Who's to Blame if We Double-Dip?

There will be plenty of blame to go around if the global economy tips into a double-dip recession. U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday, Aug. 5, spread the responsibility widely, citing a "tumultuous year" that has included the Arab revolts, the earthquake in Japan, the crisis in Europe, and partisan battles over spending in Washington.

But many of the leading global players in the ongoing financial drama have already begun casting stones at more specific targets. Here's a look at the world's favorite scapegoats.

CREDIT RATINGS AGENCIES

Arguing that their countries' economies are fundamentally sound, the governments of Spain and Italy cast blame for their climbing interest rates on shadowy "speculators" operating through the major international credit rating agencies. In late June, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told Parliament, "Rating agencies are keeping us under observation, and the locusts of international speculation are waiting for the right moment to hit prey that shows signs of weakness." Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero made a similar diagnosis earlier this year, describing "an attack under way by speculators against the euro, against tougher financial regulation of the financial system and of the markets."

As part of what seems to be a politically motivated attack, Italian prosecutors raided the offices of the Moody's and Standard & Poor's rating agencies on Thursday, citing "anomalous" fluctuations in the prices of Italian bonds.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

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FEYD

1:07 PM ET

August 6, 2011

thank you Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, etc.

The second stage of the recession is caused by democracy. It is all because the politicials want to win the next elections above all. Let's promise some money here and there. We will get some loan, for 4 years it will work well, then someone else will come and take the blame.

Unless there is a war ongoing you have to have your spending and incomes in ballance! Why it is so difficult to understand?

Of course also the problem is that the most of the people are stupid. They thought for all this years that a debt is something that you have, but not something that you should care about.

The most sad thing is that after all those bilions spend by Obama without any effect but rising the debt, there still milions out there who really want to vote for him. That's very sad.

JAC323

11:24 PM ET

August 7, 2011

So who's fault is it anyway?

We seem to forgotten the bankers and the banking familys they represent. They handed out risky loans that they shouldn"t have, placed bets through derivatives in an unregulated market and always with the attitude that we are to big to fail, besides, even if the bets are wrong we always have the sap general public to bail us out. Hey, what a business to be in you win no matter what! All well in fine, but what happens when the general public reaches the conclusion that the bankers are the problem?

FP_READER

1:54 PM ET

August 8, 2011

Who's to blame? Easy.....

....Democrats and Republicans....thats who.

It is possible to vote for a third party.......I've been voting for either Perot or the Libertarians for the last 30 years.

Continuing to vote by ideology ( ie, entrenched special interests ) will simply make things worse.

Come on America, one time, Think!

SIEGGY

3:44 PM ET

The problem, my dear fellow, is alimentary

The single biggest problem is that we have far too many piranhas and not enough cow. There are more factors to blame that we have fingers to point. I'm not going to bother enumerating them, as far too many pundits derive their income from this. However, if I might point out, the most absolutely fundamental element that has created this situation is the belief in pure, unsubstantiated fantasy figures and the blind faith (or desperate hope) that the ship wouldn't sink on their watch.

What brought down the Red Empire was, at the root of it all, that they had built a house of cards that could not withstand the winds of reality. The capitalist west has done precisely the same; arcane financial instruments that no one without a doctorate in math and an utter detachment from reality could comprehend, a willingness to put off till tomorrow whatever disasters were facing them that day, a desperate aversion to accountability and culpability combined with greed that would cause a peripatetic lamprey's eyes to bug out in disbelief has brought us to this sorry state. I'm sorry, but in whatever pit Marx is now stewing, he's laughing uproariously . . .

What is required at this juncture is precisely what this generation has signally failed to produce - a statesman, a leader willing to take the bull by the tail and face matters directly, someone with testes the size of watermelons and heart of a lion in rut, and the soul of a serial killer.

However, this titanic dilemma is being confronted by small people with small testes, small hearts, small brains, and souls with whom Satan couldn't be bothered. In the absolute final analysis, we have gotten too smart for our own good, and the complex fabrications we have built in defiance of reality are collapsing apace.

Perhaps the lesson to be derived from this is that those who attempt to engineer societies and economies should first engineer bridges to see if they fall down . . .

DOGSECRETS

8:08 PM ET

Where is Goldman Sac which

Where is Goldman Sac which help countries re-package and lie about there true debt levels? who played both side of the mortgage mess?

Alan Greenspan/ G W Bush and there fail policies two wars without raising taxes, Greenspan cheap dollar and thinking the bankers could control the there mess with out regulations.