Vladimir Putin attacks Western rescue packages

The London Times reports:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, launched a swingeing attack on Western financial rescue packages yesterday, calling for a new world order to reverse the financial crisis.

On his first visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Putin called the crisis a “perfect storm” that had arisen from a world dominated by the US. He said that only a rebalancing of global power could cure the problem and that financial stimulus packages of the kind agreed by Washington and London could lead them down a path well-worn by Moscow while doing little to aid recovery.

“Interference of the State, the belief in the omnipotence of the State: that is a reaction to market failures,” Mr Putin said in his keynote address at the opening of the four-day meeting. “There is a temptation to expand direct interference of state in economy. In the Soviet Union that became an absolute. We paid a very dear price for that.”

Here is Vladimir Putin of KGB fame sounding like economist Murray Rothbard.