Fear and Greed on Wall Street
As the US faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the American financial and economic leadrship has come under severe criticism by the world. Last week -- even before Wall Street's latest collapse -- 13 former finance ministers met at the University of Virginia campus and called on the Americans to fix their 'broken financial system.' Australia's Peter Costello noted that lately the US has been "exporting instability" in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF." The Wall Street Journal reports that the turmoil in the U.S. financial sector is rippling through political debates around the world, giving ammunition to foreign officials who question American economic leadership and oppose policies that follow the U.S. model. While the U.S. has been a model for Chinese reforms, now it's clear "the teachers