How much money did you save?

Most developing countries have accumulated massive foreign currency reserves.

Countries have accumulated large reserves in order to insure against shocks.

Americans accumulated their trade deficits by living far beyond their means.

Instead, companies hoarded vast cash reserves, mainly in tax free offshore accounts.

The past isn t the same for everybody, this amassing is personal , she says.

But the fact that so many countries hold large reserves means that the likelihood of the problem spreading into a global financial crisis is greatly reduced.

If they have built up large, monetized fiscal deficits, they should raise taxes, reduce spending, and mop up excess liquidity sooner rather than later.

The credit channel also is not working properly, as banks have hoarded most of the extra liquidity from QE, creating excess reserves rather than increasing lending.

Even in China, where the government has deep pockets to cushion the fall, one Lehman Brothers size bankruptcy could lead to a major panic.

During World War II, Britain took advantage of this, and Argentina, Egypt, and India, in particular, built up huge claims on sterling, although it was an unattractive currency.

During the 1950 s and 1960 s, Europeans amassed a huge stash of US Treasury bills in an effort to maintain fixed exchange rate pegs, much as China has done today.

But countries that saved too much China, emerging Asia, Germany, and Japan are not spending more to compensate for the fall in spending by deleveraging countries.

Indeed, many developing countries, fearful of losing their economic sovereignty to the IMF as occurred during the 1997 Asian financial crisis accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves.

To take the last one first, those countries that built up large reserves were able to weather the economic crisis better, so the incentive to accumulate reserves is even stronger.

Less efficient industrial sectors have accumulated significant excess capacity, destabilizing the entire economy, while more productive, efficient sectors lack access to the resources they need.

After almost 15 years of unprecedented growth interrupted only by a brief slowdown in 2000 2001 the United States has accumulated a huge stock of foreign liabilities, equivalent to 25 of its GDP.

But the popularity of the handout option raises an important and instructive question just how did the ruling classes in these countries amass fortunes so large that people are clamoring for them to be redistributed?

Less affected by the financial crisis and the US recession will be those that have developed with an eye toward Asia nations particularly Chile, Colombia, and Peru , and have accumulated resources to meet unexpected financial storms.

It is a fact that we are much happier saving and accumulating, and that we are much more likely to do so when we think that the resources we have saved and accumulated are at hand. It is also true that when we invest our wealth in Pfizer s intellectual property, factories in Shenzhen, worldwide distribution networks, or shopping malls in Atlanta it is not , in fact, at hand.

It is a fact that we are much happier saving and accumulating, and that we are much more likely to do so when we think that the resources we have saved and accumulated are at hand.

Many large economies, including China, Germany, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, have very large export surpluses, and so have been lending to the rest of the world (especially to the US) rather than borrowing.

A system that requires banks to accumulate more substantial buffers in good times so that they can let them run down in bad times makes sense both from a micro viewpoint and from a macro viewpoint.

To prevent their currencies from appreciating too much in the first case and falling too far in the second, emerging countries have accumulated foreign exchange reserves, two thirds of which are denominated in dollars.

By contrast, prohibiting executives from cashing out shares and options until they leave the firm would provide executives who have accumulated shares and options with a large monetary value with counter productive incentives to depart.

At the same time, such moments remind us that future generations ultimately will judge us not on the basis of what we accumulated whether personally, as organizations, or as states but by the impact we had on those around us, and by how well we responded to their needs.

Diagnosed with cancer, Bruce Feiler worried first about his young family. So as he shares in this funny, rambling and ultimately thoughtful talk he asked his closest friends to become a council of dads, bringing their own lifetimes of wisdom to advise his twin daughters as they grow.