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Nov 9, 2010

How Israel [mostly] Avoided The Global Financial Crisis

Yesterday, the Finance Ministry put before the Finance Committee of the Knesset its proposed budget for 2011-2012 for perusal and debate.

MK Moshe Gafni, the director of the Finance Committee, said that all financial forecasts had predicted serious downturn in the economy and hard-hitting unemployment figures. Yet, Gafni says, "We were the last to enter the economic crisis, and we were the first to get out of it. And the crisis did not affect our citizens or the quality of life."

Gafni explained what he sees as the reason for Israel's successful maneuvering, that being Israel's government supporting torah, and the Finance Minister supporting the yeshivas.

Alternate reasons could be successful financial policy being implemented, while MK Shelly Yachimovitz suggested yet another possibility that our successful maneuver is the result of Netanyahu's inability to pass certain reforms they say would have.

Israel has always supported the yeshivas, since the foundation of the State. Israel definitely has merit in this regard (no matter what else the government has done wrong along the way), and perhaps (or not) that did give us the boost we needed to get through the global crisis fairly well.

4 comments:

  1. it's a slippery slope to oversimplify the picture into hashgacha pratis for our mitzvos as if none of the technical hishtadlus really matters (and for that matter as if this one mitzvah is all we need do in the spiritual realm)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gafni only got 1 word wrong. Rather than:

    "We avoided the crisis because of the Finance Ministry's support of the yeshivas".

    That should be:

    "We avoided the crisis despite the Finance Ministry's support of the yeshivas".

    ReplyDelete
  3. riiiiiiiiight, so when Israel entered hyperinflation in the 80's and was basically bankrupt and had to create the New Israeli Shekel that was also the fault of the yeshivos? puleeze......

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm more partial to the idea that it was Israel's hyperconservative attitude towards mortgage lending, lack of real consumer credit, tightening overdraft misgarot, etc.

    ReplyDelete

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