Friday, November 14, 2008

Bush continues pushing "free market" approach to crisis



President Bush continues to push the same tired, old, free market mantra at the G20 meeting in New York:

The greater threat to prosperity is "not too little government involvement, it is too much government involvement in the market," Bush said.

Even Brazil's president gets it:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said last weekend in Sao Paulo, where G20 finance ministers met, that the world economic order "collapsed like a house of cards" because of a "dogmatic faith in non-intervention in markets."

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Insightful argument there, Peter/koozy.
=================================

I noted this article in the NZ Herald about the G20 meeting.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10542747

"Sebastian Mallaby, director of the Centre for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, is cynical about the summit's origins and its chances of triggering major reform.

"The truth is that national regulators failed, but national politicians don't want to be blamed, and so they blame a lack of international co-ordination and respond by calling an international summit. Lo and behold, we have a G20 summit without an agenda."

IMHO The rhetoric leading up to this summit seemed to confirm the lack of agenda. ==============================

Off topic but interesting reading.

"In summary, simple tests suggest that U.S. government deficit spending has a slight tendency to stimulate the U.S. stock market but has no reliable impact on the inflation rate over the next year or two. Annual variability of data makes trading on these conclusions risky."

http://www.cxoadvisory.com/blog/

See blog note for the 14/11/2008.

Regards
Paul