The painful, lengthy, cold turkey off-season for NFL Football addicts has come to an end.

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The idea was a cold-turkey cure for endemic balance-of-payments problems, turning economic management on its head by floating sterling and letting the market dictate the exchange rate.

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This harsh, cold-turkey, approach to our fiscal deficit has the advantage of forcing the issue one way or another.

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Putting sensible programs in place now that would restrain spending growth over time is much better than the cold-turkey approach at year end.

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Perhaps the most important change, as Mr Obama acknowledged, is that America has overcome its cold-war habit of engaging mostly with Turkey's generals.

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Mr Saakashvili had to tread carefully in Ajaria because of a sprawling ex-Soviet base near Batumi, a legacy of the days when this was a cold-war frontier between the Red Army and Turkey, a NATO member.

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Far from becoming expendable in the post-Cold War world, a strong and secure Turkey is in fact more important today than ever before.

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Some politicians -- and a few economists -- would say that America is drunk on credit and just needs to go cold turkey.

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The cold turkey scene has cropped up in films like Trainspotting and soap operas like EastEnders, where a parent uses so-called "tough love".

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