EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ahead of the G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and emerging economies this weekend, the president of the United States and the president of the European Commission have laid down their markers for what should be the solutions to save the global economy. On Thursday, US President George W. Bush made an impassioned plea for laissez-faire capitalism and warned against turning away from free markets, while commission President Jose Manuel Barroso extolled the virtues of public intervention and the European welfare state model built at the end of World War Two. The European 'social market' model has been celebrated by President Barroso "In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure," said the US leader in a speech on Friday (14 November) at the Federal Hall National Memorial. He conceded that there had been failures, but the blame for these should be pinned on borrowers, financial firms and regulators, not capitalism.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ahead of the G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and emerging economies this weekend, the president of the United States and the president of the European Commission have laid down their markers for what should be the solutions to save the global economy.
On Thursday, US President George W. Bush made an impassioned plea for laissez-faire capitalism and warned against turning away from free markets, while commission President Jose Manuel Barroso extolled the virtues of public intervention and the European welfare state model built at the end of World War Two.
The European 'social market' model has been celebrated by President Barroso
"In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure," said the US leader in a speech on Friday (14 November) at the Federal Hall National Memorial.
He conceded that there had been failures, but the blame for these should be pinned on borrowers, financial firms and regulators, not capitalism.
he blame for these should be pinned on borrowers, financial firms and regulators, not capitalism.
Who is not a borrower, a financial firm or a regulator? And if everybody is to blame, then nobody is, right? "Shit happens" seems to be the motto os those that say "it's not capitalism's fault."
That's too easy. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
