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...Madea's Big Happy Family, like most of Perry's work, is an odd hybrid of populist comedy-drama, rock concert, revival meeting and motivational seminar. The broad comedy, stereotyped characters and simple set (a two-story family house, living room downstairs, bedroom upstairs) give the show a TV-sitcom feel - an impression reinforced by the video screens that project the action simultaneously, even edited with two-shots and closeups...
...currency--but it wasn't Greece's currency. The euro was managed by monetary wonks at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt for whom the Greek economy was but a blip. And the decision makers in Athens with responsibility for fiscal policy continued to blunder. The country kept running big deficits in the boom years. Then came the Great Recession. Last fall, a new government revealed that the 2009 budget deficit was much higher than previously disclosed--nearly 13% of GDP. Ever since, the world's financial markets have been going through another of their periodic losses of faith...
What is the endgame here? Greece has big debts relative to the size of its $357 billion economy (about 120% of GDP). It no longer has the option of eating into those debts by inflating its currency. In fact, it has no power to use monetary policy to ease its pain, as the Federal Reserve has been doing in a big way in the U.S. The only options for Greece are to 1) scrimp and save to convince creditors that it can keep paying them off, 2) convince its fellow euro-zone countries--or maybe the International Monetary Fund...
...Horns, Hill dispenses with such supernatural supporting players in favor of the big dude himself: the Devil. His main character, Ig Perrish, wakes one morning to discover horns growing out of his head. Suddenly, people begin to tell Ig their deepest, darkest thoughts and all the awful things they've done to others. "I wanted to see, if you knew everyone's worst secrets, could you still love them?" says Hill over burgers and beer at a Boston pub. "Everyone has terrible ideas. And if that's the side of you that the Devil sees, then no wonder he hates...
...needs an excuse to party, but the city's first Super Bowl win provided the best reason to ratchet up Mardi Gras a week early. It was a long-overdue celebration--not just for the Saints, after 43 years of bag-over-their-heads futility, but also for the Big Easy itself, after four-plus years of post-Katrina pity parties. It was a night to stop feeling sorry. New Orleans is still a high-poverty, high-anxiety mess. Some of its neighborhoods have barely begun to rebuild, and it's still outrageously vulnerable to coastal storms. Its levees...