He had a gargantuan ego.

We've never had such gargantuan surpluses before.

When you start going up the supply chain, you find where the real food waste is happening on a gargantuan scale.

George W. Bush s idea of economic policy was to cut taxes three times while boosting spending on war. The result is a massive budget deficit, which will expand to gargantuan proportions in the coming year (perhaps 1 trillion) under the added weight of recession, bank bailouts, and short term fiscal stimulus measures.

For almost a decade, people have wondered how China would use its gargantuan foreign exchange reserves, particularly whether it would challenge the supremacy of the dollar. It now seems clear that China intends to use its foreign reserves to further its own global geopolitical strategy, not to buttress the international system that has enabled its three decade boom.

If that seems shocking today, the loss of virtue must be traced to the all pervasive permit raj, with its licensing requirements to import, produce, and invest, which grew to gargantuan proportions. High level bureaucrats quickly discovered that licenses could be bartered for favors, while politicians saw in the system the means to help important financial backers.

The DPJ suffered a bitter defeat in this summer s upper house election, after Kan abruptly proposed a significant increase in the highly unpopular consumption tax. That increase would enable Treasury mandarins to maintain their latitude in setting fiscal policy, while making it unnecessary to streamline special account budget financing for gargantuan public corporations, into which retiring bureaucrats parachute for lucrative jobs.

China has already built six mega dams on the Mekong the lifeblood for continental Southeast Asia with its latest addition being the 254 meter high Nuozhadu Dam, whose gargantuan reservoir is designed to hold nearly 22 billion cubic meters of water. The current dam building plans threaten the Salween River s Grand Canyon a UNESCO World Heritage site and the pristine, environmentally sensitive areas through which the Brahmaputra and the Mekong flow.