The Ignorant Investor

DAVOS, Switzerland: This was supposed to be the year the United States came in from the cold at the annual gathering of world leaders here. But instead of receiving a warm embrace, American policies were rebuked again and again in rhetoric that recalled the anger of the Bush years - except the ire this time was mostly directed at Washington's economic failings, rather than its diplomatic ones.

World leaders are lining up to slam the United States. I don't take it too seriously. Western leaders are politicians, and they're going through their own economic nightmares at home. Who better to blame than us for the world's problems even when everyone with half a brain knows that the modern financial system is so globalized that there is really no such thing as an American, or European, or Asian financial system. It's all interlinked, and it's not like the European bankers were complaining for years that a huge meltdown was coming and that their own bankers needed to be reined in. Picking on the U.S. financial system for its myriad of failures is like pointing to one identical twin sister and declaring "she's too ugly." However, the most absurd news is here:

The criticism did not come only from the usual suspects, like Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin of Russia and Wen Jiabao of China, who both decried a long pattern of excessive consumption, risky borrowing and inadequate regulation in the United States.

Being lectured on China about "excessive consumption" is a gas. Who sells the U.S. consumer more crap they don't need than China? Who goes out of their way to lend money to U.S. debtors to buy said crap? The joke must go over great in Shanghai.

Also, am I the only one who finds it's a little bit creepy that nobody in the media notices that events like Davos symbolize the dominance of finance in our political culture?