Word: weak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...resigning or calling early elections. Not even the increasingly influential Northern League Party, which commands 10% support in polls and is growing in popularity, is interested in an early election, aware as they are that they owe their power to Berlusconi. Meanwhile, the center-left opposition is considered so weak and fractured that it may fear new elections more than anyone. (Read "Photos of Nude Partygoers Add to Berlusconi's Woes...
...output gap," defined as the difference between the potential output of a given economy and what is actually being produced (including services). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is projecting that, despite global production cutbacks, the situation is actually getting worse because the recovery will be weak. In 2010 the output gap among 24 OECD member nations is projected to widen to -5.7% - the widest gulf by far in the post-World War II era. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...believe that corruption and shoddy construction contributed to the high student death toll, which may be as high as 6,000. Why is the government so afraid of an independent investigation into this matter? Because the Party knows its system is vulnerable, that its credibility is weak and that it has become a mafia whose only unifying ideology is to hold on to power. The truth about something as simple as why those students died in Sichuan could undermine its authority. To witness this vulnerability, you need only look at the soldiers and paramilitaries filling the streets of Beijing...
...would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak...
...warring tribes and ethnic factions that is not amenable to anything approaching nation-building. In fact, the first Afghan state emerged with the Durrani Empire in 1747, making it a nation older than the U.S. Afghans lack no sense of nationhood; rather, they have always been ruled by a weak central state...