Earlier this month, the two trading giants backed away from suing each other over subsidies they each give to their biggest civilian aircraft makers.

But their efforts were always undermined by the fact that the European Union is a trading giant and a military midget.

The idea is that every nation, regardless of size, gets an equal say and the trading giants cannot tip the balance.

But China is already a trading giant - one whose political leadership, against the advice of its own Finance Ministry, seems more interested in accumulating wealth and maximizing exports than in competing fairly.

"They are doing everything they can to help us," said Sekijima Ryoichi, the local representative of Mitsui, the Japanese trading giant.

By the end of the World War II, it became a dominant trading giant, but was dissolved by the order of GHQ.

The NYSE Group announced late Thursday that it would acquire Euronext, creating an electronic trading giant with a market capitalization of about $20 billion.

The new Enron would look something like the old, pre-90's Enron, before all the talk about being "asset light" and creating a trading giant that dealt in everything from bandwidth to paper and pulp.

With that transformation - from private to public, from white-shoed advice to sharp-elbowed trading giant - the firm has shuffled its top ranks.

To maintain stability, a new leader was chosen: Baron Matagar Bugo, who promises the citizens to make Daggerford a new trading giant like Waterdeep.