We in the United States and the Western nations will see our stature diminish in international financial markets as we do not take the medicine we recommend to others when they are in the midst of a financial meltdown.

“They were doing everything that [multilateral agencies] were counseling developing countries not to do to stay out of crisis,” he said about the parade of Western banks that have crumbled over the last six years due to heavy leveraging and bad assets. “They were greedy … and now people are having a big laugh.” ...

“They told us … there was a bubble [in asset and currency prices]. They told us not to increase borrowing. They told us to cut back government spending. Its advice they ignored in [their] own economies,” he said to an appreciative audience of Arab businessmen who have their own gripes about what they see as American and European hypocrisy, especially when it comes to foreign policy in the Middle East.

I certainly do not blame them for seeing us as hypocrites.