To his left sit a Macbook Air and an iPhone, both charging, the latter pinging every minute or so, heralding the arrival of a new message.
Maradona offered even higher praise, once heralding El Mágico as "one of the 10 best players I have ever seen".
And indeed, by the end of the presidency, an "action for growth plan" had been approved, heralding (at least in theory) a raft of new infrastructure projects across Europe.The Italians also directed the ultimately fruitless negotiations on the draft European constitution.
Tim Lee of pi Economics, a consultancy, sees a commodity crash as heralding a similar collapse in stockmarkets.
Barely a fortnight ago, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was smugly describing 2000 as a "good year for Germany" and heralding 2001 as likely to be even better.
In 2005 Labour won a third term on a manifesto that claimed: "The active welfare state created since 1997 is working .Yet on March 5th Tony Blair was heralding yet another leap forward.
At irregular intervals of two to seven years, the waters of the central Pacific warm up, heralding inclement weather throughout the southern hemisphere.
Ten years on, the Windsors' poll ratings are rosy; Prince Charles has married the once-reviled Camilla; no one talks much any more about the crown skipping over his head to land straight on his elder son's.Instead of heralding a republic, that week is now often said to have saved the monarchy, by forcing it to emulate the mourned, modern princess.
The war in Libya, far from heralding a new era of European activism, has once again highlighted the limits of Europe's military power, as Robert Gates pointed out today in his valedictory speech in Brussels.
These words of reassurance were prompted by the financial-reform plan the Obama administration had unveiled earlier in the month, which many saw as heralding the dismemberment of America's biggest conglomerate, with interests from nuclear power to financial services.GE is not the only company in the line of fire.
