As and when Italy rolls over all of its outstanding debt at these sorts of interest rates the country will be bankrupt.

FORBES: Hungary's Successful, Italy's Unsuccessful Bond Issues Today

Iraq has long had a date for when sanctions can start to be lifted: when it has handed over all its weapons of mass destruction and a monitoring system is in place to prevent them being rebuilt.

ECONOMIST: Settling with Saddam

Only when the war, with all its unexpected consequences, is over will any political repercussions begin.

ECONOMIST: Punching through to Baghdad

Its top public relations executive, Ray O'Rourke, served as principal crisis counselor to now-defunct Pan Am when Libya downed its Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all 270 on board.

FORBES

But advances in both are only accelerating in an era when college students all over the country are downloading bootleg versions of Avatar within hours of its release.

FORBES: Digital Tools

Fortunately, all that changed when ISC decided to pull over for a pit stop and re-tool its overall customer approach.

FORBES: International Speedway Corporation Races Ahead With Integrated Marketing Management

All this is particularly worrying at a time when the British economy is finally slowing, its housing market subsiding and over-indebted consumers beginning to stagger under the weight of their mortgages and overdrafts.

ECONOMIST: British banks