Their pay and assets will not appear to fall in numeric terms as inflation pushes up the value of all the things they need to buy, whilst pegging their income and assets value to a never rising floor.

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Among the state-of-the-art special effects included a giant, sparkling polar bear rising from the stadium floor and hovering over performers on a simulated ice floe.

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Many of them he keeps in a roughly 35-square-foot, mahogany-paneled room in his basement, which houses boxes of cigars piled on shelves to the ceiling and in columns rising a few feet off the floor.

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One theory is that an initial warming changed the distribution of heat in the oceans so that deposits of gas hydrates on the sea floor were released, with carbon dioxide and methane rising to the surface and entering the atmosphere, causing further greenhouse warming.

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Thus armed, day traders are adding a high-tech twist to the well-worn momentum game that exchange-floor traders have played for decades: Buy when markets are rising and sell when they turn south.

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Fred Schmidt, property specialist at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, says workers' demands for a better environment are transforming the way developers put up buildings: ceiling heights are rising, for instance, while currency traders want a Starbucks outlet on their floor.

ECONOMIST: Japan

Rising mortgage rates make it more difficult to afford a house, and thus may delay home prices from finding a floor.

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