Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.

When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.

I think the rise of China is one of the great events of all economic and human history, and I think this will be overwhelmingly a positive thing for the region and the world.

You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.

He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange.

Every American wants a clean slate, but nobody wants to lose what they've got.