There is an apparent contradiction between most economists' support for free trade, low taxes and less intervention in the market and the low marks many give to Mr McCain, who is generally more supportive of those things than Mr Obama.
Add these costs to the human toll of people being turfed out of their homes, and it is no surprise that America's politicians are scrambling for ways to stem the foreclosures. (All the more so because hardest-hit areas include election swing states such as Ohio and Florida.) So far, the focus is on low-cost intervention: encouraging borrowers to seek counselling and lenders to show forbearance.
Homeowners who have suffered for five years as they watched the value of their homes, the consummate investment, drop lower and lower would rather not forgo government intervention to see just how low prices will go.
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Indeed, many analysts now say Spain could manage to sidestep a programme altogether, as the possibility of ECB intervention continues to keep Madrid's borrowing costs low for long enough for it to cut the budget deficit and get the economy back on track.
Estruch says that the study has some limitations, most notably that the low-fat diet group may not have had as intense an intervention during the first part of the study as the Mediterranean groups did, potentially biasing the results in favor of the Mediterranean diet.
He expects some change, even without regulatory intervention, such as consolidation of venues, in part because low trading volumes are hurting profitability.
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The banks have been able to make these kinds of profits largely for reasons which have to do with government intervention which saved them in the first place, government intervention which eased up credit conditions, which provided effectively very, very low interest money to them and an implicit guarantee.
The more likely conclusion is that dropouts in the low sugar group returned to old beverage consumption habits in the interim, thereby muddling the intervention effect on the 18-month results.
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And instead of trying to prop up prices using intervention schemes, as Brazil and other coffee producers have been doing recently, low prices should be seen as an ally: eventually they will drive out inefficient producers elsewhere, and Brazil will be able to increase its earnings through greater volumes.
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