Word: verges
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...highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (o.e.c.d.). Because of the high level of mortgage debt, Jamie Caruana, governor of the Bank of Spain, warned last year that by the end of 2004, "The cushion of saving available ... had fallen to practically zero for Spanish households." Ricardo Vergés, an economist who earlier this year completed the first accounting report on housing for the National Institute of Statistics, is spooked by what he found. "We have €7.4 billion in mortgages. If you divide that by the national income, you see that we're indebted...
...unprotected. The result: in 1999, Réunion's balance of trade was in the red to the tune of over $1.9 billion. At the same time the island has been experiencing a demographic explosion, with a birthrate almost double the European average. "Two worlds coexist here," says Paul Vergès, president of Réunion's regional council. "People who work - many of whom are overpaid colonial civil servants - and people who survive thanks to French benefit payments. Welfare protection has deepened the social divisions of the colonial era and created an artificial economy...
...problem, however, is the kids don't have the money to pay for all those trendy brands. So the number of robberies has almost doubled over the past 10 years. "For decades the rmi and other welfare payments bought social peace by replacing viable economic policies," says Vergès. "But we've come to the end of that logic. Consumer goods are being presented ostentatiously to a growing population that can't afford them. In the future, that could have very serious consequences...
Just as the whole venture seemed on the verg of collapse, eight members of a Black students organization the fundamentalist Christian Seymour Society announced that they were beginning a one-week symbolic last (by eating only fruit), and invited the original fasters to join them. They stressed that the purpose of their protest was not to strong arm the University, but to redirect attention from the hunger strike itself to the moral issues involved in divestiture...
Just as the whole venture seemed on the verg of collapse, eight members of a Black students organization the fundamentalist Christian Seymour Society announced that they were beginning a one week symbolic fast (by eating only fruit), and invited the original fasters to join them. They stressed that the purpose of their protest was not to strong arm the University, but to redirect attention from the hunger strike itself to the moral issues involved in divestiture...