While America Dithered

摘要

Amid palpable fear on Saturday, October 12, 2008, President George W. Bush made an unplanned visit to the International Monetary Fund. Global equity markets were tanking-London and Tokyo were down 10 percent in a day, and $2.4 trillion had evaporated from Wall Street since the failure of Lehman Brothers three weeks earlier. U.S. car companies were approaching bankruptcy. Congress had just approved a $700 billion bank bailout. The IMF and World Bank meetings were taking place during a meltdown that seemed to herald global recession-or worse. Bush spent a tense forty minutes with the finance ministers and central bankers from twenty advanced and developing economies, promising a quick response to restore confidence. A global plan of action, he said, would assure that banks had liquidity. Credit would be unfrozen, depositors protected. Davs later after hurried visits from French President Nicolas Sarkozv.