5. The World Is a Coconut Tree

"Confidence grows at the rate a coconut tree grows," proclaimed Montek Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission of India and one of the wise old men of global finance, "and it falls at the rate a coconut falls." The metaphor was so popular that before long, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde was talking about ways to get more compost into the soil around the coconut tree.

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