Martin Weale, director of Britain's National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said that although many of the problems began in the United States, those working in the financial sector around the world were behaving irresponsibly. "In Europe, banks were buying what turned out to be subprime mortgages without bothering to check exactly what they were," he told ABCNews.com.
"It's useful for politicians to make the problem someone else's fault," said Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management. He told ABCNews.com that although the "subprime mortgage problem in the United States was the trigger, the issue has been there for some time, with the complacency of bankers."
He believes that consumers are just as much to blame. "Consumers were quite happy to play along with the unsustainable idea of 'free money.'"
Among ordinary people in France, there is a sense that this is a global problem and the United States is not solely to blame, according to ABC News' Christophe Schpoliansky in Paris. "I haven't seen strong anti-Americanism from the global financial crisis," he said. "I don't think people are out on the streets, screaming their rage against the U.S."
France's President Nicholas Sarkozy called a meeting of European nations last week to address the financial crisis. "After this crisis we will have built the pillars of a new financial world," he said, a comment viewed by some observers as a swipe at the U.S. financial institutions.
However, Sarkozy appears to hold his own country's bankers to account too. According to The Washington Post, he asked his advisers after he was forced to allow a $92.2 billion bailout for the European bank Dexia, "What were they doing screwing around in the United States?"
Russia is suffering from the world financial crisis with its stock market in turmoil, but unlike in Europe, criticism of the United States continues. Today President Dmitry Medvedev said: "Confidence in the United States as the leader of the free world and the free market, the trust in Wall Street as the center of this confidence, has been undermined -- for good, I think."
Last week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described the credit crisis as "an infection" that has spread from the United States to Russia.
American accountant Irwin Stelzer, writing in the U.K.'s Times, argued that Putin blames the United States rather than Russia's own "confiscation of foreign investment and invasion of Georgia."
Margot Light, professor emeritus of the London School of Economics, an expert in international relations, told ABCNews.com that she believes Russia's financial problems are clearly "linked to the global crisis since the subprime market problem in the United States. "
Do you have more information about this topic? If so, please click here to contact the editors of ABC News.
