When it comes to productivity, India has been a laggard. Unless it finds a way to improve, the country's demographic profile could become a burden rather than a benefit.

To be sure, economic performance will vary widely among EU countries. While Italy will be the laggard, with only 1.1 growth, the Irish rocket will not lose its force, pushing real GDP up by about 4.8 .

Lack of adequate foreign assistance is one of the greatest disgraces on our planet, and the United States has been the biggest laggard of all. It is urgent that the US wake up to global realities, and that it follow through on its commitments.

The child who dominates on the playground may become a laggard when the context changes to a disciplined classroom. In the middle of the twentieth century, Josef Stalin scornfully asked how many divisions the Pope had, but four decades later, the Papacy was still intact while Stalin s empire had collapsed.

While Germany grew by only 14 in the ten years from 1995 to 2005, ranking as Europe s vice laggard next to Italy, France grew by 23.6 , which was nearly the old EU countries average of 24.3 . In 2001, France s gross national income per capita overtook that of Germany, and is now 4 higher.

Since then, China s stock market has been a global laggard that is, until the past year, when it became the best performing in the world, rising by more than 150 . And yet the roller coaster pattern continues the 8.5 plunge came when the market re opened on a Monday that followed the largest two day rise since 2008.

Whether true or not, the important point is that the merger transcended national considerations, and the European Commission had a duty to involve itself. The EU s executive body is meant to be the driving force behind Europe s efforts to revive laggard industries and fight to reverse the long term economic decline that the eurozone crisis appears to presage.

The United States is usually regarded as an environmental laggard, with President George W. Bush perceived as being little better than the head of a gang of willful polluters who do everything they can to obstruct global action to protect the environment. Of course, there is some truth in this characterization of America (and quite a lot in that of Bush), but the picture is not uniformly bleak.

While Italy will be the laggard, with only 1.1 growth, the Irish rocket will not lose its force, pushing real GDP up by about 4.8 . In general, the big EU countries are still performing badly, in contrast to the smaller members hardly surprising, given that the EU is basically an institution to help the smaller countries overcome the drawback of their size by extending the agglomeration advantages that formerly were reserved to the bigger countries.