Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world:
___
Oct. 15
Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Sweden, on the European rescue package and Gordon Brown:
Europe has a new hero: Gordon Brown. The European Union has shown an ability to take action. It should continue toward a European energy policy. ...
Great Britain used the Swedish recipe from the crisis in the 1990's, decided to apply it to British banks and then got the 15 euro countries to accept the same things during Sunday's meeting in Paris. ...
No one can be sure, but hopefully this is the turning point in the international financial crisis.
Thus it was in London and with the Labor government that the ability for analysis and decision was found. And it is exactly that which Gordon Brown's effort consists of: He dared and he was able.
But also in Paris, with the E.U. chairman on duty, there was a proper reaction: The E.U. has to gather to a joint performance. ...
Hence, the E.U. has shown that it can tackle a big crisis challenge more effectively than the USA. No one can now say what this will come to mean for the relations of the future _ the USA of today is at an unusual point of political weakness. But Europe has with the financial crisis taken a new step toward closer and more powerful action. ...
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 11
Jerusalem Post, Israel, on recent violence:
While most Israeli Jews spent Yom Kippur in prayer, contemplation or communing with their bicycles, a troublesome minority exploited the Day of Atonement to sin against public order. ...
In Kiryat Motzkin, Haifa, Beersheba, Holon, Rehovot and Jerusalem, loutish Jewish youths - overwhelmingly not haredi - stoned MDA ambulances in displays of juvenile delinquency that have become all too common in recent years.
Violence of a different order broke out in the northern town of Acre, where the population of 50,000 is about one-third Arab. Here, at about 11:30 p.m., Jewish youths hanging out on Yom Kippur took umbrage when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab resident of Acre's Old City, drove his car along Avraham Ben Shoshan Street in the Jewish part of town. Some of the youths claimed they feared he was about to carry out a vehicular terrorist attack - similar to those recently committed in Jerusalem. ...
What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs live in close proximity. Constructively, over Shabbat, moderate Arab leaders publicly criticized Jamal for his insensitivity. Still, all eyes remain on Acre, where tensions have long been simmering between the mostly working-class populations, with the Arabs insisting that they're not getting a fair share of municipal services. ...
A correct Zionist response is to insist that Arab and Jewish citizens live by the same rules and obligations. Anyone who advocates vigilantism undermines the Jewish state and should be shunned.
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 15
The Telegraph, London, on regulating banks:
As stock markets continued their recovery after the global bail-out of the financial system ... the Prime Minister is turning his efforts to the development of an all-encompassing regulatory structure.
Mr. Brown believes it is important to rebuild the global financial architecture erected in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire that set up the IMF and the World Bank, but which has since been reduced to rubble.
Later, Mr. Brown will attend an EU council meeting where he will outline his ideas for an even larger gathering of world leaders to create this brave new world. ...
But while greater supervision of the banks may be required, there should not be a rush to devise new rules and regulations that will do more harm than good.
It is not a shortage of regulations that has been the problem; they have been in the wrong area and overseen by the wrong people, wedded to the wrong philosophy.
Politicians must beware convincing themselves that they can regulate an end to financial crises. ...
They will happen again. One thing that has been absent in recent weeks is an effective way of co-ordinating the response when they do occur. ...
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 15
Postimees, Tallinn, Estonia, on the European financial crisis:
There's a bar in Oxford where visitors are fined one pound for speaking on their mobile phones or using the phrase "the European Union." The bar's a kind of incarnation of "good old England" that looks upon European directives as it did the Luftwaffe in 1940.
All the more surprising, therefore, the bulletin about how Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a far greater Euro-skeptic than his predecessor Tony Blair, appealed to his EU colleagues with a proposal to devise a common European rescue plan for the financial crisis. Not long ago Brown was against such a plan.
What happened? Apparently, the worsening financial crisis turned out to be so grave that it forced London to turn to Europe. ... By all accounts, we're seeing a sea-change in London's attitude toward the EU.
But it's hard to believe that foggy Albion will suddenly embrace Brussels. ... Still, the EU needs a common approach to the financial crisis. If EU member states and their members start to collapse like a house of cards, this will lead to a situation like the one in the 1930s.
One can be an optimist and assume that Great Britain's proposal will find support in Brussels and the tension between London and Brussels will finally abate.
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 15
Los Angeles Times, on the government investing in U.S. banks as part of an economic rescue package:
Washington's financial-rescue-of-the-day frenzy continued this week with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. announcing that the government would invest at least $250 billion directly in U.S. banks. ...
The new approach is a much more direct and efficient way to provide more cash for banks to lend. In theory, that should ease the credit crunch that has been so damaging to the economy. Still, the plan seems to have been thrown together just as hastily as previous efforts, leaving gaping loopholes. There are no safeguards against banks frittering away the cash provided by the Treasury to pay dividends to shareholders (including, in many cases, their own executives). The government is rushing to make the investments before it knows the true health of these institutions, meaning it may be throwing good money after bad and encouraging desperate executives to make unacceptably risky bets. And by acquiring nonvoting shares, the Treasury limits its influence over how taxpayer dollars are put to use. ...
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 12
Journal Star, Peoria, Illinois, on the national debt:
America's national debt surpassed $10 trillion on the last day of September. ... The national debt clock, located near New York's Times Square, actually ran out of digits.
Seymour Durst, a Manhattan real estate developer, erected the sign in 1989 to focus eyeballs on what was then a $2.7 trillion debt. In 2008 dollars, 1989's red ink would come to $4.8 trillion. So yes, you could say the overspending has picked up a bit. ...
If you're curious what that number means to you, the debt amounts to nearly $33,000 per capita, more than $86,000 per family in America. Just add it to the mortgage. If that doesn't cause you to lose sleep, add in unfunded Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other entitlement spending, and the total debt exceeds $59 trillion.
Of course, we're told that deficits don't matter, that as a percentage of gross domestic product _ the size of our economy _ the debt is still manageable. Perhaps so, but it's getting less so by the minute _ by more than $1 million in red ink a minute, in fact. Gross national debt as a percentage of GDP just hit a 53-year high.
Nonetheless, the government spending continues, we dare say with reckless abandon. ...
___
On the Net:
___
Oct. 13
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania, on Afghanistan:
The latest price that America is paying for the Bush administration's blunder in going to war in Iraq is Afghanistan's falling back into the hands of the Taliban, who host al-Qaida.
After careful study, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the government set up by the United States in Afghanistan, after U.S. forces collaborated with the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban, is now on the ropes. According to New York Times reporters who have talked with U.S. government officials, the not-yet-released National Intelligence Estimate is very clear on that.
Although the NIE is finished, it will not be released until after the Nov. 4 election, obviously to delay embarrassment for the Republican administration on another piece of foreign-policy and national-security mismanagement. ...
What should have been done ... is the Taliban should have been driven out in 2001, followed by establishment of the Karzai government and the launch of economic development. By concentrating U.S. forces there instead of running off to Iraq, a satisfactory outcome could have been achieved five years ago, followed by the departure of foreign troops. It is way too late for that now, and Washington doesn't have available the number of troops needed to retrieve Afghanistan, given the commitment in Iraq. ...
___
On the Net:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08287/919488-192.stm
___
Oct. 9
The Trentonian, Trenton, New Jersey, on global economic concerns:
The Germans have a word for it. Schadenfreude. It means taking glee in the misfortune of others. It spread across Europe with the news of America's financial meltdown and rescue scramble.
A smirking Europe enjoyed the comeuppance for America's "speculative excess" and "cowboy capitalism."
Until, that is, the fiscal fecal matter hit the European fan.
Germany found itself scrambling to bail out a big bank, England to rescue a large real estate lender. Other nations across Europe found themselves hustling to come up with various bailout/rescue measures of their own.
And it seems the European countries' difficulties are largely of their own making.
Turnabout may be fair play, but we should cut short our own schadenfreude. The reality is that America needs European markets to stabilize, for our own economic well-being as well as Europe's.
Problem is that stabilization there may be even harder to achieve than here, thanks to a fragmented European regulatory structure. For better or worse _ in this case, worse _ Europe has nothing like our Fed.
Europeans may find our cowboy capitalism a bit too boisterous for their tastes. But they may yet come to envy the sweep and swiftness of the response we American yahoos were able to muster in the crisis.
___
On the Net:
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий