New York Times
September 12, 2011
This isn’t a case where cultural differences are threatening the future of the European Union. The truth is economic and financial disasters reveal the worst of our foibles, and Europe is no exception.
While natural disasters tend to bring out the best in people and encourage greater efforts to cooperate at every level, economic and financial woes generate "blame games" and wrangling over who pays the bills. This is inevitable: unlike natural disasters, economic crises are largely man-made.
Thus Europe's fault lines have been exposed by acrimonious debates during a crisis -- just as Japan's were in the past and the U.S.'s too. Virtually everyone blamed Japan's lost decade on policy ineptitude after the bubble economy burst in the 1990s, some analysts in the U.S. blamed China for its low interest rates and escalation in sub-prime debt pre-2007 and, in the first stages of the global financial crisis, Europe quickly put the blame on the U.S. and Anglo-Saxon financial habits.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment