Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Russia’s Vladimir Putin Calls US a ‘Parasite’ Economy

From Reuters,

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means "like a parasite" on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.

As the world’s largest economy that owns the de facto world reserve currency, the US has naturally been taking advantage of this seignorage privilege.

Nevertheless, having abused this position through Keynesian policy induced boom bust cycles and the constant bailouts of the cartelized ‘too big to fail’ banking system, the US dollar’s dominance has been in erosion.

clip_image002

Chart from Wikipedia.org

But Mr. Putin's rants seem to be diverting blame on his country’s woes to the US.

Russia’s autocratic political economy has hardly been a beacon of economic progress worthy of emulation.

image

chart from the Heritage Foundation

This implies that Mr. Putin holds no moral high ground. It would be like the envious ‘pot calling the kettle black’.

No comments: