But when the entire international system becomes entwined with an excessive amount of short term inter bank lending, the world economy becomes subject to financial panic.

Investments were not simply bad, but unacceptably risky.

Short term inter bank loans are seemingly less risky than long term lending.

Giving birth was so risky that they feared for their lives.

It's the kind of very high risk, but potentially very high return thing that we do.

So for comparison's purposes, let's think about some other walk of life where you may expect might be extremely risky.

For those who stay behind and continue the work, it's a daily dance of high risk decisions.

Mortgage backed securities were urged onto investors for whom they were too risky.

Banks could take on overly risky projects without scaring off investors because the government would step in as the lender of last resort.

The managers chose overly risky operations, because they knew that the shareholders would not participate symmetrically in the risks.

Decisions taken by the leading monetary authorities since the 2008 2009 global financial crisis have been unorthodox, creative, and at times risky.

Perverse incentives fueled excessive risk taking, and banks that are near collapse but are too big to fail will engage in even more of it.

Dealing with Russia's infant private sector may be risky, but it is a matter of assessing the professionalism of credit officers rather than testing the honesty of politicians

Fifth, some argued that highly indebted sovereigns would push investors into gold as government bonds became more risky. But the opposite is happening now.

Fifth, some argued that highly indebted sovereigns would push investors into gold as government bonds became more risky.

In 2007, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and most other players in the financial markets were earning huge returns by trading derivatives backed by very risky mortgages.

Precisely because so much emotion has been invested in QE, the psychological effects of returning to normalcy are going to be perilous and unpredictable.

Although this historically unprecedented velocity of change makes generalizations more hazardous than usual, it is safe to say that one basic way in which the world has changed is the manner in which wealth is created. When this happens the old ruling classes find it difficult to see themselves as obsolete.

Political decisions taken then were far more risky than those at hand in the Balkans, and the Greek and Iberian success stories demonstrate the wisdom of the courageous decisions taken at that time.

Although this historically unprecedented velocity of change makes generalizations more hazardous than usual, it is safe to say that one basic way in which the world has changed is the manner in which wealth is created.

Indeed, from the economic point of view, entry into Europe, and having to compete with the powerful economies of Germany or France, was risky, but it was a necessary condition for securing their democracies.

Indeed, there is even skepticism about whether Obama will be able to push through his welcome and long overdue efforts to curtail the too big to fail banks and their reckless risk taking.

The latter approach held that efforts to roll back Communism in the short run were too risky, given the Soviet nuclear arsenal, and that the United States and the West should content themselves with limiting the spread of Soviet power and influence.

As Edgar L. Smith wrote in The Atlantic Monthly back in 1924, when the principal risks are macroeconomic, bonds are no safer than diversified portfolios of stocks in fact, they are riskier.

George W. Bush s proposals for a massive tax cut are risky gambling on large future budget surpluses that might never appear, and gambling that a sharp tax cut won t trigger a jump in interest rates.