Excerpts from European Union: A coalition of irresponsibility by George Will as published in the Washington Post.
- By socializing the consequences of Greece’s misgovernment, Europe has become the world’s leading producer of a toxic product — moral hazard. The dishonesty and indiscipline of a nation with 2.6 percent of the eurozone’s economic product have moved nations with the other 97.4 percent — and the United States and the International Monetary Fund — to say, essentially: The consequences of such vices cannot be quarantined, so we are all hostages to one another and hence no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness.
- Recklessness will proliferate.
- [T]he European Union is neither a state nor sovereign enough to enforce its rules: No euro-zone nation is complying with the E.U. requirement that deficits not exceed 3 percent of gross domestic product.
- The European Union has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring.
There is nothing I dare add after the eloquence of George Will.
Bob B
RANDOM THOTS 