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The Brussels meeting ranged across many issues. Perhaps one theme linked them all: this is an age of uncertainty and of complex links between seemingly disparate subjects. Middle Eastern politics is closely related to the supply and price of oil, and the price and availability of energy helps to determine both an industrial nation's standard of living and its competitiveness in world markets. Similarly, labor's insistent demand for a bigger share in prosperity is a cause of inflation and of governmental attempts to restrain it by raising interest rates. That, in turn, tends to reduce consumption and new investments. The level of interest rates in different countries partly determines the direction and force of capital flows, which are a source both of balance of payments problems for individual nations and of world monetary turbulence. One conclusion: top managers today need to be better informed about more subjects than ever before−and, as those in Brussels pointed out time and again, so do their partners in government.