Albania used as comparison for U.S. financial meltdown

TIRANA, Sep 22 – European have made comparison of the recent financial breakdown in the United States with the pyramid schemes in Albania in 1997.
They list greed and Greenspan among the culprits, and there are comparisons to … Albania fearing the same in the financial systems elsewhere in Europe.
Europeans expressed a harsh condemnation of the excess and disarray on Wall Street.
The finance minister of Italy’s conservative and pro-U.S. government warned of nothing less than a systemic breakdown. Giulio Tremonti excoriated the “voracious selfishness” of speculators and “stupid sluggishness” of regulators.
In an interview Thursday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Tremonti drew a comparison to corruption-ridden Albania in 1997, when a nationwide pyramid scheme cost hundreds of thousands of people their savings and ignited anarchic civil conflict.
“The system is collapsing, exactly like the Albanian pyramids collapsed,” said Tremonti. “The idea is gaining ground that the way out of the crisis is mainly with large public investments. … The return of rules is accompanied by a return of the public sector.”