We must recognize, yet again, that we are all in this together.

Narrator We're just sailing out of harbor now, and it's at this stage when one can have a bit of a wobble mentally.

We are obviously sailing toward the rocks, and the whole developed world should be concerned.

To navigate it, we need strong political will around the world leadership over brinksmanship, cooperation over competition, and action over reaction.

Chu emphasized this point in his Tsinghua University speech, calling the global climate situation very disturbing, and stressing that we were all in it together. The developed world did make the problem I admit that, he acknowledged to his rapt audience.

But major financial crises are rare by the standards of any one country, and we have to range widely through history to get enough information about how such crises play out.