World of opinion
On London riots:
London’s third night of rioting has seen almost unprecedented scenes of violence and criminality, spreading across numerous parts of the capital. Families have been burnt out of their homes and businesses reduced to ashes. Police have been attacked, shops looted and cars burnt. Yet while the situation remains tense and dangerous, this newspaper has faith that London will come through this crisis, and see its normal relative peace soon restored.
First, there are at last signs that we will now see more political leadership, with both the Prime Minister and the Mayor back from holiday to deal with the crisis and Parliament recalled. Their first duty must be to support the Metropolitan Police and ensure that the force has the resources and powers it needs to take full control of the streets and prevent a repetition of the violence. If that goal demands powers like temporary curfews, then such measures should be considered. Today, law-abiding Londoners want their city back — but we also need to be able to show the world that, as host of next year’s Olympics, our police have the power to keep order. …
Once the trouble is contained, there will have to be a significant post-mortem on the causes and the policing of the riots. There can be no excuse for the kind of criminality and violence we have seen, and its perpetrators must be brought to justice and punished with the full weight of the law. …
But whatever the devastation today, Londoners and their police force will beat this thuggery and come back stronger.
London Evening Standard
On Western debt:
What a pity that merely three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the world has once again been brought back to the same place, but this time with less choices.
The shock of the unprecedented downgrade of long-term U.S. government debt and the worsening European debt crisis were clearly and painfully felt in major Asian stock markets that plummeted Aug. 8.
Policymakers in those debt-laden Western countries should definitely be galvanized into emergency action to calm the fear and panic that gripped investors at home and abroad.
An assurance from G7 finance ministers that they were “ready to take action to ensure stability and liquidity in markets” is a minimal first step to prevent their debt crisis from getting out of control.
However, it would be far more disastrous if global leaders, especially those from debt-laden rich countries, fail again to make use of the current sense of urgency to put in place serious and long-term solutions to their debt troubles. …
The present convulsion of global stock markets represents not only a vote of no confidence in debt-laden rich countries, which just focus on tinkering with their fiscal and economic problems to reap the low-hanging fruits as long as possible.
It also raises the alarm that a double-dip recession, which was once widely deemed unlikely among global policy makers, could hit the world economy sooner and harder than expected if the debt-laden rich countries keep messing around with their debt problems. …
Policy makers in both the U.S. and European Union should no longer indulge themselves in the delusion that the debt crisis under their watch has any chance of being fixed without their making difficult choices. …
China Daily, Beijing
On economic plunge and Obama’s role:
President Barack Obama may be a Democrat, but he is certainly no Harry Truman.
Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, had a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here!”
Obama, president No. 44, has chosen instead to pass the buck, claiming his country’s economic troubles were inherited, and the majority of the mess on his desk is not his fault.
As a result, he’s become a full-fledged disaster, eclipsing even Jimmy Carter as the worst president in modern U.S. history.
Obama is drowning in his own purple prose, and is so in love with the sound of his voice that he cares not if his vacuous words do nothing to inspire confidence.
And he’s becoming delusional.
“No matter what some agency may say, we have always been and always will be a triple-A country,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
What an offal load of tripe.
It was obvious who the markets believed. They believed the assessment of “some agency” named Standard and Poor’s that downgraded the U.S. federal government’s credit rating to AA+.
Even after Obama finished his buck passing, the markets continued to tumble. The Dow Jones and the TSX moved further downward, losing more than 4% and 5% of their wealth.
Both the S&P 500 Index, as well as Nasdaq, lost 6% of their value.
The slight rebound Tuesday was more a result of the world not being able to afford to watch the U.S. go down than it was a belief in Obama. …
Until the anomaly of Barack Obama came along, there was likely no one in this world who could have gone from the proverbial mail room to the CEO’s office without first working their way up the executive ladder.
Now he is showing us the reason why.
The Toronto Sun
On U.S. loan guarantees to Israel:
Standard & Poor’s decision to cut the long term U.S. credit rating may spur Washington to stop its loan guarantee program to Israel.
In March, the Office of the Inspector General, which examines U.S. foreign missions and embassies abroad, argued that Israel’s “loan guarantee program can prudently be terminated in accordance with the sunset clause in the original legislation, which provided that it would end by 2011.”
The recommendation to end this important piece of U.S. economic assistance should raise eyebrows and questions about the effects it might have on the Israeli economy.
Israel first requested loan guarantees from the United States in September 1991, soon after the Gulf War and in the midst of wide-scale immigration to the Jewish state.
The initial program foresaw Israel borrowing $10 billion from various commercial banks in the U.S. and the U.S. government acting as a sort of co-signer, guaranteeing repayment of the loans in case Israel could not meet its obligations.
Because the U.S. acted as a guarantor, the loans were received at the very best possible rates. …
However, Israel’s debt load is slightly more worrying; at 77% of GDP, it ranks 22nd in the world, which means a higher than average debt load. Given the huge protests over housing and social welfare that have erupted in recent weeks, it is clear that the numbers paint only a partial picture. There are serious concerns among large sectors of the Israeli public about their financial future.
For these reasons, the government should take seriously the recommendations to end the loan guarantee program. …
Furthermore, the responsible financial authorities should examine why the loan program was never used to its full potential in the past decade; if the desire was to illustrate the Israel does not need the money, then it seems that task has been accomplished.
The Jerusalem Post