The administration tries to finesse such narrative disconnects by creating a noir mood of "perpetual fear" -- to borrow Philip Roth's totemic phrase from "The Plot Against America" -- in line with what it sees as a perpetual war.
To put it differently, all the practices during more than the one and a half months of junta suggests that Egypt is sliding towards to become another "republic of fear', to borrow the title of Kanan Makiya's seminal book, which gives a detailed account of Saddam Hussain's iron fist rule in Iraq.
And he added another provision that some budget experts fear could expand his authority to borrow money for construction projects.
Local officials who want to cut pensions do not, as a rule, want to shortchange their bondholders for fear of not being able to borrow in the future — yet bankruptcy law requires that both types of creditors be treated equitably.
I feared that I would have to borrow his technique on the way back down.
Firms and households fear they will not be able to borrow to tide themselves over bad times, therefore they choose to save for a rainy day instead.
As a result, even though nominal interest rates were very low, people did not want to borrow because they feared that future wages and profits would be inadequate to cover their loan payments.
Companies may not want to borrow to invest, for fear that stimulus programmes will be followed by tax rises as governments strive to tackle their deficits.Indeed, the final uncertainty is whether all this fiscal and monetary stimulus will work.
Most other failures were in the small, struggling economies of the euro zone's periphery.One immediate outcome of the tests was encouraging: the interest rates banks pay to borrow decreased slightly, as fears over their solvency abated.
And it will become more expensive to borrow money if bond investors fear the country is becoming overextended.
The fear is that if it becomes too cheap to borrow money over the long-term, this will boost what is popularly called the "carry-trade".
