¡No Pasarán!: What Would “the World” to without the US as a Distant, All-Purpose Scapegoat?

What Would “the World” to without the US as a Distant, All-Purpose Scapegoat?

posted by Joe @ 13:27

"In Europe, we have a social-market economy," European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said in an interview. "We have universal health care, a more generous system of social security, a general principle of almost free university education. And we want to keep that."

For years, Europe's more-regulated model of capitalism has been maligned by many economists as a study in second-rate market economics. Now, as world leaders seek a way out of the crisis -- and aim to avoid repeating it -- U.S.-style capitalism is under siege and the European model is getting another look.

What it means:

German unemployment rose almost twice as much as forecast in January as an economic slump sparked by the global financial crisis spread to industries from cars to software.

The number of people out of work rose by 56,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 3.27 million, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said today. Economists forecast an increase of 30,000, according to the median of 33 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The adjusted jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from 7.7 percent. In unadjusted terms, the number of jobless increased by 387,000.

“We’ve reached the turning point on the labor market,” Rainer Guntermann, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “Sooner or later, we’ll see major restructuring programs and job cuts.”

That’s the ‘socially aware’ forecast of the ‘socially advanced’ economy. Can the population afford to be any more ‘aware’ of their superiority to their own “just please don’t call it a market economy” market economy? Or the “we’ll keep touting our nonexistent social collectivism?”

But Thursday's Davos discussions also brought reminders of the Continent's structural vulnerabilities. "I don't think everyone wants to take responsibility for everyone else's problems," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said during a panel on European economic governance. "In that sense, we are still nation-states ... and I think that will not change in the short term."

Just don’t say it, please... after all isn’t it that American invention, “the blind pursuit of profits” that has cause every ill in the world? We all know that the Chinese and Russian don’t pursue profits! Why? Because our delusions about them say so!

government leaders decided not to make new investments in a number of US companies that sought China's capital. China's pullback from Fannie and Freddie debt helped push up rates on US mortgages last year just as Washington was seeking to revive the US housing market.

Mr Wen said the crisis had posed "severe challenges" for China and that it needed 8 per cent growth this year to maintain social stability while the International Monetary Fund predicted 6.7 per cent for this year. The Chinese leader called for faster reform of international financial institutions and for a "new world order" for the economy.

So they poured fuel on the fire by investing in US mortgages, triggered the economic crisis by spiking the demand in energy and commodities to sell goods to the world using previously sound credt, and not they want a “new world order” that will guarantee them 8 percent growth in GDP.

Oh, and it isn’t “their capitalism” that’s at fault. It’s someone else’s. Yeah right.

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Sunday, February 01, 2009

What Would “the World” to without the US as a Distant, All-Purpose Scapegoat?