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Central Europeans are known for their persistent pessimism. An old Hungarian joke sums it up well: "We know that next year is going to be an average year - because it's going to be worse than this year, but better than the year after that." That glass-half-empty mentality was on public display in July 2009, when several senior Central Europeans wrote an open letter to President Obama decrying the lack of engagement from the new U.S. administration. While the tactics of publishing such a letter were ill-considered, the feelings behind it were genuine.