Word: nears
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...than one quarter of what you'd pay in London. That's a big draw. But Berlin isn't just cheap. Some flock there because it is not yet set in brick, stone and concrete, but in the process of redefining itself. Guido Axmann came to Berlin from Oldenburg, near Bremen, and switched from being a doctor to running a consultancy on environmental issues. "[The city] has physical space, but also mental space. It allows you to develop," he says. (See a pictorial history of the Berlin Wall...
...clubs - such as Berghain, which Britain's DJ Mag this year named as the world's best club - keep going until the following afternoon. There's always a risk that gentrification will spoil the vibe. One of the biggest haunts in the early 1990s was Tresor, a subterranean space near Potsdamer Platz. The club shut down when the area was turned into a giant shopping mall. The Love Parade, an annual techno festival that drew as many as a million people to the streets of Berlin every summer, took place for the last time there in 2006 because...
...irked some of the President's closest advisers, who didn't appreciate their own business interests coming under scrutiny. (In a further cleanup bid, SBY is instituting a pay raise for his Cabinet members "so they are not tempted by corruption.") (See pictures of a deadly dam burst near Jakarta...
There's not much to add to the first point - that really bad stuff can happen - other than to note that capitalism has just experienced the equivalent of a meteor near miss. But the second and third points demand more explanation. The reason a big federal debt undermines the dollar is that a government with really big debts will be tempted to inflate its way out by printing money to pay creditors. Printing more dollars (the process actually involves the Federal Reserve's purchasing government securities with dollars it conjures out of thin air) reduces the value of existing dollars...
...that's only the second or third chapter in a story whose brutal revelations come at regular intervals. A riveting scene near the end of the movie - with Mary, Precious and a social worker played by a makeup-free Mariah Carey (who should work for Daniels every chance she gets) - is as powerful as anything on film this year. (Look for other stealth casting, including Lenny Kravitz and Sherri Shepherd.) Because Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are executive producers, you might expect the sort of classic inspirational arc they both favor. But Winfrey and Perry aren't the creative forces...