To restart the economy, Thatcher instituted a fierce attack on the British deficit, coupled with an expansionary monetary policy.

FORBES: The Confidence Question

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, and previously chief economist at the IMF's sister institution, the World Bank, has launched a fierce attack on the Fund's policies.

ECONOMIST: Calling the wrong shots? | The

His main rival, Senator John McCain, was thought to have damaged himself, especially in Virginia, with a fierce attack on Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the icons of the Christian right.

ECONOMIST: Bush bounces back

In 1991 Dana Gioia, a poet (and former marketing manager for General Foods), set off a fierce debate in American poetry circles with an attack on American academia for turning poetry into a smug, producer-driven lobby, concerned only with its own survival and indifferent to the fact that it had alienated a wider audience.

ECONOMIST: MODERN VERSE: Poetic injustice | The

Last month's attack appears to be part of a fierce feud between organizations that monitor spam and try to block it and companies that accuse spam blockers of unjustly blacklisting them.

CNN: Spain arrests suspect in massive cyberattack