at stake, slip a cog /gear, step/move up a gear, mesh

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, is expected to announce details of the new plan within weeks. Administration and Congressional officials say it will give the government flexibility to buy some bad assets and guarantee others in an effort to have a broad impact but still tailor the aid for different institutions.

Not just billions, but hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake, The New York Times's Vikas Bajaj and Stephen Labaton write.

It is either meshed like gears, or the figures are adjusted through fear to meet the requirement but nothing more.
--Out of the Crisis, p. 160


Toyota's magic slips a gear
Canada.com - Don Mills,Ontario,Canada
Toyota Motor Corp. shares plunged nearly 20% in New York trading yesterday after the Japanese automaker said it set up an emergency committee to boost ...

Idioms:

slip a cog

Also, slip a gear or one's gears. Lose one's ability to reason soundly or make correct judgments, as in She must have slipped a cog or she would never have gone out barefoot in December, or What's the matter with him? Has he slipped his gears?

These slangy usages allude to a mechanical failure owing to the cog of a gear or a gear failing to mesh. The first dates from about 1930, the variant from the 1960s.

step/move up a gear INFORMAL
to noticeably start to do something better, especially in sport:
After a disappointing first half, United moved up a gear and took control of the game.

mesh (SUIT) Show phonetics
verb [I]
When different things or people mesh, they suit each other or work well together:
The members of the team just didn't mesh.
Whether the new personal pension works will depend much on how well it meshes with employers' schemes.

mesh (JOIN) Show phonetics
verb [I] SPECIALIZED
to join together in the correct position:
The car's gears aren't meshing properly.

at stake
If something that is valuable is at stake, it is in a situation where it might be lost:
Thousands of lives will be at stake if emergency aid does not arrive in the city soon.