The world is waiting on tenterhooks as the representatives and ministers from the G7, the G20, and the IMF try to figure out what in the dickens to do about the worldwide financial crisis:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Key nations threw their support behind efforts to tackle the financial turmoil and amid grim warnings of a “meltdown” European leaders pledged their own action ahead of a crisis summit Sunday.
With governments anxiously hoping to calm markets, the Group of 20 countries which account for 85 percent of the global economy said they had agreed to use “all financial and economic tools” to calm the storm.
The Washington meetings and others around the world stressed that efforts would be coordinated.
The G20 said action would be “closely communicated so that the action of one country does not come at the expense of others or the stability of the system as a whole,” said a joint statement.
The 20 nations endorsed a five point plan agreed by the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers at the weekend meetings in Washington to prevent the “failure” of key financial institutions.
As of this writing no actual agreement or plan of action had been reached.
Perhaps it’s my paranoia and xenophobia speaking but I can’t help but wondering if the world consensus isn’t that it’s the U. S.’s fault and that we should do something to get the entire world out of the fix that it finds itself in.
I certainly agree that we Americans deserve our share of the blame but we didn’t get into this fix entirely on our own. Greed is not a uniquely American quality; it is a human quality. We didn’t force banks all over the world to engage in speculative activities and excessive leveraging. Nor were we the only beneficiaries of these activities.
