President Ahmadinejad: Capitalists caused economic crisis in West

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has lashed out at the Western proponents of capitalism for provoking the existing economic crisis across Europe and America.

This crisis has been caused as a result of the performance of those who advocate the use of force as well as capitalists; the ordinary people have had no role in instigating that, IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying at a Friday meeting with a delegation of Germany’s “Islamic Path Union” in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

“However, today, those who caused the crisis themselves, boast of managing it and, to that end, they have put their hands into the pockets of the people and sought to manage the economic crisis by exerting pressure on the people, instead of going for the capitalists and returning the wealth that they plundered from the public to their owners,” he added.

The Iranian chief executive lashed out at the prevailing global economic structure and argued that such a system can only be dismantled when the rule of “justice and amity prevails in the world.”

Europe plunged into a deep financial crisis in 2008. The crisis has continued to intensify in the recent months.

The worsening eurozone debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, triggering incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.

Meanwhile, the US is grappling with an ongoing economic crisis which is America’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The exacerbating economic conditions, corruption, poverty as well as social and economic inequality in the West have sparked the anti-capitalism Occupy movements in major cities in the US and Western countries since September 2011.