Since the Argentine default, the use of collective actions clauses (CACs) to enforce restructurings has become the norm.

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Lately, indeed, they have grown more insistent, especially in America, where the collective actions of lawyers, Jewish groups, politicians and regulators now beset German companies as never before, and threaten to hold up the takeover of Bankers Trust by Deutsche Bank.

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But Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, the country's top clergyman, is loth to seek collective forgiveness for specific actions of the church in Spain.

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Politics, like the free markets of Adam Smith, tends to be guided by an "invisible hand": Countless individual decisions and actions together express a collective logic and even wisdom.

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Everyone figures times are bad and take the individually optimal actions needed to assure that collective terrible outcome.

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Thus our collective financial fate is likely to be left to the actions of a lame duck Congress.

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As a result, the opportunity to use the United Nations Security Council as the vehicle for bringing collective pressure to bear against aggressors (especially, through the imposition of sanctions and the mandating of corrective actions).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center for Security Policy | ��Toward A New World Order Worth Fighting For: Pax Democratica��