Word: obvious
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...emerging markets and the potential power of nations who control supply. But he only provides two, broad suggestions to households: lead a personally sustainable life (Friedman, incidentally, lives in an 11,400 square-foot home) and work to change national leadership. On this latter point, Friedman argues the obvious, that we need innovation, clear leadership signals, and fully-functioning markets, but fails to truly discuss the political process that can get us there. Furthermore, his more interesting observations are discredited by silly chapter titles such as “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore?...
...Last season, he rowed in the varsity eight, which went 5-1 in dual races and defeated Yale in the Harvard-Yale Regatta, the crown jewel of the crew season and the oldest intercollegiate competition in America. Despite Schreck’s success with rowing, he exudes an obvious appreciation for the rest of the team. “The team atmosphere is really what keeps you in it. It’s a bond that’s really hard to break,” Schreck said. “You build it up from September 15 when...
...being nurtured and schooled by the example of the black underling. (You've heard of Huckleberry Finn? Gone With the Wind?) The novel is set in rural South Carolina in 1964, which is just about the time it would have automatically been turned into an Oscar-nominated movie. The obvious reference point is To Kill a Mockingbird, whose girl narrator, Scout Finch, is 6 to Lily's 14, and whose fictional setting is Maycomb, Ala., instead of Bees' Tiburon, S.C. But that was back when most big films tended to serious sentiment. Today, the dominant tone is irreverence, sarcasm, facetiousness...
...Less obvious is the support the dollar is getting from an unlikely quarter: global hedge funds and other nonbank financial entities. This shadow banking system has borrowed trillions of dollars to leverage its investments. But the crisis has triggered massive early loan repayments, and because these loans must be repaid in the U.S. currency, demand for the dollar has increased, driving up its value. It's not just hedge funds that are affected. Foreign banks, which hold $12 trillion in dollar assets and liabilities, are also in the process of deleveraging...
Greatness is a compliment generally conferred in retrospect. We have lucked out several times in our history when implausible characters showed unexpected greatness when it was needed: a country lawyer from Illinois, a spoiled patrician in a wheelchair, to name two obvious examples. Even more miraculous (though troublesome for democracy), both Lincoln and F.D.R. were elected by promising more or less the opposite of what they did in office. Lincoln said he'd preserve the institution of slavery. F.D.R. said he'd balance the federal budget...