How to blame George Bush for Europe’s recession:
Do you notice anything funny about these numbers? Here is what I notice: the recession in the US is milder than that of Europe. Every country on this list had more economic shrinkage from 2008 to 2009 (Q1 to Q1) than did the US.
How could this be? Did they all have George Bush for President? Did they all succumb to free market ideology in the last eight years? Did they all repeal part of Glass-Steagall? Did they all spend wildly on an unnecessary war in Iraq? Did they all bankrupt themselves with out-of-control defense spending?
It’s a mystery.
The List leaves Norway off which has a +3% GDP growth the last 2 years.
The list also fails to mention Iceland and Sweden, which are probably the ends of the Moral Fable here. Iceland went into High Finance and converted the entire country into a hedge fund, which has imploded enough that the Krona is not traded. Sweden after the 199 currency crisis nationalized it’s banks, resolved poor asset quality via “Bad” banks, and regulated it’s banking sector and is down 0.5% in 2008. Norway has been very socialist and is in positive territory.
Frankly the Global economy is on fire, the Wizards of Wall Street set the world ablaze, and it’s burning hard. The EU zone let it’s major banks make terrible loans to Eastern Europe. The implosion there is caving in the financial sector there. Iceland and Ireland decided in 10 years to replicate what London, New York and Paris had spent centuries building up.
Frankly, as it gets worse, the desire to change the global economic model will only increase.
As for why each country on that List had more trouble? Simple.
They were all Basel II members. We hadn’t yet ratified that into Law here.
No mystery here. If one wants to blame George W. Bush for Europe’s recession, one will find hundreds of millions of useful fools that will accept that explanation.
“The List leaves Norway off which has a +3% GDP growth the last 2 years.”
It’s called oil jack. Check back on Norway and see how they are doing next year.
“It’s called oil jack.”
Dubai has lots of oil and it’s in the sewer.
The brits have north sea oil too, they are sinking fast.
Most oil states don’t do well.
Dubai may have lots of oil, but it has nothing else, and hence its economy is a classic pure commodity scenario. Norway, on the other hand, has a fairly complex first-world economy (for the time being anyhow) that benefits from oil revenues as an add-on, not as a sole source. The difference should be clear even to you Jack. You could make the same case for Russia as well, by the way…
Now Britain has a very small amount of North Sea oil, and a (somewhat) larger amount of North Sea gas. The problem is that oil is what matters for transportation, gas is primarily useful only for electricity (no big help for Britain, as electric is ot a huge driver in their economy at this time), and almost worthless for transportation…
Stick to something you know Jack…that would keep you off the blog permanently
It is only natural that countries which have traditionally been major exporters (including to the USA) would be in recession. Such is the case of Germany. A couple of countries in the EU had housing bubbles of their own, like Spain, and the banking sector is in the toilet.