Indonesia's Suharto fell victim to the impersonal forces of the international economy--the United States didn't even lift a finger to ease him out the door.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

When referring to the causes of our economic meltdown, he often reverts to passive voice (something "was done") or to nameless, faceless, impersonal forces ("corporate greed").

CNN: Commentary: How Obama can repair AIG damage

Like other forms of representation, architecture is the embodiment of the decisions that go into its making, not the result of impersonal forces, market or historical.

ECONOMIST: Contemporary urbanism

In 1940 only Churchill stood between Hitler and conquest, something many historians, addicted as they are to the "impersonal forces" of human events, find hard to fathom.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

That's when dynamism hurts--a sharp reminder that impersonal market forces continue to guide us.

FORBES: Billionaires

Both have advantages and disadvantages, much as the broad, impersonal-forces approach to the past and the heroic, great-man theory of history each have theirs.

ECONOMIST: The complex lives of legal persons