30% of Germans Blame Capitalism For Financial Market Crisis

international | anti-capitalism | other press Monday October 20, 2008 18:05 by Peter Sutherland's Nemesis

Financial Times / Harris Poll of Europeans Shows Banks Most to Blame For Market Turmoil

Good news for the Left and progressives in general today, when the FT revealed that 30% of people in Germany, Europe's biggest economy and the world's second* largest exporter, "attributed the financial market crisis to ... the 'failure of capitalism'" rather than "to 'abuses of capitalism'.

Or, as the Financial Times newspaper themselves put it: "Majorities in the UK, France, Spain, Italy and the US attributed the financial market crisis to “abuses of capitalism” rather than the “failure of capitalism”. The Germans were more divided, with 46 per cent blaming abuses, and 30 per cent saying capitalism itself had failed."

An average of around 80% of respondents in the poll of 6,276 adults in France, Germany, the (not so) UK, Spain, Italy and the US reckoned that "the role of the US in the world economy" has been weakened "as a result of the recent global financial market crisis". The news report and poll results of other related questions can be found at the link below. [* It was the biggest until July this year when China sailed past to become the country with the highest financial value on their exports.]