A trader reacts in front of the German DAX index board at Frankfurt's stock exchange .
My general impression of the panel discussions I attended and conversations I had was that nobody really has any idea how bad the current financial troubles could get and how much economic impact they might have. So they resort to metaphors. Optimist Jacob Frenkel, a former IMF official and head of the Israeli central bank who is now vice chairman of insurer AIG, said repeatedly that the world economy is a giant oil tanker that is not easily turned. Kenneth Rogoff, another former IMF official who now teaches economics at Harvard, retorted that it was more like the Titanic.