Quasi-socialist heartache.

(AFP) — French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Tuesday hit back at comments by US President Barack Obama about the threat of the European debt crisis, saying it had originated in the United States.

“The crisis did not start in Europe. . . Lehman Brothers was not a European bank,” Fabius said after talks with his counterpart Giulio Terzi in Rome.

“We should not shift responsibility. We’re all in the same boat,” he said.

Obama said Saturday that Europe’s economic woes were causing trouble for the United States’ own economy, after the US unemployment rate rose for the first time in almost a year, spelling trouble for his reelection bid.

“The crisis in Europe’s economy has cast a shadow on our own. And all of this makes it even more challenging to fully recover and lay the foundation for an economy that’s built to last,” he said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Fabius also said Tuesday the European Union should find a “practical method” to help Spanish banks, adding that Spain was in “a very difficult economic situation.”