By REUTERS

President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said the financial crisis was God’s way of punishing the United States for trying to impose its economic principles on poor countries. “It’s incredible that in the most powerful country in the world, which spends billions of dollars on brutal wars, people do not have enough money to stay in their homes,” Mr. Ortega said in a speech late Thursday. “God is punishing the United States.” Mr. Ortega first governed Nicaragua in the 1980s when his leftist Sandinista government was locked in a war with conservative contra rebels who were supported by the United States. He was voted back into power in 2006.