We have also communicated our agreement to take up a pilot project on community development to wean farmers away from poppy cultivation.

But even these measures, which foreign observers have largely overlooked, have failed to boost consumer demand. So what more could the German government do to wean the Germans off their abstemious habits?

Current steps that have been taken to reintegrate ex combatants in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process, for example, through the creation of job opportunities for the large population of restive youths, as part of strategies to wean them from conflicts, should be consolidated.

But we need to get the government to work with all of the fast food purveyors and the restaurant industry, and over a five, six, seven year period wean of us off the extreme amounts of fat, sugar, fat and all the other non food ingredients.

In the Gulf oil spill's aftermath, Lisa Margonelli says drilling moratoriums and executive ousters make for good theater, but distract from the issue at its heart our unrestrained oil consumption. She shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil by confronting consumers with its real cost.

The problem is not just that they need to wean themselves from their reliance on fickle capital inflows and commodity booms, which have often left them vulnerable to shocks and prone to crises. More important, export oriented industrialization, history s most certain path to riches, may have run its course.

Nonetheless, the PBOC s tactical decision is not without potential pitfalls not least because interest rate cuts encourage the extension of more credit at a time when China is trying to wean itself from debt intensive growth. A key challenge will be to avoid escalating credit risk, which could undermine the process of reform and rebalancing.

America s real problem is not competition from China it s the complexity of shifting a 17.5 trillion economy from fossil fuels to low carbon alternatives. China s problem is not the US, but how to wean the world s largest, or second largest economy (depending on which data are used) off its deeply entrenched dependence on coal.