Leading indicator shows chance of 'double dip'

Following the sign of double-dip in housing market, the Leading Economic Indicator (or LEI) shows double-dip scenario is close to reality.




(click to enlarge; graph courtesy of SocGen)

Poor countries pay for undervalued Yuan

Arvind Subramanian of Peterson Institute argues that weak Yuan acts as export subsidy and import tariff, the US gets to enjoy cheaper imports at Chinese expense, but the ultimate victim of China's currency policy is poorer developing countries.

It Is the Poor Who Pay for the Weak Renminbi

by Arvind Subramanian, Peterson Institute for International Economics

China's exchange rate policy has largely been viewed through the prism of global imbalances. That has had three unfortunate consequences. It has allowed China to deflect attention away from its policy. It has obscured the real victims of this policy. And it has made political resolution of this policy more difficult.

No sooner is China's exchange rate policy criticized for creating global imbalances, and hence contributing to the recent global financial crisis, than the door is opened for China to muddy the intellectual waters. Why single us out, the Chinese say? Why not the other surplus-running countries such as Japan or Germany or the oil exporters? And, in any case, countries on the other side of the imbalance—namely, the large current account deficit-running countries—should carry the greatest responsibility for pursuing irresponsible macroeconomic and regulatory policies that led to "excessive consumption." This debate cannot be settled. But inconclusiveness is just what China needs—and creates—to escape scrutiny of its policies.

The second consequence of the global imbalance perspective is that it has created an opposition between current account deficit and current account surplus countries, which has become a slanging match between the United States and China. But an undervalued exchange rate is above all a protectionist trade policy, because it is the combination of an import tariff and an export subsidy. It follows therefore that the real victims of this policy are other emerging market and developing countries—because they compete more closely with China than the United States and Europe, whose source of comparative advantage is very different from China's. In fact, developing countries face two distinct costs from China's exchange rate policy.

In the short run, with capital pouring into emerging market countries, their ability to respond to the threat of asset bubbles and overheating is undermined. Emerging market countries such as Brazil, India, and South Korea are loath to allow their currencies to appreciate—to dampen overheating—when that of a major trade rival is pegged to the dollar.

But the more serious and long-term cost is the loss in trade and growth in poorer parts of the world. Dani Rodrik of Harvard University estimates that China's undervaluation has boosted its long-run growth rate by more than 2 percent by allowing greater output of tradable goods, a sector that was the engine of growth and an escape route from underdevelopment for postwar successes such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Higher tradable goods production in China results in lower traded goods production elsewhere in the developing world, entailing a growth cost for these countries. Of course, some of these costs may have been alleviated by China's rapid growth and the attendant demand for other countries' goods. But China's large current account surpluses suggest that the alleviation is only partial.

These emerging market victims of China's exchange rate policy have remained silent because China is simply too big and powerful for them to take on. And this despite the fact that disaffected constituencies now encompass not just companies but also central bankers, who have found macroeconomic management constrained by renminbi policy.

Hence the third consequence. By default, it has fallen to the United States to carry the burden of seeking to change renminbi policy. But it cannot succeed because China will not be seen as giving in to pressure from its only rival for superpower status. Only a wider coalition, comprising all countries affected by China's undervalued exchange rate, stands any chance of impressing upon China the consequences of its policy and reminding it of its international responsibilities as a large, systemically important trader.

It is time to move beyond the global imbalance perspective and see China's exchange rate policy for what it is: mercantilist trade policy, whose costs are borne more by countries competing with China—namely other developing and emerging market countries—than by rich countries. The circle of countries taking a stand against China must be widened beyond the United States to ramp up the pressure on it to repudiate its beggar-thy-neighborism. But progress also requires that the silent victims speak up. Emerging market and developing countries must do a "Google" on China.

Musing on China's real estate bubble

More than 60 percent of investors surveyed by Bloomberg on Jan. 19 said they viewed China as a bubble, and three in 10 said it posed the greatest downside risk.  Read full report here.

Every recession is different, so is every bubble. Here are some thoughts I wanted to share:

1. China's real estate bubble will burst; government stimulus only delays the day of reckoning, but won't be able to prevent it;

2. The impact will not be great enough to slow down China's long term economic growth. This is because,
    a) China has high savings rate, and the household balance sheets are not highly leveraged;
    b) China is a developing country --- it grows at a much faster pace than developed economies;
    c) China's huge population and its demand for urban housing will mitigate the impact.

3. Similar to Japan, China's real estate bubble was fueled by currency appreciation expectation.  In China's case, the fixed exchange rate system coupled with the fastest economic growth in the world simply invite currency speculation and attract short-term capital inflows.  A big chunk of these short-term money found its way into real estate market, although China has tight capital control. 

Market has changed direction

David Rosenberg looks at the market direction from its 120-day change.

It clearly shows the market peaked in last August, then went sideway until last December; from last December, the market has been trending down.

This bear market rally was so long that surprised every professional investor. Now it's the time to reckon.




(click to enlarge)

Europe's shakiest to safest

Following my previous post on Ring of Fire, here is a chart from Economist Magazine that gives you an idea of which countries stand as the riskiest in Europe,  if debt crisis were to hit.

Why did Europe blink?

WSJ's analysis on Greece bailout:

Why did Europe blink?

The decision by European leaders to offer Greece support, albeit unspecified, likely owed more to fears for the weakened European banking system and its ability to supply credit to a fragile recovery than fraternal concern for a struggling neighbor.

Shares in euro-zone banks slumped as the sovereign-debt crisis unfolded, with Greek banks tumbling more than 50%. Aside from the political imperative for leaders to make a statement, the fear of contagion to the wider euro-zone economy was real.

Falling government-bond prices themselves aren't the biggest problem. Most European banks hold government bonds as available for sale assets, which means mark-to-market losses are recognized through the profit-and-loss account only when they become impaired. And although mark-to-market losses are recorded on the balance sheet as a reserve, it doesn't count under current Basel rules as a deduction against regulatory capital. If governments continue to pay their coupons and the bonds remain eligible for central-bank facilities, then bank capital or liquidity positions should be unaffected.

But there are several channels through which contagion can operate. Rising government-bond yields could push up yields on other assets, triggering mark-to-market losses on trading books. They also could lead to higher bank-funding costs, because bank credit-default swaps tend to track sovereign swaps. At the same time, fiscal tightening could tip economies back into recession, leading to higher bad-debt charges. If gross domestic product fell 1%, loan volumes fell 2%, nonperforming loans increased 5% and bond spreads widened, Credit Suisse estimates the European bank sector's 2010 earnings and return on equity would be nearly halved.

But European leaders likely also had their eye on an even bigger tail risk: That sovereign-debt fears could lead to a collapse in lending to vulnerable countries. The exposure of French banks to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain is equivalent to 30% of GDP, according to Stephen Jen of Bluegold Capital Management. Irish and Portuguese banks also are heavily exposed to those countries. Austrian banks' exposure to Eastern Europe is equivalent to 54% of GDP. These linkages between banking systems are a potentially potent transmission mechanism, making it hard to put a fence around the Greek sovereign crisis.

No wonder European leaders felt unable to leave Greece to the mercy of the markets. But in offering support, they are merely following a familiar pattern established during the crisis of shifting responsibility for funding the global debt pile from credit markets to the banks, from banks to sovereigns and now from weak sovereigns to stronger ones. Once this transfer is complete, the debt pile really will have nowhere else to go.

Understand China's financial system

Disentangle China's 'complex' financial system (source: Economist Magazine). 

No surprise here ---the deep connections between bankers, and China's Communist Party members, and their sons and daughters. 

To be fair, every system is evolutionary, and it takes time to improve.  But there is no way to guarantee China's financial system will become more transparent.  This does not look good to me.

Something about China's consumption

According to Zhang Shugang, a well-known economist in China, China's consumption grew 15.5% over past year.  On the surface, this is exactly what we needed to re-balance China's highly skewed, investment-driven economy

Not yet...

Further look at the data:  69% of the total consumption came from either housing or automobile purchase, with housing expenditure accounting for 55%.  This is out of whack.  Think about how many people were actually buying for speculation only...animal spirits and bubble show up everywhere.

This is a bubble that will eventually go bust.

Big test coming for Euro

David Rosenberg warns don't take Euro's longevity for granted:

Greece today may well be the touch-off point for market instability just as Thailand was back in July 1997 — who would have thought a Baht devaluation would have touched off a major Asian financial crisis. Then again, who thought the subprime mortgage market would unleash a broad credit collapse — certainly not the folks at the Federal Reserve. And, as for the Euroland, don't take its longevity for granted either. Go back to the history books and read about how long other currency unions lasted in that part of the world in the past (like the Latin Monetary Union circa 1867 or the Scandinavian Monetary Union circa 1873).

Maybe it's too early to be too much worried about Euro, but be reminded that the fate of Euro had always been a jousting between two of my favorite economists, Milton Friedman and Bob Mundell. 

***Read this classic historical debate*** at University of Chicago between the two great minds.

Fogel on world economy in 2040

Robert Fogel, winner of Nobel prize in economics in 1993, predicts China will dominate the world economy by 2040 (see the table below).





 His prediction raised some heated debate in economics profession. In a recent NBER paper, he explained why he thinks:

1. China's future growth rate will be about 8% per year between 2000 and 2040;
2. EU-15 will only grow at 1.2% per year between 2000 and 2040;
3. The U.S. GDP between the same years will grow at 3.7% per year.

Betting against Euro

Traders are increasingly betting against Euro (source: FT):

Traders and hedge funds have bet nearly $8bn (€5.9bn) against the euro, amassing the biggest ever short position in the single currency on fears of a eurozone debt crisis.

Figures from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which are often used as a proxy of hedge fund activity, showed investors had increased their positions against the euro to record levels in the week to February 2.

The build-up in net short positions represents more than 40,000 contracts traded against the euro, equivalent to $7.6bn. It suggests investors are losing confidence in the single currency's ability to withstand any contagion from Greece's budget problems to other European countries.

Amid growing nervousness in financial markets over whether countries including Spain and Portugal can repair their public finances, Madrid on Monday launched a PR offensive to try to assuage investors' fears.

Elena Salgado, Spanish finance minister, and José Manuel Campa, her deputy, flew to London to meet bondholders.

They sought to allay doubts about Spain's creditworthiness by repeating promises to cut its budget deficit to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2013 from 11.4 per cent last year. "We'll make the adjustment that's necessary," Mr Campa said. But their disclosure that the treasury planned to raise a net €76.8bn through debt issuance this year unsettled markets further. The projected sum to be raised was lower than the €116.7bn of 2009 but higher than many investors had expected.

The news sent yields on Spanish government bonds, which have an inverse relationship with prices, sharply higher. The premium demanded by investors to hold the country's debt over German bunds rose to 1 percentage point.

The Spanish government is convinced it is being unfairly treated by foreign investors and the media. José Blanco, Spain's public works minister, hit out at "financial speculators" for attacking the euro and criticised "apocalyptic commentaries" about Spain's finances.

Appealing for patriotism, Mr Blanco said in a radio interview: "Nothing that is happening in the world, including the editorials of foreign newspapers, is casual or innocent."

The single currency fell to an eight-month low of $1.3583 on Friday but recovered a little on Monday to $1.3683. Analysts said sentiment towards the euro had soured because of the increasing concern over Greece's fiscal problems.

Thomas Stolper, economist at Goldman Sachs, said: " Behind this intense focus on Greece obviously is the long-standing unresolved issue of how to enforce fiscal discipline in a currency union of sovereign states."

Is China rising as a science superpower?

Reports from Bank of Finland:

China rising as science superpower; huge growth in research activity. A Financial Times story on Monday (Jan. 25) compiled data from Thomson Reuters and Web Science database to show Chinese researchers published about 112,000 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals in 2008. US researchers led the pack with the most published articles (333,000).

Among the BRIC countries, China has made the most impressive gains in research publications, with notable strengths in the areas of chemistry and materials science. The quality of the science in Chinese papers still is variable, but clearly the Chinese are increasingly working across borders with members of the international research community and a growing number of foreign researchers are publishing jointly with their Chinese colleagues. Generally speaking, the quality of Chinese research is improving.
Brazil has also made huge strides in increasing its out-put of scientific articles, with particular expertise shown in the areas of agriculture and bioscience. In contrast, India, and in particular Russia, failed to live up to expectations of increasing research prowess.

China's heavy investment in education and R&D during the past decade is now coming to fruition with China joining other research leaders. The return of the Chinese re-searchers who have studied and worked in North America and Europe are playing an important role in China's development. China has also been successful in translating basic science advances into commercial applications. This phenomenon is reflected, e.g. in the large increase in international patent applications.

Two graphs extracted from the Thomson Reuters' report on China's research output:


(click to enlarge)

China now produces the world's second most research publications, only behind the United States.





Where are China's research publications concentrated?

Eurozone's debt contagion

Interview of Harvard professor Nail Ferguson. Will Germany-France bail out Greece, Spain and Portugal?

Remember Milton Friedman's prediction --- "Euro can't survive a major crisis." Let's watch and see.





(update 1) Rolfe Winkler writes on Reuters on the same issue. He outlined three possible outcomes.

1) The PIIGS (acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) cut their budgets to pay back debt. Such austerity programs are typically very difficult to get done in democracies. Deficit spending stays high long past the point that it’s possible to work off debt over any reasonable period. To successfully dig out of the hole requires cuts so deep, voters never agree to them.

2) Europe bails them out, which is the easiest solution in the short-run. Richer European countries certainly have the wherewithal to bail out a small country like Greece or Portugal. But it’s a dangerous precedent to set. What about Spain? It’s 14% of the Euro economy compared to 6% for Portugal/Ireland/Greece combined. If economies keep spending with an eye towards a bailout from the ECB, eventually you get #3.

3) The monetary union breaks apart. The customary way out of a debt crisis is to devalue one’s currency, see Argentina in 2001. It couldn’t maintain it’s dollar peg and still service its debt, so it devalued its currency and defaulted on debt. But this locked the country out of the international capital markets and drove them into a deep, though brief, Depression. For Greece to devalue, it would have to pull out of the Euro, pass a law that it’s debts are payable in new local currency and then devalue.

Beijing Consensus, no more

Yang Yao, Director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University, writes on Foreign Affairs that Beijing's ongoing efforts to promote growth are infringing on people's economic and political rights. In order to survive, the Chinese government will have to start allowing ordinary citizens to take part in the political process.

In my view, this so-called Beijing Consensus never existed. It's the fantasy of some academic scholars. It should not be treated as a universal development model and applied to other developing countries.

China's development model may be very efficient, but it lacks higher moral ground. It's the outcome of three decades of gradualist policy evolution during a very special transitioning period. What China needs is more individual freedom and less government intervention in both economic and political spheres.

Read Yang Yao's piece, "The End of the Beijing Consensus".

Market and the Dollar

This is a remarkable graph showing the negative correlation between the market and US dollar.

6-sense technology

The current state of six-sense technology -- connecting physical world to digital world.

Amazing...

Never underestimate what human capital and knowledge can do. I am optimistic that in 50 years, human welfare will be at much higher level than what any of us can possibly imagine today.

Thanks to its immigration policy, the U.S. is still leading the pack.

Paulson: the US was very close to financial collapse

Paulson's interview with Bloomberg.

At one point, he talked to his wife, Wendy, on the cell phone, "I am scared...pray for me."

Also watch my previous post on Inside the Meltdown from Frontline.

Paul Volcker on prop trading restrction

Bank credit less tight

click graph below to play video, from FT:

The problem with Euro-zone bond

Why euro-zone bond is a bad idea (from WSJ):

Is a euro-zone bond issue the answer to Greece's problems? Prime Minister George Papandreou unsurprisingly thinks it a good idea. But he and other European leaders shouldn't waste time fantasizing about it. Even if there weren't huge technical, political, economic and legal headaches to solve, a euro-zone bond could cause more problems than it solves at present.

The attraction of a euro-zone bond is that it would provide cheaper funding to countries whose borrowing costs have risen sharply as a result of the crisis: mainly Greece, but also Portugal and Ireland. But any advantages in terms of increased European solidarity are far outweighed by the costs associated by a huge increase in moral hazard.

Issuing a euro-zone bond would remove all incentive for weaker states to take difficult decisions; they would be able to spread the pain to taxpayers in other countries instead. Borrowing costs would likely rise for other euro-zone members, including those viewed by the markets as having maintained relative fiscal solidity, such as Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, ultimately leading to tax hikes or spending cuts.

The euro-zone's "no bail-outs" approach would have been shown to be fatally flawed—and the currency bloc's credibility, already damaged by failures to enforce sanctions against countries breaking the Stability and Growth Pact rules, would be further damaged.

In the longer-term, and in calmer economic waters, a shift to issuing debt at the euro-zone level might make sense—but only if introduced for the right reasons. A common euro-zone debt market could be more liquid than the multitude of national markets, making the euro more attractive as a reserve currency; this is an aspect that benefits U.S. Treasurys, after all. But this would require a radical centralization of political authority, and further changes to European treaties. Given the trauma of the Lisbon treaty process, few would have appetite for it now.

Ring of Fire

From Bond King, Bill Gross:



(click to enlarge)

The most vulnerable countries in 2010 are shown in the chart “The Ring of Fire.” These red zone countries are ones with the potential for public debt to exceed 90% of GDP within a few years’ time, which would slow GDP by 1% or more. The yellow and green areas are considered to be the most conservative and potentially most solvent, with the potential for higher growth.

How to destroy American jobs

Matt Slaughter is right on the money. Obama's proposed tax on US multinational firms only destroy American jobs, not protect them:

How To Destroy American Jobs

by Matthew Slaughter

Mr. Slaughter is associate dean and professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2005 to 2007 he served as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Deep in the president's budget released Monday—in Table S-8 on page 161—appear a set of proposals headed "Reform U.S. International Tax System." If these proposals are enacted, U.S.-based multinational firms will face $122.2 billion in tax increases over the next decade. This is a natural follow-up to President Obama's sweeping plan announced last May entitled "Leveling the Playing Field: Curbing Tax Havens and Removing Tax Incentives for Shifting Jobs Overseas."

The fundamental assumption behind these proposals is that U.S. multinationals expand abroad only to "export" jobs out of the country. Thus, taxing their foreign operations more would boost tax revenues here and create desperately needed U.S. jobs.

This is simply wrong. These tax increases would not create American jobs, they would destroy them.

Academic research, including most recently by Harvard's Mihir Desai and Fritz Foley and University of Michigan's James Hines, has consistently found that expansion abroad by U.S. multinationals tends to support jobs based in the U.S. More investment and employment abroad is strongly associated with more investment and employment in American parent companies.

When parent firms based in the U.S. hire workers in their foreign affiliates, the skills and occupations of these workers are often complementary; they aren't substitutes. More hiring abroad stimulates more U.S. hiring. For example, as Wal-Mart has opened stores abroad, it has created hundreds of U.S. jobs for workers to coordinate the distribution of goods world-wide. The expansion of these foreign affiliates—whether to serve foreign customers, or to save costs—also expands the overall scale of multinationals.

Expanding abroad also allows firms to refine their scope of activities. For example, exporting routine production means that employees in the U.S. can focus on higher value-added tasks such as R&D, marketing and general management.

The total impact of this process is much richer than an overly simplistic story of exporting jobs. But the ultimate proof lies in the empirical evidence.

Consider total employment spanning 1988 through 2007 (the most recent year of data available from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis). Over that time, employment in affiliates rose by 5.3 million—to 11.7 million from 6.4 million. Over that same period, employment in U.S. parent companies increased by nearly as much—4.3 million—to 22 million from 17.7 million. Indeed, research repeatedly shows that foreign-affiliate expansion tends to expand U.S. parent activity.

For many global firms there is no inherent substitutability between foreign and U.S. operations. Rather, there is an inherent complementarity. For example, even as IBM has been expanding abroad, last year it announced the location of a new service-delivery center in Dubuque, Iowa, where the company expects to create 1,300 new jobs and invest more than $800 million over the next 10 years.

read more here.

Implications of Obama's Budget

Obama's 2011 spending plan is way above historical average.


(click to enlarge)


This may be inevitable after a big financial crisis and government stimulus is badly needed. But big government deficit will have its consequences.

From Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff:

As government debt levels explode in the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is  growing uncertainty about how quickly to exit from today’s extraordinary fiscal stimulus. Our research on the long history of financial crises suggests that choices are not easy, no matter how much one wants to believe the present illusion of normalcy in markets.

Unless this time is different – which so far has not been the case – yesterday’s financial crisis could easily morph into tomorrow’s government debt crisis.In previous cycles, international banking crises have often led to a wave of sovereign defaults a few years later. The dynamic is hardly surprising, since public debt soars after a financial crisis, rising by an average of over 80 per cent within three years. Public debt burdens soar owing to bail-outs, fiscal stimulus and the collapse in tax revenues. Not every banking crisis ends in default, but whenever there is a huge international wave of crises as we have just seen, some governments choose this route.

We do not anticipate outright defaults in the largest crisis-hit countries, certainly nothing like the dramatic de facto defaults of the 1930s when the US and Britain abandoned the gold standard. Monetary institutions are more stable (assuming the US Congress leaves them that way). Fundamentally, the size of the shock is less. But debt burdens are racing to thresholds of (roughly) 90 per cent of gross domestic product and above. That level has historically been associated with notably lower growth.While the exact mechanism is not certain, we presume that at some point, interest rate premia react to unchecked deficits, forcing governments to tighten fiscal policy. Higher taxes have an especially deleterious effect on growth. We suspect that growth also slows as governments turn to financial repression to place debts at sub-market interest rates.

I don't think there will be a debt crisis, but certainly expect rising yields on government bonds and further weakening US dollar.

"The British screwed us", says Paulson

More from Hank Paulson's memoir ON the Brink, on the two days that led to Lehman's bankruptcy:

I had gone to bed modestly optimistic about our chances of saving Lehman. The Barclays bid was proceeding, and Diamond had a board meeting scheduled for early that morning in London.

Tim spoke with Diamond after the Barclays board meeting, at 7:15 a.m. New York time, and Bob warned him that Barclays was having problems with its regulators. Forty-five minutes later, I joined Tim in his office to talk with Diamond and Varley, who told us that the FSA (Financial Services Authority of the U.K.) had declined to approve the deal. I could hear frustration, bordering on anger, in Diamond's voice.

We were beside ourselves. This was the first time we were hearing that the FSA might not support the deal. Barclays had assured us that they were keeping the regulators posted on the transaction. Now they were saying that they didn't understand the FSA's stance. At 10 a.m., we met with the bank chiefs again, and I told them we had run into some regulatory issues with Barclays but were committed to working through them. The CEOs presented us with a term sheet for the deal. They had agreed to put up more than $30 billion to save their rival. If Barclays had committed to the deal, we would have had industry financing in place.

At 11 a.m., I went back upstairs, and soon got on the phone with (British Finance Minister) Alistair Darling, who wanted a report on Lehman. I told him we were stunned to learn that the FSA was refusing to approve the Barclays' transaction.

He made it clear, without a hint of apology in his voice, that there was no way Barclays would buy Lehman. He offered no specifics, other than to say that we were asking the British government to take on too big a risk, and he was not willing to have us unload our problems on the British taxpayer.

It was shortly before 1 p.m. when Tim, (Security and Exchange Commission Chairman) Chris (Cox) and I addressed the CEOs again. I was completely candid. Barclays had dropped out, and we had no buyer for Lehman.

"The British screwed us," I blurted out, more in frustration than anger. I'm sure the FSA had very good reasons for their stance, and it would have been more proper and responsible for me to have said we had been surprised and disappointed to learn of the UK regulator's decision, but I was caught up in the emotion of the moment.

Back in my temporary office on the 13th floor, a jolt of fear suddenly overcame me as I thought of what lay ahead of us. Lehman was as good as dead, and AIG's problems were spiraling out of control. With the U.S. sinking deeper into recession, the failure of a large financial institution would reverberate throughout the country—and far beyond our shores. It would take years for us to dig ourselves out from under such a disaster.

All weekend I'd been wearing my crisis armor, but now I felt my guard slipping. I knew I had to call my wife, but I didn't want to do it from the landline in my office because other people were there. So I walked around the corner to a spot near some windows. Wendy had just returned from church. I told her about Lehman's unavoidable bankruptcy and the looming problems with AIG.

"What if the system collapses?" I asked her. "Everybody is looking to me, and I don't have the answer. I am really scared."

I asked her to pray for me, and for the country, and to help me cope with this sudden onslaught of fear. She immediately quoted from the Second Book of Timothy, verse 1:7—"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

read more here from WSJ

What Hank Paulson had feared

Excerpts from Hank Paulson's memoir, "ON the Brink".  The former Treasury Secretary feared a total collapse of US dollar; going down of both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. He also blamed UK authority for failing to let Barclay take over Lehman Brothers, then triggered a free fall of the market in Oct. 2008. Reports FT:

Hank Paulson feared there would be a run on the dollar during the early phase of the financial crisis when global concerns were focused on the US, the former Treasury secretary has told the Financial Times.

"It was a real concern," Mr Paulson said in an interview ahead of the release today of his memoir On the Brink . A dollar collapse "would have been catastrophic," he said. "Everything that could go bad did not go bad. We never had the big dislocation of the dollar."

When the crisis escalated and went global with the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the dollar rallied - but Mr Paulson had to grapple with a firestorm of financial failures.

He feared Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would go down along with Washington Mutual and Wachovia.

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chairman, told him that Goldman would be "next" if speculators succeeded in bringing down Morgan Stanley, the former Treasury secretary said.

US officials explored the possibility of mergers between JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, Goldman and Citigroup, or Goldman and Wachovia, before settling on a "plan B" to turn Morgan Stanley and Goldman into banks with access to central bank loans.

Even then, Morgan Stanley was not safe until the US Treasury helped seal an investment by Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ, Mr Paulson writes.

The frenzied manoeuvring came in the three-week period between the failure of Lehman on September 15, 2008, and Columbus Day weekend in early October, when the global financial system was on the verge of meltdown.

"Banks were going down like flies," Mr Paulson told the FT. As his book details, he was desperately scrambling to secure Tarp bail-out funds from Congress.

"The timing could not have been worse since we were months or weeks from the election so you had the collision of markets and politics."

Although a Republican, Mr Paulson found it harder to deal with John McCain than Barack Obama - raising the interesting (and unanswered) question of which candidate Mr Paulson voted for.

Mr Paulson said that the turning point in the crisis came when - armed at last with Tarp equity - the US joined other Group of Seven nations to announce comprehensive interventions to guarantee bank funding and access to capital on Friday, October 10.

Three days later, Mr Paulson pressured nine top US financial institutions into accepting $125bn in Tarp capital. "I do think it was the defining act," Mr Paulson said.

Before that weekend, he said: "We were always running behind this. It was always bigger than we were".

Mr Paulson said the US authorities lacked essential tools to deal with a crisis - above all a controlled bankruptcy regime for non-bank financial firms.

He hopes his book conveys "the pace at which things were moving and the number of decisions that had to be made in very short time-frames".

Mr Paulson was surprised by the vehemence of the public reaction against bail-outs. He told the FT there was "a disconnect" between the way policymakers saw their actions and the way the public perceived them.

"We knew, I knew that when the markets froze there was going to be a painful impact on the economy a number of weeks out."

Mr Paulson is frustrated that people do not pay more attention to disasters averted by timely actions - including the move to seize control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Instead, most debate centres on the failure to stop Lehman from collapsing, and the decision to rescue insurance giant AIG. Mr Paulson said Lehman was "like a slow-motion car crash".

Critics say the Treasury should have deployed its sole pre-Tarp source of capital, the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, to backstop a rescue. However, Mr Paulson said Treasury lawyers had been through this during the Bear Stearns crisis six months earlier and concluded that it would not be lawful.

Others fault top US officials for not doing a better job of preparing for a Lehman collapse.

Mr Paulson said the US was taken by surprise by the UK bankruptcy administrator's decision to seize hedge fund assets held by Lehman - a move he said was "devastating".

He also admitted "I did not see the money markets moving as quickly as they did" after the Lehman collapse. But he said there were limits to what could have been done in general to mitigate a Lehman failure without precipitating its immediate collapse.

On AIG, Mr Paulson said he had nothing to do with the controversial decision to pay counterparties at par - and found out about it only in December when AIG made a public disclosure.

His book hints that the Treasury was less than enthusiastic about supporting the original Federal Reserve loan with later Tarp equity - but Mr Paulson refused to discuss AIG further.

Looking back, Mr Paulson is confident that - notwithstanding criticism - the big calls were the right ones.

"This Monday morning quarter-backing misses the point - that guess what, we did take the important actions that it took to stop the system from collapsing."

Trust placed in a 'Higher Power'

"I left the New York Fed before 9pm, optimistic about the prospects for a deal. The industry was doing its part to come up with funding, and I had reason to believe we would find a solution to Barclays' need for a shareholder vote.

"Anticipating another sleep-deprived night, I arrived back at the hotel exhausted. I went into the bathroom of my room and pulled out a bottle of sleeping pills I'd been given. As a Christian scientist, I don't take medication, but that night I desperately needed rest.

"I stood under the harsh bathroom lights, staring at the small pill in the palm of my hand. Then I flushed it - and the contents of the entire bottle - down the toilet. I longed for a good night's rest. For that, I decided, I would rely on prayer, placing my trust in a Higher Power."

Excerpt from On the Brink, Saturday September 13 2008 (during the Lehman Brothers crisis weekend)