With just four big accounting firms remaining, and none of the next tier big enough to take up the slack, the corporate world cannot easily handle another accounting-firm failure.

ECONOMIST: Ernst & Young sued over Lehman

Sales of DVD discs have begun to decline, however, and Blu-ray has yet to take up the slack, leading some analysts to conclude that retailers risk losing sales to movie downloads, much as they lost CD sales to music downloads.

WSJ: Retailers Slash Blu-Ray Player Prices

Both have private-equity businesses, which might take up the slack during a slowdown.

ECONOMIST: Times are good for nifty M&A advisers

Some think that the Valley's larger listed companies can take up the slack by acquiring more start-ups (a trend that has been growing).

ECONOMIST: A dip in the valley

That means Sony Ericsson's rather flaky-looking portfolio, which is in sore need of some high-end smartphones to rival Apple and Samsung, won't get a significant facelift until 2010--leaving only planned cost savings to take up the slack.

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If some sectors of the Cypriot economy - finance, construction, real estate, retailing - must inevitably shrink, what other parts could take up the slack?

BBC: Cyprus's future: Is euro membership viable?

Were Japan's recovery broad-based, an export slowdown would matter less, because domestic consumption would take up the slack.

ECONOMIST: Japan's pain

To encourage the private sector to take up the slack he will slash taxes on bonds to pay for new, government-approved infrastructure projects.

ECONOMIST: Brazil's new president

Renewable energy remains too expensive, too land-hungry, too unreliable and too small-scale to take up much slack, so cheap coal and newly abundant natural gas will do the job.

WSJ: After Japan's Earthquake and Fukushima Disaster, Matt Ridley on Gas-Fired Generation and Thorium | Mind & Matter