Geoffrey Morton-Haworth_

Trust - Not Confidence - Is the Issue for Geithner

While I can’t compete with ROLEX18K’s assessment of the situation, Simon I think you are right and that the trust issue is global.

The simple rule with trust is “the deeper you see the more you trust”.
So I come back to Joseph Stiglitz's remarks on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN GPS show on 28 December 2008:

“Much of the innovation that we've had in the financial sector in the last two decades has been of negative value. It has been creating complexity.

“It's not a question of disclosure. You could disclose these documents, but nobody -- the buyer, the seller, the regulators can understand them.

“And it was done deliberately. It was done deliberately, so people couldn't understand what was going on.”

Hernando de Soto added:

“You're starting to find out that the real economy has a lot to do with trust, more than with the so-called fundamentals. That when people are not able to identify each other, when they don't know what rights they have over what property or liabilities, then you don't get cooperation.

“The reason you are in paralysis, the reason you are collapsing, is because you no longer know who's got whose hand in whose pockets. Remember that financing is there at the service of production, in combination, and is not center stage.”