Power crazed lunatics of the week

Faithfully trotted out by the BBC:

Asian and European leaders have called for comprehensive reform of the global financial system. Ending a summit in Beijing, they also urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to play a greater role in helping countries hit by the market turmoil. UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for action to help affected developing nations.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said Beijing would take an active role at a summit of world leaders to be held in Washington next month. Leaders attending the 43-nation Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) agreed to "undertake effective and comprehensive reform of the international monetary and financial systems".

Dude, WTF?

"comprehensive reform"?

You can't go round reforming stuff until you understand a) how it works, and b) how we got into this mess in the first place, i.e. gummints allowing banks to lend recklessly, pushing up house prices to unsustainable levels to give the impression that the economy is growing, for example, and c) if 'debt-for-equity-swaps' aren't top of their list of ways to sort out the banking 'crisis' then they don't have a clue.

"they also urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to play a greater role in helping countries hit by the market turmoil. UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for action to help affected developing nations."?

Woah! The credit crunch has hit first world economies particularly hard; if you want to help poorer countries as well, then isn't this, er, everybody helping everybody else? Wouldn't this all cancel out? In any event, didn't the IMF recently offer to sub Iceland to the tune of $2.1 billion? That's $6,500 per head of population, FFS. That'd go a heck of a long way in rural India, methinks.

"Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said Beijing would take an active role at a summit of world leaders to be held in Washington next month."

Hardly surprising! China and Hong Kong have managed to amass $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves (twice as much as Japan), including $600 billion in US treasury stock (and as much again in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, I believe), and they are probably getting a bit nervous ...