I do like a good conspiracy theory.....
At a G20 summit in Mexico, Mr. Barroso - the EC president - blamed the Eurozone crisis on the Americans. More precisely, this is what he said:
"Frankly, we are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy. "This crisis was not originated in Europe … seeing as you mention North America, this crisis originated in North America and much of our financial sector was contaminated by, how can I put it, unorthodox practices, from some sectors of the financial market."
So, let us deconstruct, as they would say in Paris, what Mr. Barroso actually said.
Lessons in Democracy
Mr. Barroso isn't actually elected by the European people. He is appointed, in contrast to say, Mr. Obama. So, a lesson in Democracy from the Americans might have its uses.
The origins of the crisis
In the wacky world of Mr. Barroso, Greek public debt accumulation was due to subprime lending in America. The Spanish banking crisis happened because of Wall Street. Likewise, the Irish and Portuguese economies were sucked down a black hole because of viperous capitalists three and a half thousand miles away.
The implication from Barroso's outlandish comments must also be that the crisis had nothing to do with the adoption of the Euro. A useful conclusion for someone who is keen to avoid any responsibility for what is unfolding within the Eurozone.
Contamination..unorthodox practices
Barroso ludicrously claims that the Europeans caught the disease from the Americans. European bank regulators were powerless to stop the infection. Eurozone politicians, zombie-like, just kept on accumulating debt, once they caught the borrowing bug from across the Atlantic.
Barroso just doesn't get it
Blaming the Americans for the Eurozone crisis is a crude and unconvincing attempt to shift responsibility for the Eurozone disaster onto innocent American shoulders. The sad thing is that Anti-Americanism is so rampant in Europe that many people will be quite comfortable parroting Barroso's contemptible nonsense.
The Eurozone crisis was cooked up on this side of the Atlantic, Mr. Barroso. Blaming others will not save the Euro.
9 comments:
It doesn't matter to them that it is poppycock.
The excuse will do.
So, extreme de-regulation & the packaging and selling on of toxic assets pushing "buyer beware" to the very limits by the US financial sector has nothing at all to do with the current economic situation in Europe? That it was impossible for those outside the US to gauge the risk they were taking in their borrowing levels is not a result of staggeringly exploitative north American practices, that few (including the dg of the CBI in Britain) would have believed possible?!
What annoys me is that all these fatcats are not even good capitalists. How can they be when they are not able to judge the future accurately and make sensible investments? Yet the little people ar called feckless when they cant find a job. I think the game was up when all those bailouts happended. There is no responsibility now. It's a joke.
Kevin. Agreed. Any excuse will do.
Barroso was(is?)a Maoist. To expect any sense from such a noxious turd is ridiculous.
Barroso's lack of ability is as obvious as his toupee, so naturally this makes him the perfect figurehead for Europe...
The thing to realise is how widespread the causes have been. In Japan, a wasted generation of economic management. In the US, the mad mortgage era, the corrupt investment banks and the corrupt politics, in Australia the mad housing bubble, in China the deeply corrupt everything, in the UK the idiocies of the Blair-Brown governments and the dimwittedness of the managements of Northern Rock, RBS, HBOS and Lloyds TSB, and in the EU the EU itself and the Euro madness.
It's because there have been so many blunders that the whole bloody thing is going to end in disaster. Or, as Dubya so eloquently put it, "This sucker is going down".
He wears a toupee?
I have a feeling "L1" may be related to anon in the comments here ...
Post a Comment