How many swedish cheese can you buy with...

US$ 50,000,000,000,000

50 trillion dollars in perceived value have been wiped off the world's books.

US$ 50,000,000,000

50 billion dollars was the cost of just one fraud.

50,000,000 jobs

50 million jobs are likely to be lost by the end of 2009.

David Rothkopf Consider this final point: How can Sweden (which got the bank nationalization thing right, by the way, Tim Geithner's comments about how the United States is not Sweden aside) afford to say no to bailing out Saab, a national icon, while we can't afford the same with GM? Which country is more committed to letting the markets work in healthier ways? Which therefore might be seen as more truly capitalist? The reason they can make it happen politically is because

they have a social system which ensures no Swede fears that economic upheaval will leave him or her destitute or without healthcare.

Thus they can afford the creative destruction of markets, but we cannot. Their "socialism" is in this respect more capitalist than our system of bailouts for the richest and subsidies for the greediest. The United States needs new models and to be open to new ideas and we had better start thinking about looking elsewhere because to date precious few are coming from Washington.

But Krugman says...

European Stability

"... I think it’s important, however, to distinguish between the role of the welfare state in stabilizing society and its role in stabilizing GDP.

On the social front, there’s a quantum difference. For given depth of recession, the human suffering in America — where losing your job means losing your family’s health insurance, and unemployment benefits are minimal at best — is vastly greater than in Europe.

On the macroeconomic front, however, the strength of Europe’s “automatic stabilizers” has been exaggerated. Yes, government is about 12 percentage points of GDP larger; so each 1 percent fall of GDP automatically increases deficits by more than in the US. But unless the slump is much deeper than even pessimists expect, that won’t be enough to offset the stronger US discretionary action.

The IMF has tried to incorporate the automatic stabilizer effect; by their estimates, it still comes up short. So yes, the European response is better than it might seem at first sight; but it’s still pretty bad." (Revision 30 March 2009)

24 March 2009