Many countries have begun to look at financial protectionism as a way to increase their political leverage.

To help these domestic powerhouses increase their market leverage, the government often favors them at the expense of foreign competitors.

The first round of fiscal stimulus, supported by credit easing, led local governments and the financial sector to increase their leverage ratios.

Those mistakes led to an underpricing of risk and the resulting increase in excessive leverage.

Moreover, the relative increase in debt (leverage) in the financial system was similar on both sides of the Atlantic.

International agencies could use their leverage to help make this happen.

Indeed, it has almost furtively initiated dam projects to reengineer cross border river flows and increase its leverage over its neighbors.

Recently, UN Habitat has embarked on the following strategic partnerships to increase the impact of the Programme and leverage its resources

Its objective is to explore new kinds of relationships with NGOs that will leverage mutual strengths and complementarities to increase impact and sustainability.

The central problem is that Europeans have squandered their most powerful source of leverage unity.

With time, they could leverage retained earnings, increasing their lending potential without additional paid in capital.

Leverage is down sharply.

Higher leverage increases their payoffs when times are good as executives and traders are paid based on their return on equity.

Borrowing is also supported by an easing of credit standards and new financial products that increase leverage and widen the range of assets that can be borrowed against.

And hedge funds, unlike banks, can leverage their bets, borrowing to take on assets many times the size of their capital base.

Europe is not without leverage.

The increase in leverage was driven in part by government policies aimed at expanding home ownership among lower income groups that have proven unable to afford that life style.

Developing countries had acquired greater leverage in WTO negotiations and increasingly used WTO rules to defend their interests.

The EU has even more leverage.

Second, given their limited leverage, Afghanistan s neighbors must lean hard on countries that can influence any future Afghan government.

Subregional offices are well positioned to leverage their status as subregional entities as a comparative advantage in resource mobilization.

Others may decide to aggregate traffic with other operators and thus gain leverage in their dealings with global providers.

Some of the ideas discussed during the consultations include suggestions for mechanisms to mitigate regulatory risk to increase the role of the World Bank and regional development banks in risk mitigation through increasing the leverage for their guarantees and to strengthen local currency lending.

Mexico, for example, recently adopted ahead of schedule the changes in capital requirements for banks recommended by the Third Basel Accord (Basel III), in order to reduce leverage and increase stability.

An increase in bank loans allows households and businesses to increase their spending.

Economic leverage should be applied as well.

In a surveillance society, they become leverage.

Excessive leverage needs to be reined in.

Banks must pay for their implicit government guarantee by using less leverage and accepting restrictions on how they invest depositors money.

Clinton also refused to regulate credit default swaps, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission allowed banks to triple their leverage.

Moreover, stakeholders find they have little leverage in participating in policy setting process, even though their products may be directly affected.

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.

(By contrast, non financial corporations rarely borrow more than 70 of their assets, and often much less, despite the absence of any regulation of their leverage ratios.)

The most straightforward answer seems to be leverage.

In Switzerland, the leverage ratio is now central.

Consumers who represent 72 percent of the GDP of America have actually started, just like banks and just like businesses, to de leverage, to unwind their leverage, in daily life, to remove themselves from the liability and risk that presents itself as we move forward.

Investment banks with leverage of more than 30 times their capital in early 2007 are now down to little more than ten times.

With the increase in staffing, the UNFICYP police were able to increase their contacts with both sides.

One obvious way to increase GEF resources would be for donor countries to increase their Replenishment contributions.

It is unrealistic to call for an end to Russian gas imports, or even an end to Europe s major reliance on them, but the EU can increase its own leverage by developing alternative sources of supply.

Banks balance sheets are systemically dangerous when bloated by leverage, and it is this that regulatory or fiscal policy should address through liquidity buffers and leverage ratios.

In the case of Europe, only now are banks being pushed to deal decisively with their capital shortfalls, leverage problems, and residual weak assets.

With little leverage, Iran s leaders would then have two options.

Nevertheless, China s leverage over North Korea is in part illusory.

So they also need clear, albeit different, limits on leverage.