Word: solidities
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...smallish, less than rich nation beset by government budget deficits, inflation and a spotty record of economic policymaking. Convincing foreign investors to buy your debt is a struggle. Financial life is difficult in ways scarcely imagined by inhabitants of the lucky (and not large) club of nations with solid currencies...
Greece suddenly found itself with a solid, reliable currency. Its government and businesses could borrow at lower interest rates than before. The country boomed, with real GDP growth topping 3.8% for eight straight years. (During the same 2000-07 run, U.S. GDP growth never hit 3.7%; Germany didn't make it past 3.2%.) It seemed as though Greece had landed a one-way ticket to economic good times...
...reality was more complicated. Greece now had a solid currency--but it wasn't Greece's currency. The euro was managed by monetary wonks at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt for whom the Greek economy was but a blip. And the decision makers in Athens with responsibility for fiscal policy continued to blunder. The country kept running big deficits in the boom years. Then came the Great Recession. Last fall, a new government revealed that the 2009 budget deficit was much higher than previously disclosed--nearly 13% of GDP. Ever since, the world's financial markets have been going...
...weight of two Snickers bars--delivers 450 calories of energy, a bunch of vitamins and minerals and up to 15 g of protein and 15 g of fat. Oh, and no more than 15 g of sugar. This is meant to be survival food, not Red Bull in solid form...
...Where was that sense of daring and anxiety-triggering anticipation in the men's figure-skating final on Thursday? It certainly wasn't much in evidence on the ice in the Pacific Coliseum. There was great skating, certainly - American Evan Lysacek skated a solid, clean program that earned him enough points to skate past heavy favorite Evgeni Plushenko of Russia and cinch the gold. The right man won, no doubt. But the entire night, I felt something was missing. We didn't see anything akin to the inspired performance Sarah Hughes gave in 2002 in Salt Lake City to best...