In particular, the Mediterranean quartet of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece has suffered a huge loss of competitiveness in a relatively short time (see chart 4 .This loss is reflected in colossal current-account deficits (eg, 8.5% of GDP for Spain, which has been growing fast) or pitifully slow growth (only 1.3% a year for Italy since the euro began).
That is partly because the euro-area slowdown has only just started; partly because domestic demand has been rising; and partly because intra-east European trade has started to make up for softer exports westwards.The big exceptions are the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia, home to colossal current-account deficits and breakneck growth in recent years.
Keates also neglects the wonderful place Messiah holds in the hearts of those of us from the north of England, where colossal amateur choral accounts, complete with tubas, might have stamped rudely over the conclusions of musicologists, but achieved any number of other things.
By the 1960s its local reputation was "colossal", and it accounted for 80 per cent of William Stones' sales.
Of course, many colossal bankruptcies involve bad accounting.
Yushchenko's Presidency was, by all accounts, a colossal failure.
The senator's accounts of colossal bribes, back-room oil deals and desperate cover-ups — pieced together from interviews, leaked intercepts of telephone conversations and court filings — offer a rare glimpse into how a leftist party that rose to power vowing to stamp out the corruption of a privileged political elite ended up embracing its predecessors' practices.
It takes no account of the colossal cost in energy and carbon of destroying so much existing fabric and building it again.
The authors suggest, in scientific spirit, that she was possibly a sirenia or sea cow, but elsewhere recognise that the recent discovery of the Colossal Squid renders the numerous accounts of sea-monsters such as the Kraken much more trustworthy.
"Google can remove sites from its search results for causing too much spam; why not for piracy?" said Robert Levine, whose 2011 book, "Free Ride," is a wonderfully clear-eyed account of this colossal struggle over the future of our cultural lives.
