Views on the Meltdown From Across the Pond

The banking crisis isn’t limited to the US—it’s a cross-continental phenomenon. Here’s what the British press saying about the mood:

• France and Germany are livid, reports Charles Wyplosz of the Financial Times. There, individualism isn’t seen as a virtue, and free markets are greeted with suspicion. Both Nicolas Sarkozy and the German finance minister have "announced the end of Anglo-American financial supremacy."

• In Britain meanwhile, conservatives have swiftly swung leftward, writes Rachel Sylvester in the Times, after initially “taking a laissez faire approach at odds with the faites quelque chose mood.”
• Regulation is coming, writes Tracy Corrigan of the Daily Telegraph, and it’s necessary. But it’ll be designed “to prevent a rerun of the latest crisis,” not prevent the next, and consumers will foot the bill.
• Ann Pettifor of the Guardian thinks our entire “orthodox monetary policy” is to blame. Money is manmade, and hence, as Keynes theorized, the idea that it must be scarce and expensive “is a nonsense.” 

(More credit market stories.)