It was impossible to overstate the importance of full and timely payment in that regard.

We've been searching ever since, but it's impossible to overstate the magnitude of the search that remains.

In this era of proliferating international courts and tribunals, we cannot overstate the importance of the Court's leadership role as the only universal international court with general jurisdiction.

For example, US multinational corporations sometimes over invoice import bills or under report export earnings to reduce their tax obligations. Again, this would work to overstate the recorded current account deficit.

While CARICOM appreciated the steps undertaken by States to prevent the likelihood of accidents, it could not overstate the damage that would be done to the ecosystems and economies of its countries should an accident occur.

It is difficult to overstate the dependence of modern economies on large scale computer systems. But imagine if one day a host of key communications satellites were incapacitated, or the databases of major financial systems were erased.

To say that 0.25 , or even 1 , is high in this environment is pure hyperbole. And while one shouldn t overstate the risks of sustained ultra low rates to financial stability, it is also wrong to dismiss them entirely.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of the occasion. According to Héctor Schamis, a political scientist at Georgetown University, if a similar political change had occurred in France or Brazil, the country s citizens would be celebrating the birth of a new republic.

Human life expectancy barely changed before the late eighteenth century. Yet it is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the gain since 1900 in that year, life expectancy worldwide was 32 years, compared to 69 now (and a projection of 76 years in 2050).

But it is hard to overstate the outcome s importance to the rest of the world. Virtually all developing countries and, increasingly, the advanced countries as well will be affected one way or another as they, too, struggle to achieve stable and sustainable growth and employment patterns.

No one can overstate the families unspeakable anguish from not knowing if their daughters have been raped, beaten, or trafficked out of Nigeria or even if they are still alive. The rest of the world may have moved on, but the girls parents wake each morning to a day of uncertainty and resignation.

True, many skeptics argue that with reasonable low cost prophylactic measures, large scale cyber meltdowns are highly implausible, and that doom mongers overstate the worst case scenarios. They say that the ability of cyber terrorists and blackmailers to take the global economy to the brink, as in the 2007 Bruce Willis movie Die Hard 4, is utterly fictional.

NEW YORK While the United States recently reported 3.5 GDP growth in the third quarter, suggesting that the most severe recession since the Great Depression is over, the American economy is actually much weaker than official data suggest. But official measures of GDP may grossly overstate growth in the economy as they don't capture the fact that business sentiment among small firms is abysmal and their output is still falling sharply.