If we don't find ways to mend it, the problem will only become more serious.
But he thinks that there is a lot wrong with the economy, and that changes in the tax system can help to mend it.
Whether or not people are forgiving, they will have noticed that Italy's economy and social fabric have continued to fray, yet the cash to mend it is in ever-shorter supply.
So it is alarming that the whole Afghan operation has a make-do-and-mend feel to it.
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In short, American manufacturing may be on the mend, but it is far from booming.
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"Although all of these patches can help mend wounds, it really depends on the wound itself as to which patch you should use, " McGuire said.
An email purportedly from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said it was responsible for the ambush in southern Nigeria on Friday.
Maybe so, but bleating about it will not mend Wall Street's battered brand.
Germany's Angela Merkel made clear two years ago that, if Russia wanted better relations with the EU, it had to mend fences with Poland.
It may not mend any fences and given the less-than-contrite nature of many of his answers, the whole fiasco hardly seems likely to gain him much sympathy.
"The tragedy is that he is a smashing lad and I just felt when he got the transplant and was on the mend, he had cracked it, " Mr Docherty said.
If the seasonally adjusted rate for auto sales is now on the mend, he says, it's likely to mean unemployment, currently at 9.5%, will peak during the second half of 2010.
Amazon has been silent, while Apple claims that some of its existing procedures weren't followed properly, regardless of any rules it might need to mend.
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Some people want to see Mr. Blair exercise influence over the White House and get them to mend their ways, as Europeans would see it, but many of them doubt that he'll be able to deliver more than a feel-good factor from the president.
At times in the Delta MEND's insurgency was so intense that it shut in as much as a third of Nigeria's oil production, pushing up the world price of crude and enfeebling the Nigerian government, which depends on oil for about 80% of its revenues.
Though it may sometimes feel like it, having credit card debt to mend is not a dead end.
In a 1995 speech, Clinton vowed to "mend" affirmative action, not "end" it and to establish guidelines that would help disadvantaged firms compete more readily with their better-established counterparts without imposing "reverse discrimination" on white-owned businesses.
Housing benefit, which is doled out by local authorities, has long been leaking like a sieve, but it also seems to be slowly on the mend.
It will not be easy for Mr Bush to mend relations with Egypt at the same time as passing on Mr Olmert's complaints about Gaza.
David Jones, an economist who has written two books on Greenspan's Fed, told The Associated Press he thought it was obvious Greenspan was moving quickly to "mend fences" with Lott.
It even inspired some people to think that Congress might mend its ways and become more cohesive.
Perhaps it would take a default for Paraguay's politicians finally to mend their ways.
It has adopted a policy of make-do-and-mend rather than investing in new rails and signals.
This morning it appears that investors are overlooking the lack of necessary growth to mend broken budgetary policies.
Shortly prior to its ceasefire announcement MEND had carried out its boldest attack against Nigeria's oil installations since it launched its campaign of violence in late 2005, when an attack on Shell's Bongo facility, 120km out to sea, forced the Anglo-Dutch major temporarily to halt production equivalent to about 10% of Nigeria's output, and to declare force majeure.
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The chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, hitherto a seriously hyper-active type, needed a break from using fiscal policy to mend every last thing in the economy that does not work exactly as he thinks it should, and so did the country.
When I was young I was told that "no utility infield has ever made it into the Hall of Fame, " but I am too old to mend my ways.
Labour wants to mend relations with a party that may yet get to decide who forms the next government, although it struggles to resist opportunities to torment Mr Clegg in particular.
This will cause some glaring logistical problems, making it tougher for the Mets to make a quick call-up or send players on the mend down for brief rehab assignments.
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But there is a long way to go before it can be said that Argentina's economy, let alone its political system, is on the mend.
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