But the nation now confronts a war on three fronts - the threats at home and abroad from terrorism and the new threat from future fiscal instability.

New ordinances created part-time litter control positions, but with the city's fiscal instability, even Ms. McNamara questions whether those new jobs can be filled.

It was placed on a watchlist by the US Department of Education, due to fiscal instability in 2009.

Leading bankers there have echoed public concern about sharing a currency with southern neighbors with a long record of fiscal and political instability.

"I am a natural choice to solve the most difficult problem facing the city now, education and its fiscal instability."

Now he issues dire warnings about "fiscal instability."

Excessive taxes can drive the middle class out of the city, as Mr. Bloomberg is fond of warning, but so can poor services and fiscal instability.

He urged the United States and other countries with trade deficits to stop the "pernicious drift toward fiscal instability."

All the same, between 1853 and the 1930s, fiscal instability was a transitory phenomenon.

Such softness is typically the result of political or fiscal instability within the associated country.