Let's be clear: They didn't get married in college, but the hard work of balancing two careers in flux can work out.

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This is hard enough when it involves balancing the needs of the smaller, overheating economies on the fringe against those of the sluggish economic heartland.

ECONOMIST: The euro economies

Balancing a budget is hard work, particularly for a country with the largest budget in the world.

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But it's hard to tell exactly where society comes down on the balancing the risk-benefit scale.

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The fact of the matter is that, in his present capacity and under current circumstances, Mr. Ashcroft has to make hard decisions every day about where to draw the line in balancing the need for enhanced security while trying to protect the free and open society that all Americans, and particularly those on the Right, hold so dear.

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His balancing act is delicate: Britain may find his integrationism hard to bear, France may resent his liberalising instinct and even Mr Monti's authority may not divert Germany from its self-defeating obsession with austerity.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

EU. Yet forging a common policy is hard, and centre-right governments may prove no better than have those of the left at balancing the benefits offered by the free movement of labour against voters' fears, often irrational, about threats to national identity.

ECONOMIST: France and Europe