SWEDEN

SWEDEN

Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Oct. 15: Europe has a new hero: Gordon Brown. The European Union has shown an ability to take action. It should continue toward a European energy policy.

Great Britain used the Swedish recipe from the crisis in the 1990’s, decided to apply it to British banks and then got the 15 euro countries to accept the same things during Sunday’s meeting in Paris.

No one can be sure, but hopefully this is the turning point in the international financial crisis.

Thus it was in London and with the Labor government that the ability for analysis and decision was found. And it is exactly that which Gordon Brown’s effort consists of: He dared and he was able.

Proper reaction

But also in Paris, with the E.U. chairman on duty, there was a proper reaction: The E.U. has to gather to a joint performance.

Hence, the E.U. has shown that it can tackle a big crisis challenge more effectively than the USA. No one can now say what this will come to mean for the relations of the future — the USA of today is at an unusual point of political weakness. But Europe has with the financial crisis taken a new step toward closer and more powerful action.

ISRAEL

Jerusalem Post, Oct. 11: While most Israeli Jews spent Yom Kippur in prayer, contemplation or communing with their bicycles, a troublesome minority exploited the Day of Atonement to sin against public order.

In Kiryat Motzkin, Haifa, Beersheba, Holon, Rehovot and Jerusalem, loutish Jewish youths — overwhelmingly not haredi — stoned MDA ambulances in displays of juvenile delinquency that have become all too common in recent years.

Violence of a different order broke out in the northern town of Acre, where the population of 50,000 is about one-third Arab. Here, at about 11:30 p.m., Jewish youths hanging out on Yom Kippur took umbrage when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab resident of Acre’s Old City, drove his car along Avraham Ben Shoshan Street in the Jewish part of town. Some of the youths claimed they feared he was about to carry out a vehicular terrorist attack — similar to those recently committed in Jerusalem.

Simmering tensions

What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs live in close proximity. Constructively, over Shabbat, moderate Arab leaders publicly criticized Jamal for his insensitivity. Still, all eyes remain on Acre, where tensions have long been simmering between the mostly working-class populations, with the Arabs insisting that they’re not getting a fair share of municipal services.

A correct Zionist response is to insist that Arab and Jewish citizens live by the same rules and obligations. Anyone who advocates vigilantism undermines the Jewish state and should be shunned.

BRITAIN

The Telegraph, London, Oct. 15: As stock markets continued their recovery after the global bail-out of the financial system ... the Prime Minister is turning his efforts to the development of an all-encompassing regulatory structure.

Mr. Brown believes it is important to rebuild the global financial architecture erected in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire that set up the IMF and the World Bank, but which has since been reduced to rubble.

Brave new world

Later, Mr. Brown will attend an EU council meeting where he will outline his ideas for an even larger gathering of world leaders to create this brave new world.

But while greater supervision of the banks may be required, there should not be a rush to devise new rules and regulations that will do more harm than good.

It is not a shortage of regulations that has been the problem; they have been in the wrong area and overseen by the wrong people, wedded to the wrong philosophy.

Politicians must beware convincing themselves that they can regulate an end to financial crises.

They will happen again. One thing that has been absent in recent weeks is an effective way of co-ordinating the response when they do occur.

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/3qojsh

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Oct. 15

Postimees, Tallinn, Estonia, on the European financial crisis:

There’s a bar in Oxford where visitors are fined one pound for speaking on their mobile phones or using the phrase “the European Union.” The bar’s a kind of incarnation of “good old England” that looks upon European directives as it did the Luftwaffe in 1940.

All the more surprising, therefore, the bulletin about how Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a far greater Euro-skeptic than his predecessor Tony Blair, appealed to his EU colleagues with a proposal to devise a common European rescue plan for the financial crisis. Not long ago Brown was against such a plan.

What happened? Apparently, the worsening financial crisis turned out to be so grave that it forced London to turn to Europe. ... By all accounts, we’re seeing a sea-change in London’s attitude toward the EU.

But it’s hard to believe that foggy Albion will suddenly embrace Brussels. ... Still, the EU needs a common approach to the financial crisis. If EU member states and their members start to collapse like a house of cards, this will lead to a situation like the one in the 1930s.

One can be an optimist and assume that Great Britain’s proposal will find support in Brussels and the tension between London and Brussels will finally abate.

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On the Net:

http://rus.postimees.ee

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