Word: dollarization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Texas oilmen flaunted their new wealth: "[O]ne oilman wore a hundred-dollar bill as a bow tie; when asked, he would take it off and throw it in the air, then tie another. Another took to riding a pet lion to meet the mailman; yet another tried in vain to keep penguins in a walk-in freezer. One wrote Pablo Picasso asking to buy ten paintings; he didn't specify color or type, just the size of his wall. A Houston oilman's wife wrote to the Smithsonian to ask whether the Hope Diamond was for sale. Then there...
...Maybe that should be the model now. Within a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus bill there is probably enough that lawmakers agree on to get the kind of bipartisan vote Obama once aimed for: shoring up collapsing infrastructure, extending unemployment benefits, targeted tax cuts and relief - with strings attached - to state and local governments and embattled homeowners. Then take a deep breath, and let's have the debate he promised, the rigorous test of "Do we need this?" and "Can we afford it?", for all the other programs currently marinating in the bill, whether the honeybee subsidy or the Pell grants...
...This isn't just the first test, it's the biggest. Trillion-dollar legislation doesn't come along every day, and the hard choices are not just what we spend money on but how, at what speed, toward which priorities. Is getting a bad bill quickly really worth it? Is taking more time to get it right really so risky...
...Mexico's cultural diversity. Demonizing arranged marriages is the latest portrayal of Indians as savages that has continued during five centuries since the Spanish conquest, says Ximena Avellaneda of the Rosario Castellanos Women House. "Why do Americans attack an arranged marriage between Triquis and say nothing about million-dollar marriage contracts between Hollywood stars?" she says. "Relationships between teenagers are also common in many communities, not just among indigenous people...
...Still, the outlaw spirit lives on in the work of contemporary monkeywrenchers like Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old college student who singlehandedly disrupted a multi-million-dollar land auction that would have put hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands in southern Utah in the hands of oil and gas companies. But DeChristopher didn't use sabotage or homemade bombs-just chutzpah. (See the top 10 green ideas...