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Title: "Geithner's view of the future is disturbing" Post by: WhiskeyGirl on February 28, 2011, 05:06:56 PM Asking US banks to lead financial development in other countries is inviting trouble
By SIMON JOHNSON Quote It is a deeply disturbing vision, one that amounts to a huge, uninformed gamble with the future of the American economy - and that suggests that Mr Geithner remains the senior public official worldwide who is most in thrall to the self-serving ideology of big banks. Mr Geithner argues that the world will now experience a major 'financial deepening', owing to growing demand in emerging markets for financial products and services. He is thinking, of course, of 'middle-income' countries such as India, China, and Brazil. And he is right to emphasise that all have made terrific progress and now offer great opportunities for the rising middle class, which wants to accumulate savings, borrow more easily (for productive investment, home purchases, education, etc) and, more generally, smooth out consumption. Hmmm... How much money from the Fed will these 'global' banks have access to? When they help create bubble after bubble in investments and consumerism, how much money will the Fed be advancing? How much more financial damage will be done to the dollar? Americans on Main Street? Democrats controlled Congress, the national purse for over four years...why hasn't the Fed been audited? Because it's bailing out California? Other states? Unions? Big foreign banks and global companies? Big special interests? I was waiting to hear that Ron Paul had issued some invites to bring records, and nothing! Quote And third, Mr Geithner completely overlooks what has brought significant parts of Europe to its economic knees. He should spend more time with the authorities in Iceland or Ireland or Switzerland, countries where 'financial globalisation' allowed banks to become big relative to the economy. Why haven't the big banks in the US been broken up? Asked to use their own money? Why do US taxpayers remain on the hook? Why haven't any of them gone to jail for the housing catastrophe? read more here - http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/views/story/0,4574,428248,00.html (http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/views/story/0,4574,428248,00.html) |