The USA — All Systems Go?

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The con­trast today between Europe—the sub­ject of my first few posts on Forbes—and the USA could not be more extreme. The cri­sis, when it began in 2007/08, was seen ini­tial­ly as a pure­ly Amer­i­can phenomenon—and by some, proof that the dereg­u­lat­ed Amer­i­can(and more gen­er­al­ly, the Anglo-Sax­on) mod­el of cap­i­tal­ism had failed, while Europe’s more col­lec­tivist ver­sion was still going strong.

One of the most vol­u­ble putting that argu­ment was then French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy, who assert­ed that the cri­sis proved that the Amer­i­can dereg­u­lat­ed ver­sion of finance was kaput:

A page has been turned,” he said, on the “Anglo Sax­on” finan­cial mod­el.

Even our Anglo-Sax­on friends are now con­vinced that we must have rea­son­able rules.” (“G20: Advan­tage Nico­las Sarkozy vs Les Anglo-Sax­ons?”, UK Tele­graph April 3rd 2009)

Well that was then. Now, it’s the Euro­pean system—and its very pecu­liar rules—that are look­ing decid­ed­ly poor, while the USA seems to be pow­er­ing ahead.

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About Steve Keen

I am Professor of Economics and Head of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University London, and a long time critic of conventional economic thought. As well as attacking mainstream thought in Debunking Economics, I am also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. The key issue I am tackling here is the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally, and our very low rate of inflation.