Hedge funds did not cause the financial crisis. They did not even exacerbate it. Instead, they avoided catastrophic losses and did not take a single penny of taxpayer bailout, courting controversy only when they bet against outrageously mismanaged banks that richly deserved the resulting collapse in their stock prices.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: EU SETS COMPROMISE PACKAGE OF HEDGE-FUND RULES

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EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier has really thrown down the gauntlet to the financial industry’s domineering lobby, not only in the European Union but, by extension, in the U.S. as well because American banks are so entrenched in Europe.

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Three years after the worst financial-economic crisis since the 1930s began; a new international financial, regulatory and fiscal architecture has emerged. Although incomplete, not yet implemented and inadequately coordinated between major countries, the new structure is due to be ratified at a summit of G-20 countries in Seoul on Nov. 11 and 12. The leaders will naturally put a positive spin to the new measures, and indeed much has been accomplished.

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According to the European Union’s Maastricht criteria, EU member states may not have a budget deficit that exceeds three percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or a national debt that exceeds of sixty percent of the GDP.  Listed below are the EU states’ 2009 government budget deficits as percentages of GDP, their official predicted future government budget deficit as a percent of GDP.  Also listed is the national debt as a percentage of GDP for 2009.

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Will the current slump end up producing “creative destruction” of the sort that has propelled capitalism forward in previous crises? The term was coined by Austrian economic historian Joseph Schumpeter to posit that the collapse of old structures can launch a new cycle in which economies arise again, phoenix-like, from their ashes. And, yes, it can offer a guideline for policy-makers seeking ways out of the current global economic predicament, according to Slovenia’s Finance Minister Franc Križanic.

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