41.   The companies argue that current prices are justified by the billions of dollars they spend on research.

42.   The companies have justified higher prices by pointing to skyrocketing costs of oil, but fare increases also arrive at a time when air travel is in hot demand.

43.   The idea that the U.S. market alone can justify stock prices that were once predicated on world expansion is an exercise in wishful thinking, Grant said.

44.   The kind that lets Upper Deck justify exorbitant prices without even posing an inconvenience to forgers.

45.   The pharmaceutical companies insist that huge research costs justify high prices for breakthrough drugs but they guard their numbers as trade secrets.

46.   The rarity, he said, justifies the price.

47.   The rewards of fee-based businesses justify such prices, buyers say.

48.   They pushed companies out into the public market before they were ready, and invented absurd measures of business performance when the usual metrics no longer justified stock prices.

49.   To justify the price of buying Hughes, Raytheon believes it must simultaneously announce specific consolidation and cost-cutting plans, said one person close to the company.

50.   Those types of short-term concerns are not enough to justify higher prices now, analysts said.