The cowardly EU « Europe not EU
I am back from my holidays and a blogging hiatus to find that EU finds it easier to rally behind a mindless G20 Obama love-in on fiscal and bank bailouts than it is to hold a summit on preserving jobs. EU heads of state and government have decided to run away from cancel a Prague meeting, originally scheduled for May 7, which aimed to bring together national leaders with businesses and trade unions. Only last week, the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was insisting that it would be a "fundamental error" not to hold the summit. "Our public opinion would not understand, it would be unacceptable that EU leaders meet at the highest level and that they discuss the problems of the banks and not social problems. That they discuss the problems of the financial sector and not that of employment. That would be really unacceptable," he said on Mar 18.
I am back from my holidays and a blogging hiatus to find that EU finds it easier to rally behind a mindless G20 Obama love-in on fiscal and bank bailouts than it is to hold a summit on preserving jobs.
EU heads of state and government have decided to run away from cancel a Prague meeting, originally scheduled for May 7, which aimed to bring together national leaders with businesses and trade unions.
Only last week, the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was insisting that it would be a "fundamental error" not to hold the summit.
"Our public opinion would not understand, it would be unacceptable that EU leaders meet at the highest level and that they discuss the problems of the banks and not social problems. That they discuss the problems of the financial sector and not that of employment. That would be really unacceptable," he said on Mar 18.
(Mr. Waterfield still liberally mixes the EU and its institutions and constituting national governments.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Fiscal conservatives will make the recession worse. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Which kind of dodges the question of what to do about this crisis.
There have been no substantial policy proposals from Europe since Obama got elected, everyone's been waiting for him to solve the crisis.
There have been consistent calls by France and Germany to regulate capitalism better and crack down on tax haven (mostly grandstanding from Sarkozy, I'll grant, but the German drive has been serious enough).
There's been a pushback on deficit spending, and more generally there has been very little criticism of how the ECB has handled the crisis on its side, which is a stark change from usual practice in big parts of Europe.
Brown has been forced to choose sides (symbolically anyway) and seems to have sided on the European side. That's pretty significant too. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
