President calls Washington’s reaction to financial crisis ‘populist and ineffective’

Czech president Václav Klaus has called the American government’s reaction to the current global financial crisis ‘populist and ineffective’. In an interview with the news website aktualne.cz, Mr Klaus also criticized central banks’ and European leaders’ handling of the crisis. The Czech president accused world leaders of ‘failing to see the signs’ pointing towards a looming financial crisis, so immersed were they in the battle against climate change. Mr Klaus says that far from increasing regulation within the banking sector, leaders should now be doing away with the ‘old and bad’ regulations which, he said, lead to the crisis. Mr Klaus, himself an economist, said that he thought the current financial crisis would not end up on the scale of the turmoil felt after WWII, but encouraged ‘Thatcherite’ reforms so as to avert any further crises.

Author: Rosie Johnston