Het Neoliberale Geloof 408

De Volkskrant berichtte vanochtend: 'Op zijn eerste Europese bezoek bracht president Barack Obama de Europeanen in een roes. Overal viel hem lof ten deel.' Dit is het nieuws van een volgens Henk Hofland Nederlandse 'kwaliteitskrant'. Op pagina 5 zagen we een foto van 'de Europeanen in een roes.' We zien Obama ergens in Praag met om zich heen voor het merendeel blanke jonge vrouwen, en veel zonnebrillen. Deze vrouwen waren duidelijk op zijn marketingbeeld af gekomen, ze stonden er als fans niet van zijn politieke programma, die is niet wezenlijk anders dan die van andere presidenten, maar vanwege zijn -- zullen we zeggen -- uitstraling, een uitstraling die de Europese leiders totaal missen. Tot zover onze 'kwaliteitskrant', die Henk Hofland en Jan Marijnissen graag gesubsidieerd zien met belastinggeld. Nu een bericht uit de grote mensenwereld van echte journalisten:

'The West's Fatal Overdose
04/03/2009 02:25 PM
OPINION
By Gabor Steingart in Washington D.C.

The G-20 has agreed on plans to fight the global downturn. But its approach
will only lay the foundation for the next, bigger crisis. Instead of
"stability, growth, jobs," the summit's real slogan should have been "debt,
unemployment, inflation."

Now they're celebrating again. An "historic compromise" had been reached,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the conclusion of the G-20 summit
in London, while US President Barack Obama spoke of a "turning point" in
the fight against the global downturn. Behind the two leaders, the summit's
motto could clearly be seen: "stability, growth, jobs."

US President Barack Obama: The G-20 is laying the foundation for the next
crisis.
When the celebrations have died down, it will be easier to look at what
actually happened in London with a cool eye. The summit participants took
the easy way out. Their decision to pump a further $5 trillion (•3.72
trillion) into the collapsing world economy within the foreseeable future,
could indeed prove to be a historical turning point -- but a turning point
downwards. In combating this crisis, the international community is in fact
laying the foundation for the next crisis, which will be larger. It would
probably have been more honest if the summit participants had written
"debt, unemployment, inflation" on the wall.

The crucial questions went unanswered because they weren't even asked. Why
are we in the current situation anyway? Who or what has got us into this
mess?

The search for an answer would have revealed that the failure of the
markets was preceded by a failure on the part of the state. Wall Street and
the banks -- the greedy players of the financial industry -- played an
important, but not decisive, role. The bank manager was the dealer that
distributed the hot, speculation-based money throughout the nation.

But the poppy farmer sits in the White House. And during his time in
office, US President George W. Bush enormously expanded the acreage under
cultivation. The chief crop on his farm was the cheap dollar, which
eventually flooded the entire world, artificially bloating the banks'
balance sheets, creating sham growth and causing a speculative bubble in
the US real estate market. The lack of transparency in the financial
markets ensured that the poison could spread all around the world.

There are -- even in the modern world -- two things that no private company
can do on its own: wage war and print money. Both of those things, however,
formed Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many
column inches have already been devoted to Bush's first mistake, the
invasion of Baghdad. But his second error -- flooding the global economy
with trillions of dollars of cheap money -- has barely been acknowledged.

No other president has ever printed money and expanded the money supply
with such abandon as Bush. This new money -- and therein lies its danger --
was not backed by real value in the form of goods or services. The measure
may have had the desired effect -- the world economy revived, at least
initially. And US consumption kept the global economy going for years. But
the growth rates generated in the process were illusionary. The US had
begun to hallucinate.'
Lees verder: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-617224,00.html