That's a card our negotiating partners have which gives them a certain leverage, a certain influence over the U.S..

I keep looking for the unemployment numbers to rise, and they don't; they just keep getting lower.

Inflation is just not a problem in this economy.

We are consuming more than we produce.

It doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to see what could happen if one of these central bank managers decides to dump dollars. We had a situation recently when a mid-level official at the Central Bank of Korea used the word 'diversification'. It was a throwaway remark at some obscure lunch, but there was instantaneous overreaction. The US stock market fell by 100 points in 15 minutes because the implication was that South Korea might be shifting out of US dollars. So picture this: you have a quiet day in the market and maybe some smart MBA at the Central Bank of Chile or someplace looks at his portfolio and says, 'I got too many dollars here. I'm gonna dump $10 billion'. So he dumps his dollars and suddenly the market thinks, 'My god, this is it!' Of course, the first guy out is OK, but you sure as hell can't afford to be the last guy out. You would then see an immediate cascade effect - a world financial panic on a scale that would dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s.

I think the Japanese are in a very tough dilemma,