Japanese people are generally very reserved.

I swallowed my pride, and I learned calculus.

Perhaps in convergent mode we need to be more serious.

But Mr Putin's smile looked thin and he was hardly oozing warmth even by his own restrained standards.

I think they re two quite different modes divergence and convergence.

And curiously, in these systems, as they grow larger, the systems don't converge they diverge more.

More recently, Karim Wade, the son of former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, was arrested on suspicion that he amassed a fortune of roughly 1.5 billion during his father s presidency, when he held senior ministerial positions.

The relationship between Commandant Jérôme and FEC, which includes some 80 local businessmen, is unscrupulous but lucrative.

Many academic studies have found that the rate of convergence tends to be about 2 per year. That is, each year, an economy tends to close 2 of the gap between its actual and potential income levels.

Joint MONUC and FARDC operations along the southern shores of Lake Albert seem to have discouraged the illicit cross border transport of weapons across the lake.

Sun Fujian is a Party cadre, but he lost his ideal and belief by violently breaking the discipline of the Party after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. In addition, he is not astringent and breaks the rules. Such deed is vile and grave indeed.

The past month coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a period that usually enjoys a respite from conflict and violence, much as we witnessed in Darfur during Ramadan in 2004.

Even if it manages a soft landing, annual output growth will slow to 5 6 in the coming decades. Standard growth theory predicts convergence of per capita GDP a fast growing country will eventually encounter difficulty maintaining high rates of labor mobilization, capital accumulation, and technological progress.

Greece is also the canary in the coal mine for the euro zone, where all the PIIGS economies (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) suffer from the twin problems of public debt sustainability and external debt sustainability. Euro accession and bull market convergence trades pushed bond yields in these countries toward the level of German bunds, with the ensuing credit boom supporting excessive consumption growth.

And the surprise and just the amazement of that was only overshadowed by my return to Toronto, when, in my inbox, 10 literary agents were waiting for me to talk about putting this into a book.

These changes do not directly induce economic growth, but they increase the economy s potential or long run income. Growth itself occurs as the economy begins to converge to this higher level of long run income.

To be sure, the colonizers amassed huge fortunes, thanks to the toil of those peoples, but they could not prevent the slaves from passing on their languages to us, along with their religious beliefs, their music and their temperament.

In fact, the fiscal union proved to be explosive rather than adhesive. As international capital markets developed in the early nineteenth century, state governments borrowed on a large scale, quickly turning them from creditors into debtors.

By mid century, Japan s population could shrink by 30 unless it attracts 17 million immigrants a hard task in a country historically resistant to immigration. Moreover, the Japanese language is not widely spoken, and Japan s meager English language skills make it difficult to attract international talent to its universities.

Following the adoption of Security Council resolution 1572 (2004), in which the Council demanded that the Ivorian authorities stop all radio and television broadcasts inciting hatred, intolerance and violence, the use of virulent language abated as did most manifestations of xenophobic sentiments.

If Franco German rivalry shaped the era between 1870 and 1920, it was the conflict with Russia that defined the next 70 years. That conflict was forgotten for two decades after the end of the Cold War, because Russia s internal travails and Germany s desire to demonstrate its post unification harmlessness kept both powers from flexing their muscles.

Indeed, Iran s nuclear aspirations, one of the most pressing issues of our time, may well be reduced to whether the US should support Israel in the event that its government takes military action. One is hard pressed to find any analyst who believes that Israeli air strikes could do more than set back Iran s program for a few months while unifying fractured Iranian opinion around support for nuclear weapons.

Using this macro historical framework, we can see Japanese deflation, European debt, and even the Arab Spring as phases of systemic changes within complex structures that are interacting with one another in a new, multipolar global system. We are witnessing simultaneous global convergence (the narrowing of income, wealth, and knowledge gaps between countries) and local divergence (widening income, wealth, and knowledge gaps within countries).

These developments offer hope that current and future homeowners will be spared the agony of worrying about the vicissitudes of the real estate market. They will be able to leave the game of real estate speculation to professionals and rest assured about the value that they have accumulated in their homes.

A well designed tax on oil would also reduce demand, thereby lowering the potential for windfall profits for those who rule or own the ground over the oil deposits. A little more than a decade ago, Lloyd Bentsen, President Bill Clinton's first Treasury Secretary, tried to ensure precisely that, proposing to use a BTU tax to close America's fiscal deficit.

A final point worth emphasizing is that the Lisbon treaty moves away from many of the ideas that could serve as the foundations of a European federal super state. The disappearance from the treaty of such terms as constitution and minister of foreign affairs clearly show that the constitutional treaty s ambitions have been scaled back.

The last mentioned instrument, which would enter into force on 14 December 2005, represented a real breakthrough in that it offered for the first time a mechanism for the return from one country to another of plundered wealth, which could mean an unexpected infusion of funds for development.

NEW YORK I just returned from India, where I was lecturing to the Indian Parliament in the same hall where US President Barack Obama had recently spoken. The country was racked by scandal.

Nevertheless, there are grounds for the US doing less in the greater Middle East than it has in recent years the weakening of al Qaeda the poor prospects for peacemaking efforts and, above all, the mounting evidence that, by any measure, massive nation building initiatives are not yielding returns commensurate with the investments.

Over the years, corruption has become endemic in China, with regional party leaders and bosses in state owned enterprises wielding their vast privileges and authority to accumulate personal wealth. This has severely undermined the Chinese Communist Party s legitimacy, while hampering the kind of market based competition that China s economy needs to propel the country to high income status.

Clearly, the world s rich countries should carry the burden of dealing with climate change over the next generations. After all, they could take an easy, emissions intensive path to industrialization and wealth.

The technologies on which many of us depend today arose from a parallel convergence of discoveries in physics and engineering in the early twentieth century. In 1900, the world did not have ready access to electricity, automobiles and aviation, or telecommunications.

If his years of amassing cash had led to victory, John might have got away with his arbitrary methods but when he was defeated in France, a group of barons rose up against him and captured London. As part of a peace deal brokered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the king accepted the baron s demands, put to him in a document called Magna Carta, or the Great Charter.

Chen s personal wealth grew conspicuously shortly after he assumed office, but no one could produce hard evidence of his corruption back then. His political supporters initially brushed aside the mushrooming rumors of his self enrichment as opposition KMT propaganda.

Debates within eurozone member states typically converge on what legal scholars call herrschende Meinung ( dominant opinion ), which, in turn, appears to reflect their countries status as creditors or debtors. Reinforcing this, the typical career conscious economist has little incentive to deviate.

Unfortunately for many African countries, freedom and independence ended up in the hands of a few who had tasted and become addicted to the repressive practices that Africans had spent decades fighting. They amassed untold wealth as hunger and disease ripped their societies apart and pushed more Africans deeper into poverty.

They have been struggling to persuade the Kim regime to temper its volatility and accept a grand bargain official recognition and normalization of relations with all of its neighbors, and with the United States, in exchange for denuclearization. Indeed, this has led to considerable squabbling between the two countries in recent years.

Besides, it is not like there is huge profit for G 8 leaders in trying to collect coins from impoverished peoples living on a dollar a day. What would the G 8 leaders do, station troops in Africa to seize coffee beans and peanuts?

If we look at moments of so called structural convergence the 1880 s, 1920 s, 1950 s and 1960 s, and 1990 s, in particular we see the sources of American prosperity and power emerged in a global context, only to recede again. Perhaps rise and fall is more of a cyclical than a linear phenomenon.

Earlier this year, the editor of Die Zeit , Josef Joffe, put his finger on the issue like Jews, Americans are said to be selfish and arrogant. Like Jews, they are in thrall to a fundamentalist religion that renders them self righteous and dangerous.

It's called Kunene region.

The Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress gave primacy to the principle of market competition but, as a senior Chinese banker commented in a related context some years back It s quite hard to compete when you re playing against the referee.

Xi must also be aware that the children of the People s Republic s second generation of leaders face considerable public resentment, owing to their rapid accumulation of wealth. That explains his focus on combating corruption.

Being close to the content that's the content really is close to my heart.

Principal Secretary