Today's great powers have relied on similar methods, also heavy with rhetoric, against puny opponents, but with far less convincing results.

Even government deficit spending long the bane of Africa seems positively puny compared to the massive debts that the US and some European countries face.

It is as if an ant should try to understand our decisions, so puny is our intelligence in comparison with the infinite wisdom of God.

Moreover, the assertion that our intelligence is puny in comparison with God s presupposes just the point that is under debate that there is a god who is all knowing, all powerful, and all good.

Even government deficit spending long the bane of Africa seems positively puny compared to the massive debts that the US and some European countries face. The new Obama administration is proposing spending plans that would create a record US deficit of more than one trillion dollars and this coming on top of the outgoing Bush administration s record deficit.

To mitigate the effects of a US recession and global economic slump, the Fed and other central banks should be cutting rates much more aggressively, rather than relying on modest liquidity injections that are bound to fail. The Fed s 25 basis point cut in December was puny relative to what is needed similar cuts by the Bank of England and Bank of Canada do not even begin to address the increase in nominal and real borrowing rates that the sharp rise in Libor rates has induced.