EC President Blames US For Financial Crisis in Europe

The G-20 summit off to a great start if you like fireworks, endless bickering, and finger-pointing. Otherwise these summits are totally useless.

When asked by a Canadian journalist "Why should North Americans risk their assets to help Europe?" EC President José Barroso replied "Frankly, we are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy."

The Guardian has further details in Barroso blames eurozone crisis on US banks.

The opening day of the G20 summit was threatening to deteriorate into a fractious row between eurozone countries and other non-European members of the G20, notably the US, as EU commission president José Manuel Barroso insisted the origins of the eurozone crisis lay in the unorthodox policies of American capitalism.

As Europe's leaders came under intense pressure to act decisively to cure the euro's ills, and a campaign gathered pace to relax some of the austerity programmes laying waste to countries with unsustainable debt levels, Barroso said Europe had not come to the G20 summit in Mexico to receive lessons on how to handle the economy. Asked by a Canadian journalist: "Why should North Americans risk their assets to help Europe?" he replied: "Frankly, we are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy.

"This crisis was not originated in Europe … seeing as you mention North America, this crisis originated in North America and much of our financial sector was contaminated by, how can I put it, unorthodox practices, from some sectors of the financial market."

The European council's president Herman Van Rompuy, speaking alongside Barroso, said a draft G20 communique showed "support and encouragement for the euro area countries and leaders and for the European Union as a whole to overcome this crisis".

"We are not the only ones that are so-called responsible for the current economic problems all over the world," he said.

A Few Questions Nannycrats Might Consider

1. Might I point out to nannycrats Barroso and Van Rompuy that leverage in European banks exceeded leverage in US banks?
2. How about the fact the property bubbles in Spain and Ireland were bigger than the property bubbles in the US?
3. Is the US responsible for putting together a structurally unsound euro, or is Europe?
4. Did the EU fail to do its homework in letting Greece into the EU?
5. Did nannycrats in Brussels praise property development in Spain before everything blew sky high?

I am quite certain I can ask dozens of such questions.

Let's be honest here. Yes the US caused lots of problems. So did the ECB, and so did the nannycrats. China played a part as well.

Thus, those comments by Barroso are strictly from Fantasyland if not Idiotland. Europe created the euro, not the US. Europe foolishly pledged more and more money to Greece, not the US. And eurozone rules are at the heart of Europe's mess, not anything the US did.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com