Munin
VIP Member
- Dec 5, 2008
- 1,308
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No, Annie is dead on. The US did not create the problem for Europeans, they did themselves. Western European banks took dominant roles in lending in Eastern Europe. They began to give mortgages and other loans at low interest as long as it was dominated by euros, swiss francs and yen. This worked out well until the Polish zloty alnd the Hungarian forint fell in value, and Italian, Austrian and Swedish banks suffered the defaults.
BTW, all the talk about how Europe hated Bush and his policies, did you notice Blair remaining in power during the Bush years, the French dumping Chirac for a pro-American, and Schroeder replaced by the more pro-American Merkel. Explain?
No the lending to the eastern european Nations is not the key issue, that lending would have been possible if the liquidity in the market hadn't changed. The problem with the europeans is that european banks were as much unregulated as the american banks (altough this will not be acknowledged by many europeans, they re so glad they can use the US as a scapegoat), many european banks have the same toxic assets that the american banks have because they started acting more and more like american banks. One of the best examples of this is the Belgian bank "Fortis".
Ask any french guy if they elected Sarkozy because he was pro-american, you ll soon know that your statement is irrelevant. If anything, their election was despite being more pro-american than their predecessors. The world doesn't revolve around the US, you ll notice that if you travel some more around the world. In europe people don't elect people because they are pro- or anti- american, it is the same about the US: americans don't elect people because they are pro-european (this time it was just coincidence that it was a pro-european candidate, the same could be said about european elections).