While several provincial satraps have been cut down to size, new, aspiring ones have garnered significant support.

Inequality has been falling.

A much larger share was lost productivity.

With fewer victims, crime will pay less.

Due to accelerating industrialization and urbanization, agricultural land is shrinking.

Fewer Africans working in rich countries will automatically translate into less money circulating in African countries.

Slower growth means less revenue, and a faster downward spiral.

Her hopes that he is still alive are dwindling.

As their legitimacy and funding diminish, so does their effectiveness.

China s growing interest in the Middle East also decreases the likelihood of an American withdrawal.

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

Demand for loans was low, leaving it short of revenue.

But it is a mistake to dismiss America's declining attractiveness so lightly.

The fall of the Soviet empire, naturally, reduced Americans' security interest in Europe.

But Ahmadinejad s unpopularity does not necessarily weaken his chances of being re elected.

Sarkozy believes in the efficiency of markets and will shy away from state intervention in the economy.

In the past, when a stay at home wife went to work, the chance that her marriage would dissolve increased.

Several factors have diminished investors willingness to extend long term credit.

Moreover, the capacity of Mexico s security machinery appears diminished.

With time for a two state solution quickly running out, a speedy settlement is in everyone's best interest.

With fewer trades, the information content of prices is arguably reduced.

The US current account deficit has been narrowing in recent quarters, thanks to export growth.

Moreover, with less government support, rural credit has often become prohibitively expensive.

And the traditional notion of saving for bequests has waned.

And policymakers have moved to a risky credit easing policy as QE s effectiveness has waned.

The improved resilience may be seen in fewer bank failures and more consistent credit provision.

When structural barriers to employment have diminished, unemployment benefits should revert to their old norms.

Given Russia s economic fundamentals, Putin s diminished popularity might appear surprising.

When there are few copies of an allele, the effect of genetic drift is larger, and when there are many copies the effect is smaller.

Indeed, a part of the observed warming is due to less reflection, as snow and ice cover has shrunk.

A reduced Chinese appetite for reserves would be reflected in an appreciation of its currency and a reduction in its trade surplus.

Water supplies are increasingly under stress in large parts of the world, especially in the world s arid regions.

The sharp drop in retail sales in the United States and Europe means fewer orders for the goods produced in Chinese factories.

With little incentive to manufacture structured investment vehicles, few Spanish banks created them, thereby avoiding excessive leverage.

Perhaps most revealingly, while Kennedy s aura among women has dimmed, his wife s reputation has grown.

Private capital flows have exploded since, dwarfing trade in goods and services.

In practice, the global crisis means that sustainable investments are being curtailed rather than expanded in the developing world.

If fiscal rebalancing is accomplished in part by cutting investment, medium and longer term growth will suffer, resulting in fewer employment opportunities for younger labor market entrants. Sustaining investment, on the other hand, has an immediate cost it means deferring consumption.

Indeed, leaders in the middle frequently find themselves in a policy vacuum, with few clear directives from the top.

Detractors ultimately fall back on the argument that multilateral lending to middle income countries is waning along with demand.

These funds managers rightly complain that insufficient investment opportunities exist in the region in agriculture and manufacturing.

The former expected transformational technological and social change, while the latter darkly predicted weakened competitiveness and job losses, even recession.

For too long, developed countries have clung to their outsize influence in the international financial institutions, even as their fiscal fitness has dwindled.

In addition, as the cancer adjusts to the drug, further mutations are likely to occur, diminishing the drug s efficacy.

Other European countries are in a similar situation, which is exacerbated by the fact that Europeans are having fewer children.