The fact that the government had to put up hundreds of billions of dollars to Citibank in guarantees was a public declaration that Citibank was a mess. Making Citibank go through financial restructuring would not have conveyed any more different information. So it's very hard to see why it would have had that kind of a panic if it were done well.

Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

Wall Street banks have used the same tactic that Bush used in the war on terror - fear - and they've basically said that if you don't do what we tell you, the sky will fall. If you don't do what we tell you, it will be the end of capitalism as we know it. The failure of Lehman Brothers lent some credence to those fears.

The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them.

Global demand for dollars has supplanted demand for manufactured goods and services, resulting in multilateral trade deficits and loss of jobs at home.

I've always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person you can engage in an argument with, and that that person is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person: it is fantasy. We know that ... the market is subject to irrational optimism and pessimism, and is vindictive ... You're dealing with a crazy man ... Having got what he wants he will still kill you.

The country has large unfunded liabilities - social security, health care, and there will have to be some adjustments to these problems. What is scary though is how much worse things have gotten in the last eight years, and the Iraq war is one of the main factors.