Word: muchness
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...There was a brief boom of research into whether animals could be used to predict earthquakes in the 1970s, when a few scientists documented changes in the behavior of birds, mice and domestic animals immediately before the earth's beginning to shake. But the idea never gained much traction. The very difficulty of predicting earthquakes makes it hard to study how animals react to them. "This was a completely fortuitous event," says Halliday. "It would be practically impossible to plan research like this. You'd spend a lot of time watching toads with nothing happening." (Read "Why Chile's Quake...
This is where we are, almost. Nor is Greece the only culprit. It is all the PIIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain. All of them have been shoveling too much coal. To keep their folks warm, they spread euros around like there is no tomorrow, especially to their powerful public-employees unions. By the same token, they have been loath to raise taxes, let alone take on entrenched interests. The fallout is right out of the introductory economics textbook. (Read: "Bailout Showdown: Greece and Germany Raise the Stakes...
...been a standard theme of commentary of late to say that Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, could be the leader of Europe - but doesn't want the job. When Merkel took on much of the E.U., above all French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with her lonely, stubborn and ultimately victorious campaign against a Greek bailout, she became "Madame Non" in France, and Public Enemy No. 1 in Greece. At home, Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister of the government she ousted in 2005, gave her an F for an "extraordinary foreign policy disaster." Germany, he surmised, was no longer the "motor...
Take as a metaphor a train stringing together 16 engines; these are the members of the Eurozone. Each has to steam along at the same speed. If any or several of the 16 engineers throw too much coal into the boiler by way of excessive government spending, the train will derail. That's grade-school physics...
Still, let's not praise Merkel the martinet too much. She has not acted out of pure selflessness. As the richest nation in Euroland, Germany would have had to pay the largest share of the bailout. And if the euro careens out of control, Germany would end up as the biggest loser. With the euro derailed, the new deutsche mark would be everybody's darling, driving its value up - not a cheery prospect for the world's second biggest exporter. (See video: "Globabl Business Trips: Germany...