There is also the litany of complaints and legal cases now surrounding the firm.

For progressives, these abysmal facts are part of the standard litany of frustration and justified outrage.

The result is a litany of post utopian values that include a stronger emphasis on individual freedom and personal responsibility.

Yet even with this litany of problems, US Secretary of State John Kerry has decided to focus on Israel and Palestine.

While the IMF s primary scenario is that Irish and Portuguese debt levels will soon stop rising, it comes with a chilling litany of downside risks.

As always, a litany of plans and promises for structural reforms can be heard, but none of them is likely to be implemented anytime soon.

What, then, should ministers do when they gather in Washington? First, there is the long standing litany of policy responses needed to deal with the global trade imbalances.

They are home to 70 of the population that lives on less than 2 a day, facing massive unemployment, gross inequalities, lack of infrastructure, regional imbalances, and a litany of other challenges.

In the face of the familiar litany of desperate global problems not just financial instability, but also climate change, energy insecurity, potential pandemics, terrorism, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction the prospect of a rudderless world is more than alarming.

Supporters of lifting the arms export ban argue that this litany of sins does not reflect China s real improvements in human rights and penalizes European armaments jobs to the benefit of Russia, which enjoys a lively arms trade with its neighbor (something it might one day regret).

But the point in reciting this litany is not so much to highlight China s wayward behavior as it is to demonstrate the dilemma in which the country finds itself if it behaves like a normal power, the world will forget the many hundreds of millions of people that it still needs to pull out of poverty.