A full video webcast of the Clinton-Lee dialogue session is now available on the CGI site.  It’s interesting to note how Lee’s full comments are much more pessimistic than Channel News Asia’s cheery opinion that “Mr Lee expressed confidence that the US Treasury would be able to revive the economy”:

“Falling asset prices, people feel poorer, they can’t pay their mortgages, home values are down, credit cards can’t be paid up, installments due on cars, they’re fearful of being retrenched, so there’s a spiral downwards. It started with the subprime mortgages, a floor must be put on that.  I don’t know how to do it, FDIC may be one way of doing it, but unless you put a bottom to the housing market, the housing values, and then find some ways to raise asset values, you run the risk of a deflation like in Japan … people feel poorer, they don’t spend, their assets keep on sinking, their debts become more and more unrepayable, and you’re down the drain!” (minutes 20-22 min in webcast, transcription by LEEWATCH)

The Straits Times published an additional story, talking only about climate change:

While nuclear fusion looks some years away, ‘the only thing that can replace carbon fuels would be nuclear power’, said MM Lee, who said he was more pessimistic about energy than water scarcity.

‘With the best of intentions, the world must prepare itself for more adaptations than pushing back climate change,’ said Mr Lee.

With scientists forecasting that global temperatures could rise by as much as 6 deg C over the coming decades, Mr Lee said the world must aim to keep the increase to the minimum prediction of 2 deg C. But it will not be easy.

Lee also makes an uncharacteristic factual mistake (around minute 26), confusing the CERN Large Hadron Collider, built and used only for particle research, with a nuclear fusion reactor.