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Views on the Meltdown From Across the Pond

How Europe, but mostly England sees the crisis

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 30, 2008 12:54 PM CDT

(Newser) – The banking crisis isn’t limited to the US—it’s a cross-continental phenomenon. Here’s what the British press saying about the mood:

France and Germany are livid, reports Charles Wyplosz of the Financial Times. There, individualism isn’t seen as a virtue, and free markets are greeted with suspicion. Both Nicolas Sarkozy and the German finance minister have "announced the end of Anglo-American financial supremacy."

In Britain meanwhile, conservatives have swiftly swung leftward, writes Rachel Sylvester in the Times, after initially “taking a laissez faire approach at odds with the faites quelque chose mood.”
Regulation is coming, writes Tracy Corrigan of the Daily Telegraph, and it’s necessary. But it’ll be designed “to prevent a rerun of the latest crisis,” not prevent the next, and consumers will foot the bill.
Ann Pettifor of the Guardian thinks our entire “orthodox monetary policy” is to blame. Money is manmade, and hence, as Keynes theorized, the idea that it must be scarce and expensive “is a nonsense.”

[Quotes (6)]

A man walks past the London Stock Exchange in London, Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

David Cameron, leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party speaks on stage at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, England Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

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Will Anglo-American capitalism fade away? Maybe, but that will be decided in Washington, not Paris and Berlin. - Charles Wyplosz

The crisis in capitalism is simultaneously a crisis of government, a challenge to the way in which the free market has been run. - Rachel Sylvester

The Tory leader had somehow ended up giving the impression that the fat and the poor had responsibilities, but the rich had rights. - Rachel Sylvester

Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. - Ann Pettifor

I’m getting a bit fed up with all this nonsense about how banks should be allowed to fail, to teach them a lesson. In countries where banks fail frequently, people tend to stash cash under their mattresses. - Tracy Corrigan

Nationalism is always a convenient spare wheel for difficult times. - Charles Wyplosz

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Views on the Meltdown From Across the Pond

How Europe, but mostly England sees the crisis