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Fashion & Style
No Society’s Child
What to say when people comment on your beau’s race; when the plus-one turns out to be someone not welcome; and what to wear the first day of a new job.
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U.S.
Antigay Crime Remains Steady in Washington Despite Work of Special Unit
Critics say that a unit trained to respond to hate crimes has languished and that distributing its duties throughout the department has proved ineffective.
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Business Day
Slugging It Out, Inside Obama’s Mind
An economist imagines a debate between two President Obamas — one liberal, one moderate — as Washington aims to avoid hitting a fiscal wall at year-end.
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Business Day
Health Insurance Exchanges May Be Too Small to Succeed
Paradoxically, an increase in competition among insurers may lead to higher reimbursements and health care spending, and thus higher premiums, particularly when the medical provider market is not very competitive, three economists write.
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Style
Woman Gives Birth to Own Grandson
On February 9, 2011, my son, Finnean Lee, came into the world, and at sixty-one my mother became the oldest woman in Illinois to give birth.
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Business Day
Britain Revives Regulation in a Push for Renewable Energy
Britain is returning to a system of greater market intervention to fulfill what the government considers to be an imperative to reduce greenhouse gases.
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Opinion
California Horror Stories and the 3-Strikes Law
The stories of Dale Curtis Gaines and other prisoners reveal how the most vulnerable and helpless suffered the most from a harsh law.
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Business Day
Britain to Encourage Both Nuclear and Wind Power
The plan is intended to keep the government on track in meeting its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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N.Y. / Region
In the Book Bag, More Garden Tools
Teachers at schools with their own gardens are bringing their classrooms to nature, encouraging students to plant, harvest and experiment with solar and wind energy.
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Opinion
When ‘Grading’ Is Degrading
So far, education “reform” has given us little but re-segregation and the same dismal scores in math and science.
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N.Y. / Region
City Will Test a Disaster Housing Prototype Both Innovative and Inside the Box
The city’s emergency management office has been developing a new line of temporary housing for future disasters using shipping containers — a multistory prototype is in the works.
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N.Y. / Region
Many Cemeteries Damaged, but Green-Wood Bore the Brunt of the Storm
Operators of other major cemeteries in New York reported downed trees and some structural damage, but nothing of the magnitude of Green-Wood's loss.
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Opinion
An 83-Second History of 20 Years of Climate Diplomacy
A short guide to a prolonged negotiation over how to limit the human influence on the earth's climate.
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World
France: Sarkozy Questioned Over Campaign Funds
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy was put under caution as a witness who could face charges related to accusations that his 2007 election campaign received illegal donations.
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N.Y. / Region
The Mysterious Mr. Rechnitz
Joshua Rechnitz, the philanthropist who pledged to build a bicycling velodrome in Brooklyn Bridge Park, is planning to turn an abandoned powerhouse into artist studios.
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Business Day
For Martha Stewart’s New Fans, Tattoos Meet Appliqué
Martha Stewart’s focus on artisanal products has attracted a cult following among 20- and 30-somethings who have begun their own businesses around crafts and food.
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Fashion & Style
After the Affair
After I got over my shock, my husband’s affair with a younger woman made a perverted sort of sense.
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Health
Help by the Hour, or Less
Mission Healthcare in San Diego, Calif., decided that clients should be able to specify how much help they want in 15-minute increments.
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Business Day
Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.
Dr. Robert Langer’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is on the front lines of turning discoveries into drugs and drug delivery systems.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/krugman-fighting-fiscal-phantoms.html?hp
"These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated
policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry
for them, if it weren’t for their role in diverting attention from the
ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to
perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment. What has changed? For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not
happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile
in, driving interest rates to historical lows.
Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American
economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is,
instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the
“fiscal cliff” — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about:
the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this
year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed
economy.
Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its
clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising
many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run
by more or less the same people; dig down into many of these groups’
back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the
private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.
But the deficit scolds aren’t giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt,
is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while
making lower tax rates a “core principle.” That last part makes no sense
in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if
you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.
So should we take this latest push seriously? No — and not just because
these people, aside from exhibiting a lot of hypocrisy, have been wrong
about everything so far. The truth is that at a fundamental level the
crisis story they’re trying to sell doesn’t make sense.
You’ve heard the story many times: Supposedly, any day now investors
will lose faith in America’s ability to come to grips with its budget
failures. When they do, there will be a run on Treasury bonds, interest
rates will spike, and the U.S. economy will plunge back into recession.
This sounds plausible to many people, because it’s roughly speaking what
happened to Greece. But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to
see how this could actually happen to a country in our situation.
For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private
and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the
Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can
print the stuff. So there’s almost no risk that America will default on
its debt — I’d say no risk at all if it weren’t for the possibility that
Republicans would once again try to hold the nation hostage over the
debt ceiling.
But if the U.S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that
lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
Now, it’s true that investors might start to expect higher inflation
some years down the road. They might also push down the value of the
dollar. Both of these things, however, would actually help rather than
hurt the U.S. economy right now: expected inflation would discourage
corporations and families from sitting on cash, while a weaker dollar
would make our exports more competitive.
Still, haven’t crises like the one envisioned by deficit scolds happened
in the past? Actually, no. As far as I can tell, every example
supposedly illustrating the dangers of debt involves either a country
that, like Greece today, lacked its own currency, or a country that,
like Asian economies in the 1990s, had large debts in foreign
currencies. Countries with large debts in their own currency, like France after World War I,
have sometimes experienced big loss-of-confidence drops in the value of
their currency — but nothing like the debt-induced recession we’re
being told to fear.
So let’s step back for a minute, and consider what’s going on here. For
years, deficit scolds have held Washington in thrall with warnings of an
imminent debt crisis, even though investors, who continue to buy U.S.
bonds, clearly believe that such a crisis won’t happen; economic
analysis says that such a crisis can’t happen; and the historical record
shows no examples bearing any resemblance to our current situation in
which such a crisis actually did happen.
If you ask me, it’s time for Washington to stop worrying about this
phantom menace — and to stop listening to the people who have been
peddling this scare story in an attempt to get their way."
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