Word: centralization
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...chill wind is blowing through Mitte, the once drab district in central Berlin that is fast becoming hangout central for the world's creative types. Davide Grazioli, used to warmer climes, pulls his black woolly hat over his head and strides up Kastanien Allee - now dubbed Casting Alley because of all the wannabe film directors and actors who frequent its cafés. Grazioli is an Italian artist whose work includes unraveled embroideries from India and skulls made of organic incense. Three years ago, he moved to Berlin from Milan with his wife and young daughter, and though his German...
...rejuvenated an idea once dismissed as unwieldy and unrealistic: the knitting together of a free-trade zone, similar to the European Union, straddling the Asia-Pacific region. Proposed by APEC's Business Advisory Council, this zone would include most of Asia (but not India) and a sliver of Central and South America, as well as big non-Asian economies like the U.S., Russia and Canada. If all of APEC's member countries participated - a big if - its combined annual GDP would be $37 trillion, 21/2 times that of the E.U., the world's largest economic bloc in terms of combined...
...There are other reasons Asia may not be ready. One of the central goals of an Asian bloc would be to make it easier for China to buy a greater proportion of the region's output as the U.S. fades as an engine of global consumption and growth. But, while China's per capita GDP now stands at about $3,200, up nearly fourfold since 1997, it's still a far cry from U.S. per capita GDP of about $46,000. Moreover, conservative Chinese financial habits are deeply ingrained and driven by the need for "precautionary savings" for medical care...
...undeniable that Asia unlocked some deep well of creativity in Maugham. Hastings makes the unimpeachable case that posterity will remember Maugham, first and foremost, for these undeluded, worldly-wise, sometimes shocking tales of white colonist-planters exiled in the steamy jungle. In later years, when he visited Mexico and Central America, he was to write that these countries did not give him a fraction of the inspiration that he got from Asia. There is a just measure of reward in the fact that if anyone reads Maugham now, they are more likely to be in that continent than...
...change: "Bureaucratic reform is one of my top priorities and so is combating corruption. If we achieve this, we can create a conducive climate for our economy to grow and our people to prosper." Dumping a marriage-of-convenience Vice President from his first term, SBY selected respected former central banker Boediono as his No. 2 this time around; despite political pressure, he has kept on Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, whose commitment to cleaning up Indonesia's regulatory morass has delighted foreign investors even as it has irked some of the President's closest advisers, who didn't appreciate...