The G7 finance potentates met to discuss the "severe economic downturn". The usual statements about how its going to take "time" and how they are "working" on it. No one who knows anything is seriously buying this nonsense.

“The statement ticks all the right boxes, but as expected does not go beyond generic statements of principle and commitments that we have heard before,” said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at Unicredit MIB in London. “The commitment to act in a coordinated way flies in the face of the rather uncoordinated approach that followed similar commitments last October.”

It ironic that some people have been calling this the collapse of the Capitalist system, when its really the collapse of the socialist system. Socialism has been masquerading as a viable economic alternative to free market capitalism for decades, but when it really comes down to it, it exists as a parasitical dynamic--redistributing wealth from the free-market sectors of their economy to the unproductive political economies like unions, government employees, state enterprises, etc...

Now free market capitalism is in traction, and the socialists are front and center--expected to pick up the slack with socialist enterprise. Except that there is no such thing. The only available tactic is to stall, and hope capitalism start feeling better and then claim credit for socialism when and if things start improving.

We are now in a game of chicken. The Europeans are looking to the U.S. to pull them out of the death spiral, and Obama is hoping that lower oil prices and whatever gas remains in the private economy can save his ass before the Congressional elections next year. If not, then socialism faces another twenty years in the wilderness as the generic ballot is already showing signs will happen.