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Article: Lehman's a footnote in globalisation crisis International view
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- September 13, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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You can see why markets and governments both like to blame Lehman
Brothers for the "Great Contraction". Such wishful thinking shields
investors from the nasty reality that deeper forces are at work: it
absolves officialdom from its own destructive role in fixing the
price of credit too low for 20 years, luring us into debt.
As my colleague Jeremy Warner puts it, Lehman no more caused the
economic convulsions of the last year than the assassination of an
Austrian prince caused the First World War. There was the little
matter of a rising Germany then, and a rising China now. Both
scrambled the international system, albeit in different ways.
The 48 hours that killed Lehman and AIG - and would ...