It dissuades investment, dampens economic growth and chokes off development.
But as long as she dampens turnout more for the parties of the left than for her own, she wins.
It may also explain why Spain was the worst performer in western Europe, and why Latin America was the worst-performing region: Spanish's role as an international language in a big region dampens incentives to learn English.
It also hopes to abolish the arrangement whereby notaries pool their income to ensure a minimum for everyone a system that dampens the incentive to compete.
The secular nature of the state dampens communal tensions, an important consideration in a country that, like Iraq, is a cocktail of confessions and ethnicities: 60% Sunni Arab, 18% Shia and other Muslim sects, 10% Kurdish and 12% Christian.
The reluctance of commercial banks to lend at low interest-spreads further dampens aggregate demand; and banks' low profits on new lending mean that they cannot recapitalise themselves.
But railway planners talk of a two-day high-speed trip from Shanghai to London by 2025.Infectious optimism, but the following dampens it.
Pegging those currencies to the weak dollar also dampens demand for imports in their economies, and thus hinders the rebalancing of global current accounts.
Africa's rapidly rising population still dampens its growth in real income per head but that, too, has risen by an annual rate of 3% since 2000 almost twice as fast as the global average.For Western firms Africa's economy still looks tiny, accounting for only 2% of world output.
It also dampens the incentive for households to curb demand.In this section Splitting headaches Beyond reason What downturn?
That dampens price competition: independent brokers originate less than one-third of the mortgages in Canada, compared with up to 70% in America during the bubble.
