Pale she was, listless And soft to the touch.

The album's commercial performance was initially lukewarm.

Political and economic reform, when it advances, does so at a glacial pace.

Responses to America s call for democracy in the Middle East have been tepid at best.

After a lukewarm reaction to the uprisings, Europe was eager to show its support for democratic movements in the region.

Committee reports are usually deadly dull, and UN committee reports are among the dullest.

As a result, the sanctions that have been imposed by the UN Security Council are so tepid that they are unlikely to be effective.

The fiscal response tax cuts and spending increases has varied considerably, being somewhat more tepid in debt averse Europe than in the US and China.

But Egypt s Muslim Brotherhood controlled government does not seem particularly eager to protect its Christian citizens in Libya it offered only a half hearted call for the release of its detained citizens.

Moreover, relations with China cooled after the Tiananmen Square shootings in 1989, and the Clinton administration had to devise a new approach.

Eichengreen is my friend, teacher, and patron, and his book is to my mind the best explanation to date of why policymakers in Europe and the United States have reacted to the most dramatic economic collapse in almost four generations with half hearted measures and half finished interventions.