While the financial issues received the most attention, these negotiations were much more about long-term reforms.
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"The programme deals with the short-term and immediate challenges and builds the foundations for more medium-term reforms, " said Mr Dimian.
But even if none of the talk leads to needed long-term reforms, a consolation prize may still be in store.
Buffeted by the international financial turmoil, Brazil, having doubled interest rates to bolster its overvalued currency, turned to long-term reforms to cut its budget deficit.
Obama also acknowledged that while Social Security is not the cause of the deficit, it needed long term reforms that would have to be tackled separately.
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Spain and Italy are undertaking difficult, important long-term reforms, and it will be important that they continue to borrow at affordable rates as they undertake those reforms.
President Obama's budget also replaces the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester with smarter ones, making long-term reforms, eliminating actual waste and programs that are no longer needed.
She has been harangued by world leaders, attacked in print and lampooned on magazine covers for saying "nein" to the pooling of euro-zone debt while focusing instead on long-term reforms.
But fellow Lib Dem MP Mr Webb told activists at their party conference what he called long-term reforms of the system must not be dropped in the rush to save money.
If Europeans are serious about putting their budgets in order, they will need to undertake long-term fiscal reforms.
Those negotiations would include discretionary spending restraints, long-term entitlement reforms and "a process to get to pro-growth tax reform, " said Sen.
The IMF and the financial markets would probably like to see a combination of all of these: long-term structural reforms to free up economies and put government spending on a more sustainable path, combined with some short-term relief on austerity and (with luck) easier monetary policy as well.
Some of the weakness in both Germany and its neighbours may reflect the short-term impact of government and corporate reforms, which may be boosting long-term competitiveness, but are also dampening wages and thus consumer spending.
If he is right, economic growth need not slow down even in the short term, because such reforms may boost employment growth.
Mr Singh conceded that there were "uncertainties" in running coalitions, but said he was hopeful that the government would complete its five-year term and push economic reforms.
In his second term Mr Blair drove through reforms to enhance choice and competition.
In an ideal world, America's politicians would come up with a package of medium-term spending cuts and tax reforms to fill the country's fiscal gap.
That prime minister was popular in the London social scene while playing it cool politically, and instituted several social welfare reforms during his term from 1908-1916.
The GOP's plan is to make clear that the only way for Democrats to forestall these cuts is to agree to longer-term and more sensible spending reforms.
He hopes the peace deal will lure more investment to the Philippines, particularly from Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia, and give momentum to his economic and social reforms beyond his term of office.
Even after the labour-market reforms, long-term unemployment remains well above the OECD average.
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Long-term strategy also underpins the organisational reforms which Mr Hague unveiled this week.
Athens, however, faces long-term challenges to push through unpopular reforms in the face of widespread unrest from the country's powerful labor unions and the general public.
The resulting scandal caused Lula to lose interest in difficult tax and labour-law reforms in his second term and to forge an alliance with the PMDB, an agglomeration of regional barons with a voracious appetite for patronage and pork.
And if they are just cutting and cutting and cutting, and their unemployment rate is going up and up and up, and people are pulling back further from spending money because they're feeling a lot of pressure -- ironically, that can actually make it harder for them to carry out some of these reforms over the long term.
Abramoff served a nearly 6 year prison term and is currently speaking on lobbyist reforms.
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But thanks to the Hartz reforms, the long-term unemployed are having their collars felt a little.
Meanwhile, the pro-business reforms promised for his second term are largely in limbo.
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