President Obama is using the summit to try to bully the rest of the world into legitimizing his own misguided policies. It doesn’t make sense for many of these other countries to increase spending because they already have safety nets in place that insulate their economies. This would devalue their currencies. There is great coverage about the world response on this page :

http://www.newsy.com/videos/obama_faces_battle_at_g20/

But lets be honest, the summit was always going to be more about PR than policy…kind of like the Obama administration.

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I’m sure the rest of the world will wait to see just how honest the Treasury’s “honest assessment of the balance sheets of our major banks” will be before investigating in bundles of these assets.

The whole situation regarding toxic assets in the US is absurd. The banks “needed” all this bailout money because the values (which the banks refuse to disclose) were supposedly so low that they were a drain on their balance sheets, requiring too much reserve capital and/or being so “toxic” that nobody would touch them.

But now that the Treasury is financing all but 7 cents on the dollar (the amount private investors have to pay), the banks are suddenly claiming that the assets aren’t really all *that* worthless. Which is it? They can’t be both; that would be double dipping! What the hell do they care – it’s someone else’s money.

What a load of CRAP!

I hope the rest of the world put’s Obama in his rightful place.

Jeff V

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Good article and insight.

It is the height of hubris to pen a world wide op-ed. But to expect anything different from the spoiled man-child is foolish…

Nice site, keep up the good work

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