Ventura County Star: For a change, blame is light

All things considered, the United States and the shambles it has made of its economy, and much of the world's along with it, got off lightly at the annual Davos summit of political and economic heavy- weights that ended Sunday.

The sternest criticism came from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and he did not single out the U.S. by name.

But when he blamed the global recession on "ex- cessive expansion of fin- ancial institutions in blind pursuit of profit," a failure of government supervision and an "unsustainable mo- del of development, char- acterized by prolonged low savings and high con- sumption," it was not hard to guess whom he had in mind.

The Chinese have hint- ed they are going to scale back on U.S. and U.S.- backed investments, and it's hard to blame them.

This story was originally published February 2, 2009 at 11:45 PM with the headline "Ventura County Star: For a change, blame is light."