The Economic Times of Asia
'Time of dominance of one economy, one currency is over'
3 Oct, 2008, 0417 hrs IST, PTI
MOSCOW: Apparently referring to the US, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday said the time of dominance of "one economy and one currency" is over and called for collective steps to cope with the current financial crisis caused by "financial egoism".
"The problems caused by the global financial crisis have demonstrated that the time of dominance by one economy and one currency has irreversibly become a matter of past," Medvedev said addressing the Russian-German 'St. Petersburg Dialogue' in Russia's former imperial capital.
With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting by his side, Medvedev declared that a today not a single nation could alone play the role of a "mega regulator" of the global financial system.
For resolving the current financial crisis, which to a great extent is the product of financial egoism (of the US), there is a need for collective measures," Medvedev said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, battling to insulate the former Communist nation's nascent economy from the global financial crisis, had yesterday blamed the US for showing "irresponsibility".
"We see an inability to take appropriate decisions. This isn't the irresponsibility of particular individuals, it is the irresponsibility of a system that as we know had claims to leadership," Putin said in his televised remarks at the Cabinet meeting yesterday.
Putin, who as the country's chief financial and economic executive has taken several steps to ease the credit crunch by releasing 1.5 trillion roubles and earmarking another 500 million roubles to buy securities to prop bourses, said that Russia could no longer remain unaffected by the "infection" originating from the US.
