That successive efforts to agree a programme of work in the CD have become mired in procedural disputes is a matter for deep regret.

The coup in Egypt may have serious regional consequences as well. Syria remains mired in a bloody civil war that has already caused more than 100,000 deaths.

Iceland, which was hit by a financial crisis in 2008, provides the counterfactual. Whereas Greece remains mired in depression, Iceland which is not in the eurozone has essentially recovered.

Since their collapse in 2007, US households have understandably become fixated on repairing the damage. That means paying down debt and rebuilding savings, leaving consumer demand mired in protracted weakness.

The Capital Master Plan for United Nations Headquarters in New York is an issue that has, sadly enough, been mired in what the Secretary General terms political and financial dynamics.

America is suffering the consequences of a generation long effort to render the state illegitimate as an economic actor. Europe is mired in its oxymoronic commitment to expansionary fiscal austerity.

Brazil, for example, uses visits to doctors to measure health sector output, regardless of what happens to the patient. China s statistical agency is still mired in communist input output accounting.

It is now mired in an existential crisis more profound than at any point since 1945. And, while muddling through is a characteristic response of complex political systems, it is deeply destructive.

Meanwhile, many of America s European allies are mired in economic malaise. And, though the US economy is recovering from the global financial crisis, America s treasury and reputation has been dealt a severe blow.

Yemen is mired in crises that it cannot solve alone. Unless its international allies throw it a lifeline, it risks being swallowed by a sea of disorder that could imperil the entire region.

Now it is time to re examine the ODA system. After all, donor countries are mired in debt and stagnation, while some recipient economies are growing 5 7 times faster than they are.

Today, with Venezuela s economy mired in high inflation and overly dependent on oil, Chávez is fading as a regional model and guide. He has also been startled by the rise of domestic opposition.

What is needed today is nothing less than a new consensus between alliances that are frayed, between wealthy nations and poor, and among peoples mired in mistrust across an apparently widening cultural abyss.

The BRICS arose at a time when much of the world, especially the advanced economies, was mired in crisis. The fall of the West narrative ran alongside that of the rise of the rest.

I hate to argue with Einstein, but if that which is most valuable in our life and our business actually can't be counted or valued, aren't we going to spend our lives just mired in measuring the mundane?

France is not Imperial Rome, where panem et circenses made a fundamental difference. It is a weakened democracy mired in an economic and social crisis so deep that it verges on becoming an identity crisis.

PALO ALTO With the global economy mired in recession and financial crisis, policymakers everywhere have launched a series of monetary, financial, and fiscal responses. Nevertheless, economies continue to contract, unemployment to rise, and wealth to decline.

Given that as many as half of China s 1.3 billion people remain mired in abject poverty, it is in China s interest to ensure that these economic relationships continue to flourish. In the past, China has recognized the vital need for good neighborly relations.

The United States and China are locked in an uncomfortable embrace the economic counterpart of what psychologists call codependency. The flirtation started in the late 1970s, when China was teetering in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and the US was mired in a wrenching stagflation.

Systemically important emerging economies are also subject to considerable uncertainty. Brazil s presidential election in October will determine whether the country makes progress toward a new, more sustainable growth model or becomes more deeply mired in a largely exhausted economic strategy that reinforces its stagflationary tendencies.

NEW HAVEN The politicization of central banking continues unabated. The resurrection of Shinzo Abe and Japan s Liberal Democratic Party pillars of the political system that has left the Japanese economy mired in two lost decades and counting is just the latest case in point.

The review of its implementation is of immense importance to the international community because while we deliberate on this important subject, millions of women and children in all parts of the world still remain mired in disease, poverty and the adverse effects of terrorism.

But, rather than keeping an eye on that ball, the United States wasted the first decade of this century mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in a recent speech, American foreign policy will pivot toward East Asia.

Likewise, Europe is on life support, thanks to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi s astute maneuvering and promises of unlimited intervention in sovereign debt markets. But unemployment is at its highest in decades and growth has essentially stalled, even in Germany, while the troubled southern economies are mired in deep recession.

Meanwhile, the Middle East remains a region mired in backwardness. The Arab Spring triggered by slow growth, high youth unemployment, and widespread economic desperation has given way to a long winter in Egypt and Libya, where the alternatives are a return to authoritarian strongmen and political chaos.

If a country fails to respond adequately to new challenges as they arise, economic growth and development stall. Many countries in Latin America and South Asia, for example, have become mired in the so called middle income trap, because they failed to adjust their growth models in a timely manner.

But unemployment is at its highest in decades and growth has essentially stalled, even in Germany, while the troubled southern economies are mired in deep recession. The situation in Greece, moreover, has become socially unsustainable Greece is small, but a total collapse there could have very negative financial and psychological effects elsewhere.

Japan provides good lessons about where the true risks are, as it has been suffering from deflation or near deflation for 14 years. Since 1991, Japan has been mired in what Harvard economist Alvin Hansen, a contemporary of Keynes, once described as secular stagnation.

Add to that a stop start commitment to reform of state owned enterprises and China could inadvertently find itself mired in something comparable to what Minxin Pei has long called a trapped transition, in which the economic reform strategy is stymied by the lack of political will in a one party state.

Likewise, the Arab Spring in 2011 was supposed to herald a new, more democratic future for the Middle East and North Africa. While Tunisia has averted disaster, most of the other affected countries have ended up mired in chaos, with Syria s brutal civil war facilitating the rise of the Islamic State.

Why, two decades after communism ended and Ukraine gained its independence, does the country remain mired in economic torpor and an authoritarian politics that has aroused such ire in Europe? When a country like Ukraine develops slowly and remains poor, it is not because of natural disaster or resource constraints.

West Africa cannot afford to find itself mired again in instability and conflict, and Brazil therefore urges the Government and the rebel forces to reach a common vision of the future and to participate in good faith in the plan of action laid out by President Mbeki and his team for sustainable peace in Côte d'Ivoire.

Their risks today are often big due to real estate bubbles in such glamour cities as London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Istanbul, Moscow, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Those bubbles may keep expanding, or may burst, leaving many homeowners mired in debt.

In these circumstances, with China s financial system too fragile to withstand external shocks, and the global economy mired in turmoil, the PBOC would be unwise to gamble on the ability of rapid capital account liberalization to generate a healthier and more robust financial system. On the contrary, policymakers should tread carefully in their pursuit of financial liberalization.

Although Europe remains mired in crisis and existential self doubt, and Japan is still finding its feet after two decades of economic stagnation, the US is as relevant as ever. Indeed, no major global challenge from conflict in the Middle East to climate change to global financial regulation can be confronted without American engagement.

Among the splinter groups that arose were the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) and the nationalist LPR. As they emerged on the political stage, the left was failing the economy did not improve, unemployment remained high, and the SLD, which attracted all kinds of riffraff, became mired in corruption scandals.

Okinawans were already furious that the Democratic Party of Japan led government broke its pledge to relocate the Futenma Air Base. But, with Japan s political system mired in a protracted transition under a dysfunctional two party regime, recent governments have been unstable and weak, unable to satisfy either side s demands.

Likewise, Putin s foreign policy remains mired in old Russian obsessions, beginning with restoring the empire in whatever form possible. In his effort to prove that losing its imperial status has not diminished Russia s global role, Putin has meddled relentlessly in international decisions, opposing sanctions against Iran and supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad s regime, even as it slaughters its own citizens.

Most importantly, while the average debt GDP ratio is no higher than it is in other advanced countries, and consolidation efforts started earlier, the eurozone has been mired in a severe crisis of confidence for the past two years. This points to a systemic dimension of the crisis that cannot be reduced to profligate behavior by fiscal sinners.

Burning fossil fuels is having a measurable impact on the earth s temperature. But reducing carbon emissions has proved impossible, because such a commitment could constrain GDP growth (anathema to developed countries mired in economic malaise) and impede access to energy and electricity for billions of people in developing countries, which is unacceptable to China and India.

While the international community's Performance based road map to a permanent two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict was endorsed in 2002 by both Israel and Palestine as the frame of reference for the coming period, three years later it remained mired in its first phase, from which there seemed to be no way out.

If the peripheral countries remain mired in a deflationary trap of high debt, falling output, weak competitiveness, and structural external deficits, eventually they will be tempted by a third option default and exit from the eurozone. This would enable them to revive economic growth and competitiveness through a depreciation of new national currencies.

The continent s third pillar, South Africa, will spend 2008 mired in an escalating political feud between Thabo Mbeki, the lame duck president, and Jacob Zuma, a former deputy who is the newly elected leader of the ruling African National Congress and the leading candidate to succeed Mbeki, his bitter rival, next year.

But neither France s near total control of money and credit, nor its strong influence over politics and security, is wholly responsible for keeping the franc zone countries mired in poverty and instability. By misappropriating public funds for personal use, franc zone leaders serve as accomplices to France s institutionalized exploitation of CFA countries and citizens.

Hobbled by severe damage to private and public sector balance sheets, and with policy interest rates at or near zero, post bubble economies have been mired in a classic liquidity trap. They are more focused on paying down massive debt overhangs built up before the crisis than on assuming new debt and boosting aggregate demand.