Major problems like the tattered school system and persistent youth violence are far from solved.
The Japanese government's promises to throw money at its shrinking economy and, especially, its tattered banking system (see article) have given the stockmarket a short-term stimulus.
The United States also faces a host of problems — global security obligations, towering debt, a tattered education system and economic growth — all of which have the potential to sap its resources and power.
Human rights activists and the International Commission of Jurists argued that the manifest flaws in Pakistan's tattered judicial system meant that the innocent, as well as the guilty, could go to the gallows.
This is combined with soaring rents and house prices that people can no longer afford; insecure wages and a tattered welfare system that means people turn up to the council with nowhere to go.
For the Bronx Defenders, exposing the interns to the realities of a tattered court system fits with its philosophy that public defense must go beyond just matters of law and look at how court cases, even minor ones, can affect other aspects of clients' lives, including housing, immigration and child custody.
Foster didn't join the House's science committee as a rookie, instead focusing his legislative energies on reforming the nation's tattered banking system after the 2008 financial meltdown.
But the city's teachers were then hit by the storm's ripple effect: the loss of thousands of jobs in the tattered school system.
I thought it might prove illuminating, as this dreadful year collapses to a close, to re-examine the original Ponzi scheme, as it sheds light not only on our tattered global economic system, but as well on what has been dubbed our "Ponzi era" - and indeed, on our entire, shattered, pyramid-like, 21st-Century Ponzi democracy itself.
America's tattered health insurance system cries out for reform.
