In rich countries, the stagnation of middle class wages has caused understandable anxiety. Politicians like Hillary Clinton in the United States are promising that they can cajole large corporations into paying higher wages.

You have to work the phones, cajole world leaders to do this or that. It is a symphony often not a very harmonious one of small steps that you hope will lead to something greater.

Third, Zoellick should use his formidable negotiating skills to cajole rich countries into greatly increasing the grant component of World Bank aid. The idea that a big government guaranteed global bank is needed to fill holes in private capital markets is laughable nowadays.

For this reason, politicians and powerful businessmen often cajole the press, the credit rating agencies, and even the analysts to portray their actions in a positive light. As the main source of negative information that is not sensitive to power, the CDS market is feared, and politicians want to eliminate it.

The DPJ has even weaker grass roots support, so the mandarins will most likely use their standard techniques of divide and rule to cajole the party by teaching it to mimic the LDP in using state money and contracts to underwrite its major constituencies, such as labor unions and other interest groups.

South African president Thabo Mbeki convened negotiations with Zimbabwe s political groups but they have been so unfruitful that opposition leaders recently all but accused Mbeki of lying to the world about the progress of the talks. Some African leaders notably Ghana s president, John Kufuor, and outgoing African Union head Alpha Konare have tried to cajole Mugabe towards reform, to no avail.

I have spent many hours trying to guide, cajole, and beg my energy analysts to create a model that might identify it, just as we have for currencies, bond yields, and equities. I have also discussed the idea with industry experts, most of whom believe that one exists, but that it moves around a lot, because it is greatly influenced by the marginal cost of oil production itself an unstable variable.