"Do you favour Britain leaving the EU to become a proud, sovereign state again instead of a puny province of Europe run by crooks and toadies?" would be one example of the genre.
This was especially true in America, with its relatively puny welfare state.Mr Rajan thinks, therefore, that it is no coincidence that America in the early 2000s saw a boom in lending to the poor, including those folks that banks used to sniff at.
The state's otherwise puny Republicans have the power to block tax increases, which require a two-thirds majority vote.
But the state is too puny in many ways: it is unable to enforce contracts and cannot afford to spend enough on infrastructure.
For while today's generation of pensioners may be angry about the puny size of their basic state pension, it is positively generous compared with what tomorrow's generation will receive.In this section Getting noticed On the up Wait for it Wild wild East Playing the race card A friend turned foe What am I bid?
BULKED-UP BONDS -- On the municipal bond market's Muscle Beach, California's general obligation bonds are puny, with the worst credit rating among the 50 states.
In both situations, the big state feels a sense of grievance over the very existence of its puny neighbour and resents outsiders that act as its self-appointed protectors.
The Communist Party does not want an angry middle class.These political sensitivities are apparent even in the pioneering cities. Chongqing, for example, charges a puny rate (0.5-1.2%) on a tiny number of properties barely 8,500, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
Done too early, it may create a central banker's nightmare: an outpouring of rand, prompting a run on the currency which South Africa's puny foreign reserves would be unable to stem.In this section Turkey's troubles Who needs a state pension?
But now it's not about matters of war and peace, civil liberties, and the sorry state of the mainstream media -- it's about the growing misuse of that puny piece of punctuation called the apostrophe.
Having grown up in the shadow of the Empire State Building, we wondered why the Man of Steel would waste his time leaping over the puny LA City Hall building.
