Monday, September 26, 2005
A moment of honesty from Al Greenspan
From the UK's Independent we get a refreshing bit of honest talk. While it is not directly from Als' lips, it does ring true.
Bitter disagreements over global economic policy broke out into the open yesterday as the French Finance Minister claimed that Alan Greenspan had admitted America had "lost control" of its budget while China warned the US to drop demands for radical economic policy changes.While the Treasury folks tried to blame it on a translation problem, I suspect that M. Bretons english is better than Greenspans. And when the Chinese speak out, no matter how mildly, you know there is a problem.
In an extraordinary revelation after a meeting between Thierry Breton and Mr Greenspan, M. Breton told reporters: "'We have lost control,' that was his [Mr Greenspan's] expression.
"The US has lost control of their budget at a time when racking up deficits has been authorised without any control [from Congress]," M. Breton said.
Speaking at a meeting of the International Institute of Finance, Mr Zhou said people were right to worry about imbalances. "The US has always run a fiscal imbalance and current account imbalance but in the recent two years we see the magnitude of the deficits is historically high. People start to worry," he said.Worry indeed!
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