Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

No, there was no global consensus. If global means everybody, no. What he may mean ... well I explain in my statement. When the IMF programme discussions started and the EU programme discussions started in ... so, 21st thereabouts of November 2010, even a day or two before in truth, the IMF was not just saying, as I say in my statement, that they were in favour of, but I've looked over my notes since then, in some ways they were saying, "We might even make it a requirement, this might be something that we would think is essential," - this burden-sharing with senior bondholders to be clear.

The other partners were clearly not so anxious to do so and while we genuinely tried, because we needed this programme to hold together, we genuinely tried not to force differences between the parties. We did explore a little bit more with the IMF than with anybody else about this. They said, "Look, we've talked to Dominique Strauss-Khan [their managing director], he thinks that he can get the other parties, the big European and American governments over the line, he thinks he can persuade them that this is a good thing to do."

Myself and the Minister in discussion didn't think that we could, so if Strauss-Khan could do it that would be wonderful. So the plan was that Strauss-Khan would speak to these sort of G7 types, the big countries, and he was pretty confident. There was even, at least as recounted to us by the IMF staff on the ground, and there was even a hint back, we got an e-mail ... or I got an e-mail, I think on about the 24 November or thereabouts, 24th or 25th, maybe the 25th, that Strauss-Khan had reason to believe that Geithner, the American secretary ... the American finance minister, Secretary to the Treasury, that he would ... he was sort of showing himself to be a little bit favourable. And then ... so they have the telephone conversation as I understand it and the message we got back was actually the opposite - it was very negative. What we were hearing was that among the negative people were Geithner and Trichet of the ECB, but others too.