A currency serves three functions: providing a means of payment, a unit of account and a store of value. Gold may be a store of value for wealth, but it is not a means of payment. You cannot pay for your groceries with it. Nor is it a unit of account. Prices of goods and services, and of financial assets, are not denominated in gold terms.

In the history of modern capitalism, crises are the norm, not the exception.

The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.

You have to eventually nationalize US banks, you have to take the problem by the horns. In my view actually most of the US banking system is insolvent.

Having spent 10 years studying emerging markets, I know that you have patterns repeated over and over again. A bubble is like a fire which needs oxygen to continue... when you see there is no oxygen, things change.

I am not going to say I told you so, but I did.

I'm not a pessimist by nature. I'm not someone who sees things in a bleak way.