When you're facing the threat of recession, you need to have an expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Pre-Keynesian, Hooverite views are dead everywhere except on 19th Street in Washington.

Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

The crisis was 2008, in 2015 - almost eight years later and the gap between where we would have been and where we are is huge and not closing. The implied unemployment rate is very high, labour force participation is very low, and the increase in wages in the second quarter was the lowest in 25 years. Before this turmoil, the U.S. economy was in better shape than Europe or Canada, but not strong.

Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting; what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.

Capital market liberalization includes freeing up deposit and lending rates, opening up the market to foreign banks, and removing restrictions on capital account transactions and bank lending. The focus is on deregulation, not on finding the right regulatory structure.

China's accumulation of reserves is a result of the IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis a decade or so ago. If countries know they can't rely on the IMF to help them, their best defense is their own reserve cushion. In a time of spreading global recession, too much emphasis on savings in surplus countries like China can impede prospects for global growth.