With the start of the New Year, hedge fund and institutional investors were given a clean slate to get reinvolved in the risk-on trade.

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Unlike an Etch-a-Sketch you cannot wipe the slate clean here.

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It's based on flawed assumptions that - the first of which is that we can just kind of wipe the slate clean after three and a half years of sacrifice and death and the president gets a do-over.

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The only exception to what international lawyers call this "clean slate" rule is "dispositive" treaties--such as those that dispose of territory.

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Starting from a clean slate, the concept of a small battery-powered car that could be stacked at various pick-up points around a city took shape.

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"Corruption still exists but right now is at a low ebb and it must be said that the slate is now clean for us to expose anyone involved in match-fixing, " Virk said.

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Administration aides think that's merely an excuse, but in any case everybody seems to want to clean the slate though that may not really be possible until after election-season rhetoric subsides.

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Yet irrespective of how the specific write-down numbers are interpreted, H-P has seized on the Autonomy debacle as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean.

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Will he be able to use this clean slate to revolutionize the tech world with a new piece of technology akin to the Wi-Fi he helped bring us?

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The Rolling Jubilee project is seeking donations to help it buy-up distressed debts, including student loans and outstanding medical bills, and then wipe the slate clean by writing them off.

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