Temperedoil wrote:patience wrote:Won't the result be more of the same BS and smke we saw last time?
This year is different.
Budget smoke and Bailout Surprise.
With, of course, the right mix of cheer and gloom so that we can keep spending whilst being aware that our leaders are aware that times are a bit tougher than they had expected this year to be when they last met.
Yep, some hard looks to the US but
we can get over this message:
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has told the World Economic Forum in Davos that the global financial crisis is a "perfect storm" whose destructive powers have been multiplied.
Putin compared the economic meltdown to the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early '30s, but said the difference this time is that every country in the world has been affected.
"In an era of globalization, the crisis has affected all countries without exception, regardless of their political or economic system," Putin said. "All countries have found themselves in the same boat."
Putin said he did not blame the United States for the crisis, but he reminded his audience that at last year's Davos forum, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. economy was fundamentally stable.
"I will remind you that only a year ago we heard our American friends talk on this podium about the fundamental stability and unclouded future of the U.S. economy," Putin said. "Today, Wall Street's pride -- investment banks -- have practically ceased to exist. In a matter of one year, they had to acknowledge losses exceeding their profits for a quarter of a century."
linkDAVOS, Switzerland — The leaders of the former bastions of the Communist bloc took the stage here on Wednesday to rebuke their capitalist brothers for dragging the world into crisis but also to assure them that, working together, they can rapidly restore the global economy to health.
In the official opening address of the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke of a financial “perfect storm” that has decimated the old system, rendering it obsolete.
“A year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the U.S. economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects,” he said, speaking through a translator. “Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist.”
But the damage goes beyond Wall Street, he said. “The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional center manufactures inexpensive goods and saves money printed by other governments, has suffered a major setback.”
The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, left little doubt that Beijing blamed the United States for the economic breakdown. “Inappropriate macroeconomic policies,” an “unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption,” the “blind pursuit of profit” and “the failure of financial supervision” all contributed, he said.
Like Mr. Putin, he was upbeat about prospects for the future and expressed an eagerness to work with the West on solving common economic problems.
Mr. Wen was eager to assure investors that China was poised to rebound. “I can give you a definitive answer,” he said of the prospect that his economy would recover strongly. “Yes, it will; we are full of confidence.”
link"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
George Bernard Shaw
“You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Ayn Rand
