Basically, there's this precipitous drop of marital satisfaction, which is closely aligned, we all know, with broader happiness, that doesn't rise again until your first child goes to college.

Kagan may be right in thinking that a precipitous US retreat from East Asia could have dangerous consequences. But this argument has the familiar whiff of the late stages of empire.

Second, much will depend on how China navigates the transition to a more open capital account. History is littered with financial crises occurring in the wake of precipitous capital account liberalization.

The German rebound was initially robust because world trade rose rapidly after a precipitous fall. China s voracious appetite for German cars and machines provided the needed boost, even as Germany s traditional trade partners in Europe struggled.

Is it sustained economic decline, high and long term unemployment, poverty, rampant inflation, a precipitous fall in the exchange rate, fiscal deficits, high borrowing costs, and political dysfunction? Most would agree that a crisis exists if just some of these misery indices are present.

For example, scientists have known for decades that certain drugs can cause severe and precipitous anemia in people with a genetic deficiency of the enzyme G6PD. More recently, researchers have learned that certain cancer drugs are ineffective in fighting tumors containing the mutated variant of the gene KRAS.

But the rise of extreme CEO compensation in the US, documented by Piketty and others, may reflect CEOs ability to disrupt the team if they do not get part of the surplus. After all, CEOs experience precipitous income declines when they are kicked out, indicating that they were paid far more than their opportunity cost.

Though it is the Turkish government that is to blame for the precipitous decline in press freedom, the policies of the European Union and the United States have been contributing factors. The EU had indicated that performance on human rights would be a key factor in determining whether Turkey would be admitted as a member.

This is from the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics. You can see that there is a fairly low rate of violence in the '50s and the '60s, then it soared upward for several decades, and began a precipitous decline, starting in the 1990s, so that it went back to the level that was last enjoyed in 1960.

This, then, is the modern Japanese version of populism the liberal elites, by falsifying the history of Japan s glorious war to liberate Asia, undermined the Japanese people s moral fiber. Because the ideological collapse of left wing politics in Japan has been as precipitous as in much of the Western world, the so called liberal elites have lost much of their former influence.

The burden of bailing out the country s ailing financial institutions was too heavy for an already indebted Cypriot state, and the International Monetary Fund was adamant that it would not pretend otherwise. So, in mid March, Cyprus was heading for a precipitous retrenchment of its banking system, resulting in the loss of a very large part of the country s financial wealth.

Keynesians argue that Europe would grow if only policy were focused on generating aggregate demand they blame precipitous fiscal consolidation and insufficiently aggressive monetary easing for the loss of momentum. Their opponents, by contrast, see structural weaknesses and internal imbalances as the major impediment to growth for supply siders, it is the slow pace of economic and social reforms that is to blame.

Therefore, the Iraq report is more than a plan to rescue Iraq it is a road map for extricating America from the mayhem of an unwinnable war. However much the study group shunned recommendations for a precipitous withdrawal, and avoided strict timetables for disengagement, their report is not only an unequivocal repudiation of Bush s stay the course obsession, but also a counsel to cut and run.

Even so, the threat to financial stability is possibly even graver today than it was in 2008, as the capacity of Western European governments to backstop banking systems is clearly reaching its limits. Allowing foreign banks subsidiaries to become orphaned amid a worsening crisis in home countries would undermine confidence in emerging Europe s financial systems, which could trigger asset price declines and precipitous contractions in credit.

Alternatively, in a moderate export downturn scenario, with real exports falling by 5 over a four quarter period, real GDP growth could slip below the 1 stall speed threshold leaving the US economy vulnerable to a recessionary relapse. By way of reference, the assumption of a 5 export downturn pales in comparison with the precipitous 13.6 decline in real exports that occurred in 2008 2009.

There appears to be a link between this precipitous drop in the average duration of stock holdings and the phenomenon of the so called ownerless corporation, whereby shareholders have little incentive to impose discipline on management. That absence of accountability, in turn, has contributed to the vertiginous rise in senior executives compensation and, in financial firms, to a shift away from shareholder returns and towards large payouts to insiders.

Personalized drug therapy uses biological indicators, or biomarkers such as DNA sequences or the presence or absence of drug receptors as an indicator of how patients should be treated, as well as to estimate the likelihood that the intervention will be effective. This concept is not new it has been known for decades, for example, that people who have a genetic deficiency of an enzyme called G6PD can experience severe and precipitous anemia if they are exposed to certain drugs.