"It Didn't Start Here" by Alan Reynolds (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"It Didn't Start Here" by Alan Reynolds (Cato Institute: Commentary): "At the recent meeting of G-20 nations in London, officials from many nations agreed on one thing -- that the United States is to blame for the world recession."

"last year's recession was much deeper in many European and Asian countries than it was in the United States."

"The dollar value of US imports didn't start to fall until August 2008, and imports of consumer goods didn't fall until September -- many months after Japan and Europe fell into recession."

"There were no bank failures last year in Japan, Sweden, Canada or any other country on this list except Britain. And US and British banks didn't fail until September-October -- at least nine months after the Japanese and European recessions began."

"But Germany's GDP and industrial production was down 19.2 percent for the year ending in January -- versus an 11.4 percent decline in Britain and a similar US drop. Are we supposed to believe that German (and Japanese) firms are more dependent on US and UK banks than American and British firms?"

"US industrial production only started to decline from its peak after January 2008 -- long after production began to slow in Canada (July 2007), Italy (August 2007), France (October 2007) and the Euro area as a whole (November 2007). Aside from a one-month uptick in February 2008, Japan's industrial production peaked in October 2007."

"In 1983, economist James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego showed that "all but one of the US recessions since World War Two have been preceded, typically with a lag of around three-fourths of a year, by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum." The years 1946 to 2007 saw 10 dramatic spikes in the price of oil -- each of which was soon followed by recession."