Countrywide's share price has dipped a bit since then, but BofA is still sitting on a paper profit.

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Even if the share price rises sufficiently to produce a paper profit, we can never say that we are better off than we would have been had the government stayed out.

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On paper his business never made more than a small profit, but its meat products (burgers and Philly steaks) were rated as good quality by those who knew the brand.

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Over in print media, Janet Robinson , chief executive of The New York Times Co. (nyse: NYT - news - people ), plans to shrink the width of its flagship paper and cut 250 jobs in the face of a dismal profit picture.

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There's so much iffy paper still on the books that 2009 is more of a workout year with few major profit centers igniting and others, like the collateralized debt business, shrinking to insignificance.

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The SIIA white paper also shows how suspected pirates are using Internet auctions to turn better than a 90 percent profit from sales of illegal software products, and how they are reaching thousands of new customers with little effort or cost.

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If digital photography sales bomb, Plaza Create will end up with a lot of costly assets that do nothing to boost its paper-thin 1.1% net profit margin.

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Traders don't necessarily have to realize a profit in order to get a positive result, they just need to be able to show it on paper.

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