On Sunday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy hosted a meeting of European leaders to discuss shoring up credit markets.

Putting aside policy merits or partisan leanings, and looking at how leaders are communicating, I'm struck by:
  • The fin de règne disengagement or disconnect of President Bush and his cabinet. The American speakers strike me as weary, with an eye on the clock. This must due to more than the presidential election or dissenting voices in Congress.
  • Strictly as a communications point, having seen and heard leaders from both sides of the Atlantic, I find the Europeans more compelling, more adult, more engaged.

If the goal is to inspire confidence, I'd give higher marks to Brown, Merkel, and Sarkozy, than to Bush.

On both sides of the Atlantic, though, this observer finds that the talk has been substantively weak. There's a bizarre notion that the root of the problem is mood or feelings, and that government can act to boost this. There's also a rush to moralizing, to expressing outrage at the greed of bankers, brokers, and other players in the financial services industry. What I've heard little is the possibility that what the markets have been doing may be right, at least in part; given similar movements in markets worldwide, following decisions made by professionals armed with lots of information, might there be some merit to the price-setting mechanism on stock markets, or to banks' hesitancy to lend to peers?