Europe is in bad shape, there’s no doubt about it. The sovereign debt crisis continues to roil the continent, Greece may leave the euro, Spain may have to revise its budget deficit upward for the second time because of bad loans, and France has a new socialist president pledging more spending instead of austerity. So when the G8 leaders met last week, President Obama had some words of advice to offer — “Look at me and learn from my stellar example!” OK, that’s a paraphrase, but his actual words aren’t … More
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During the NATO meeting in Chicago, the alliance will declare that it has an interim operational capability to defend itself against ballistic missile attacks. This is a major step forward for NATO and U.S. leadership within the alliance. The declaration marks the achievement of the first phase in the Obama Administration’s European Phased Adaptive Approach missile defense plan. This interim capability is based on the Aegis missile defense system and its accompanying Standard missile defense interceptor called the Block IA, which is deployed on U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers. This … More
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At the NATO Summit in Chicago this weekend, leaders will gather to discuss a number of issues facing the alliance. Top of the agenda will be Afghanistan, improving NATO’s military capabilities, and extending NATO’s partnerships with regional and global partners. However, nothing agreed at the summit will matter if America’s European allies do not start spending what is required on defense. Defense spending inside NATO is increasingly declining. As Libya and other NATO campaigns have demonstrated time and again, Europe relies too much on the U.S. to pick up the … More
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Numerous governments across Europe have embarked on strict austerity programs. Europe is also sliding into a deep recession, with some countries already essentially in deep depression. Are the two phenomena related? Is the austerity exacerbating the economic downturn? Yes and no, and the yes should be no surprise. For context, recall that the Obama Administration was greeted by a global financial contagion and the Great Global Recession. The budget deficit was already rising rapidly as tax receipts fell, thus creating a powerful countercyclical force, according to standard Keynesian theory. Obama … More
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I wrote last year about a tax protest in Ireland, and I wrote earlier this year about a tax revolt in Greece. But Irish and Greek taxpayers are wimps compared to their Italian compatriots. When Italians decide to have a tax revolt, they don’t kid around. Here are some remarkable details from the UK-based Telegraph. [...]
Revolt of the Italian Tax Slaves is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
With both France and Greece deciding to jump out of the left-wing frying pan into the even-more-left-wing fire, European fiscal policy has become quite a controversial topic. But I find this debate and discussion rather tedious and unrewarding, largely because it pits advocates of Keynesian spending (the so-called “growth” camp) against supporters of higher taxes [...]
Paul Krugman and the European Austerity Myth is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Last weekend, the people of France took a sharp turn to the left, and the rest of Europe may be on the brink of rebuking its recent tack toward fiscal responsibility. With Sunday’s election of French Socialist leader Francois Hollande, France has leapt backward toward the policies that have helped sink the continent in a sovereign debt crisis. Disturbingly, the big government platform Hollande campaigned on is all too familiar to the American people, and if the United States is not careful, it could suffer the same fate as its … More
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Voters in five European countries—France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Serbia—go to the polls on May 6. Election outcomes, particularly in France and Greece, are likely to ratchet up uncertainty about the future of the European Union. In a somber, warning tone, a group of concerned French economists penned a public appeal for an informed decision on the country’s critical Sunday election. Making a strong case that France “should know better than to elect François Hollande,” they remind voters: Socialism has never succeeded in its extreme form, communism. As the past … More
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By Doug Bandow
On May 20, the 2012 NATO Chicago summit will bring together the heads of state from the alliance. The agenda reads like a rundown of major world events in the past two years: the Arab Spring, the Libyan civil war, the global financial crisis, and the war in Afghanistan. It seems no problem is too [...]
NATO: An Alliance Past Its Prime is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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The European euro/debt/growth/banking/identity crisis is entering its third year. With so many summits, toasts, tense conference calls, and self-congratulatory pronouncements of ultimate success by Europe’s brightest lights, why won’t the crisis just go away? Instead, it is ramping up as interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt rise to critical levels, signaling the end of another respite. The answer, of course, is that in three years, Europe has yet to face up to the deepest causes and underlying consequences of a failed experiment. But before heaping scorn on Europe’s timidity, … More
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