Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”
Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”
Putin also cautioned the US against using military Keynesianism to lift its economy out of recession, saying, “in the longer run, militarization won’t solve the problem but will rather quell it temporarily. What it will do is squeeze huge financial and other resources from the economy instead of finding better and wiser uses for them.” Putin’s comments come in sharp contrast to Russia’s own military buildup and expansion.
Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, “we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and ‘bad’ assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would ‘conserve’ and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.”
“The time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future.”
Source:
dprogram.wordpress.com 
Putin is of course warning against the turn to a Soviet-style model. The US is nowhere close to this, even after Obama’s tepid moves. The headlines tell us daily of the Obama administration’s LACK of control over the US banks. Here’s a story about the banks’ failure to resume lending after the bailout. The whole point of the bailout was to loosen lending in order to get the economy going again:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124019360346233883.html
And yet later in the speech (which you guys dug up from back in January), Putin outlines his own stimulus package:
“Our anti-crisis policy is aimed at supporting domestic demand, providing social guarantees for the population, and creating new jobs. Like many countries, we have reduced production taxes, leaving money in the economy. We have optimised state spending.”
Righties in the US would find this unacceptable.
Personally Jeff i think you are wrong The whole point of the bail out was to steal U.S. taxpayers money plain and simple.
evilbughead,
If the whole point of the bailout was to steal the taxpayers’ money, who received it? Certainly not the bank execs, whose big bonuses will be severely scrutinized and even denied. Certainly not the banks’ stockholders, since their stocks have plummeted and remained down. Who got the taxpayers’ money?