But I did go on to be a reasonably astute, arguably world class worrier.

And one of the questions, they were very culturally astute, the people who put the questionnaire.

I convey gratitude to Mr. Jean Ping for his astute leadership of the fifty ninth session.

Nevertheless, while not all is sweetness and light, there has been progress. And for this the IMF s strong, politically astute management not exactly something from which the Fund has regularly benefited in recent years deserves credit.

Bryan, Roosevelt said, would be as clay in the hands of the potter under the astute control of the ambitious and unscrupulous Illinois communist. The free coinage of silver would be but a step towards the general socialism which is the fundamental doctrine of his political belief.

Indeed, the phrase casino banking tends to ignore the fact that casinos have a rather good handle on their returns. They are typically very astute at risk management, unlike many of the banks that dramatically increased their leverage and thus their risks during the last 20 years.

Unfortunately for him, Greece does not want to exit, and it cannot be forced to do so under the treaties governing the European Union. What Greece wants is to remain in the eurozone, with a lower debt burden a position that is both economically astute and protected by treaty.

How Putin, an astute politician, responds to that pressure will determine his political legacy. And the West s response to Putin s return to the presidency could have a marked effect on whether he presses for liberalizing reforms and survives, or follows his KGB honed authoritarian instincts and stokes further protest.

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.

The best answer that I have heard comes from Axel Weber, the former president of Germany s Bundesbank and an astute political observer. In Weber s view, policymakers simply do not have the public mandate to get ahead of problems, especially novel ones that seem small initially, but, if unresolved, imply potentially large costs.

Fortunately, the United Nations has remained undeterred, and that is due in particular to the astute leadership of our Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, whose diplomatic skills and efforts to unite tested as they have been  have managed to keep the Organization focused as it deals with the critical issues confronting the international community today.

Park, who lost her first bid for the GNP s nomination to Lee in 2007, needs to ensure that no rupture with her erstwhile rival knocks her off the path to victory in 2012. An astute politician, Park did not hesitate to campaign wholeheartedly for Lee the last time around a move that, as part of long term political strategy, made perfect sense.

What we call schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are recognizable in literature dating back to ancient Greece, and The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621 by the English scholar Robert Burton, remains one of the most astute descriptions of depression. Today, low and middle income countries account for most of the morbidity and 75 of the suicides that result from mental illness.

Park Geun hye, daughter of Park Chung hee, President of South Korea from 1961 to 1979, is now one of the two likely candidates to succeed President Lee Myung bak. While Park derives some of her power from her family pedigree, she has proven to be an astute and seasoned politician one who climbed the Grand National Party s leadership ladder over the last two decades to emerge as a national figure.

Park Geun hye, daughter of Park Chung hee, President of South Korea from 1961 to 1979, is now one of the two likely candidates to succeed President Lee Myung bak. While Park derives some of her power from her family pedigree, she has proven to be an astute and seasoned politician nbsp one who climbed the Grand National Party s leadership ladder over the last two decades to emerge as a national figure.

One of India s more astute young commentators, Sreeram Chaulia, captures this heady exuberance well Every milestone in advanced rocket science, he writes, is a shot in the arm for national self confidence, showing that India is headed for global leadership. When the chips are down, or if there is a national calamity, memories of the Mars orbiter blazing a trail in the sky will sustain the faith that the future belongs to India.

Singapore s former leader, Lee Kwan Yew, an astute observer of both the US and China, argues that China will not surpass the US as the leading power of the twenty first century, precisely because the US attracts the best and brightest from the rest of the world and melds them into a diverse culture of creativity. China has a larger population to recruit from domestically, but, in Lee s view, its Sino centric culture will make it less creative than the US.