The toxic mix of mutual mistrust and tit for tat behavior has brought Sino American ties to their lowest point since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. There is now widespread concern that the US and China may be headed for a new cold war.

That stance has left both countries isolated and looking somewhat churlish. For Japan, it has had the additional effect of making its investment announcement look like a tit for tat response to the AIIB, even to the extent of topping the bank s initial capitalization of 100 billion.

He started a computer tournament for people to submit prisoner's dilemma strategies and discovered, much to his surprise, that a very, very simple strategy won it won the first tournament, and even after everyone knew it won, it won the second tournament that's known as tit for tat.

Since then, many calls for coordination have lamented the outbreak of currency wars, otherwise known as competitive depreciation an old phenomenon that recalls the tit for tat devaluations of the 1930s. Now, as then, the fear is that if all countries try to depreciate their currency to gain export competitiveness and boost their economies, all will fail.

This is not the first time communications has been a problem for the ECB. On more than one occasion, under both Trichet and former ECB chairman Wim Duisenberg before him, press leaks and the tit for tat responses they engender, made the Governing Council sound more like a cacophony of discordant voices than a serious deliberative body.