Word: evens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such profligacy must bring retribution, one would think. Yet Italy goes serenely on, racking up an enviable economic record and attracting little international criticism or even attention. Perhaps insolvency resides in the eye of the beholder, for there can be no doubt about the numbers. Italian governments have been abusing their credit cards for 20 years, piling debt onto debt. Only once in the past dozen years has the annual budget deficit been less than 10% of GDP. By contrast, the worst U.S. ratio was 3.8% in 1983; last year it was only 1.8%. Moreover, most of Italy's debt...
...Even sobersided economists accept that there is something odd about the Italian experience. A recent scholarly study, The Italian Miracle, does smack of the supernatural compared with the German miracle, which was 99% hard work. But there are rational elements. Italians are great savers, squirreling away 15% of income, much of it in government securities. Fully 97% of the national debt is funded domestically, and nearly two-thirds of the negotiable state debt is in the hands of individuals. This mode of saving doubtless owes something to exchange controls and preferential tax treatment, but Italians have been willing buyers...
...astonishing how many ways the Middle East's antagonists can find to thwart peace. Lately, the preferred method has been to dither. Now Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has stepped in with a proposal to goose the main parties into conversation, only to find even those modest efforts mired in debate. After an inconclusive round robin of talks in Cairo, Washington and New York, Mubarak went home warning -- not for the first time -- that a "golden opportunity" was about to be missed...
...decade ago fake-fur coats were lumpy modacrylic numbers that clever designers dismissed as "mama coats," garments that conservative women bought to keep out the cold. Now refined techniques allow realistic animal patterns to be printed on more vibrant and active fabrics, such as Lycra, stretch velour and even sheer silk mousseline...
...real animal skins, has, in part, boosted the new fad by encouraging designers to play with the unreal thing in their lines. Designer Christian Lacroix's fringed panther-print polymid shawl ($470) is hot stuff. Patrick Kelly has scored with skinny dresses in leopard stretch velvet ($340), and even purist Giorgio Armani uses mock lynx for a duffle coat in the Emporio Armani line ($685). After dark, the more the merrier seems to be the rule. Says Annie Allanche, a manager at Paris' Irie boutique: "Women are mixing leopard, tiger, giraffe and ocelot for evening...