News reports says that Europeans love Obama. That’s great and all, but I find it weird that since Europe is pushing forward with austerity, “superficially” wouldn’t a cut government spending Republican be more in line with their current trajectory?
So why is it that most European nations from the UK to Germany pushes for austerity yet loves President Obama?
Or is it simply that Obama’s direction is going to meet them in the middle, since Europe’s social program was kind of out of control before?
Some Europeans countries governments support austerity , some don’t. Some people support austerity , some don’t. Some countries have a choice , some don’t.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Some Europeans countries governments support austerity , some don’t. Some people support austerity , some don’t. Some countries have a choice , some don’t.
Some Europeans support Obama , some don’t.[/quote]
Point taken. Though in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, most European nations chose parties that supports austerity. Austerity is the direction that the EU believes to be the solution to the crash, and forces other EU nations in much larger trouble to comply. So in a sense, a larger group of Europeans chose to support austerity.
I don’t believe in Republicans “cutting government spending” either. Because for in the past when they are in office, that is not what they do. In the past all these talks about cutting federal spending might have been just a way of getting votes. Besides, cutting federal founding is another way of saying support state rights, which is another way of something else in the past (hopefully that’s all in the past).
But now they have said it so much, people have taken it literally. When Republicans are elected, people are going to examine whether or not they really cut government spending. So they started to cut budgets without considering or reviewing a program’s value, which sounds even worse.
Not sure who really loves austerity in Europe. The Bank of England is against it, the IMF, the current French government won opposing it, and the Greek people sure hate it.
I think the German government loves it for entirely self-serving reasons and the British government is too cowardly to admit they have imposed unnecessary hardship on their people for 4 years and should change course.
The situation in Europe is really complex. To give an example. In Ireland all the major local banks went bust and were nationalised. One of the prime reasons they were nationalised was due to pressure from the ECB and Germany in particular, they feared a domino financial crisis where their banks and the Euro was endangered. The nationalisation of Irish banks included payments to senior bondholders, who were not even secured. Again this is following government policy. This created a massive national debt practically overnight.
At the same time the Irish government is running a circa 10 billion euro/year deficit, even though they have gone through multiple rounds of austerity-lite. A large dose of austerity at one time would kill the patient, especially with the load of the banks debts added…in many respects Ireland has not really gone through austerity, nor have the banks creditors faced austerity as they were bailed out through the ECB support of Irish bonds…which became national debt. See…it is complex. Yet austerity, as in cutting government spending, is the only real choice for a small country like Ireland that doesn’t even have it’s own currency. The country’s population is split on austerity, with many private taxpayers agreeing with harsher cost cutting policies due to the increasing tax burden, and many public sector workers and social welfare recipients and some local business people reluctant to see their income reduced.
Spain and Portugal and Greece and UK and others all have differing stories. Germany and Austria and the Scandinavians have had a very different experience.
Greece is pursuing austerity because it has been left with no choice, being a small bankrupt nation at the behest of it’s lenders, the austerity program is a complete failure and will not succeed. However austerity in Ireland, the UK or Italy makes sense and may indeed succeed overtime if handled carefully. That’s because these countries have fairly decent economies and industrial structures at heart, whereas Greece needs to rebuild from the ground up. It does not belong and never did belong in the Eurozone.
The US is in a different position due to it’s massive size and it’s ability to manipulate it’s currency. It makes more sense for the US to try to inflate away some it’s debt as it is more feasible for it to do so and probably is NECESSARY for it do so if you look at the numbers. It also helps to boost exports and reduce imports. Most countries would not enjoy that privilege. It’s also clear that the US does NOT spend a lot on social welfare programs compared to European countries, so austerity in the US must mean something different than in Europe. Also it looks very strange from the outside to say things like ‘we are going to cut government spending but expand the military’. It simply doesn’t make sense.
Why do Europeans go on the street to protest? Because many of them don’t agree with the austerity measures their governments enforce. Our economy isn’t getting better, which is what economists have been predicting for years. If governments cut, who is going to spend? They want to reduce wages: and then, who’s going to buy stuff? Maybe we can just work for food and shelter and export to another planet where people are wealthy.
I think that we - the Western world - have long ago forgotten how to create growth. We enjoyed for a few decade the illusion that we could generate wealth by liberalizing the banking and finance sector, and now we see the results. People are hopeless because they feel politicians and experts don’t know how to get us out of this mess. I personally believe that we should learn something from Asia and from Scandinavian countries. From Asia we should learn that the state can and should be involved in the economy. It should set goals and support private businesses (all of East Asia’s most successful economies were or still are “mixed economies”, no pure free market economies). It should guarantee a healthy banking sector that support business. But it should also solve the problem of wages. Low wages are not the solution. Low wages mean less consumption, so what are businesses working for if no one buys? At least Obama won’t return to the absurd “trickle down” lie of the Bush administration who left this mess. From Scandinavian countries we should learn how to manage a good welfare state and equality.
It is also a question of foreign policy. Obama is viewed by most Europeans as a reliable leader who won’t start wars against other countries.
One does find it so amusing when European nations flout UN resolutions to engage in an illegal war against Libya and then look askance about our gun-slinging cowboy culture… for, er, engaging in illegal wars against Iraq which had the support of 2/3rds of the EU and NATO governments and only 17 binding UN resolutions. Pathetic. Remember, too, the fight against Serbia over Kosovo had no UN resolutions at all. Another illegal European war. And you had then secretary-general Kofi Annan applauding the action as being “necessary” to carrying out UN diktats. But do continue to rewrite your own history and to engage in delusional ramblings of Europe as an international law respecting entity except of course when its lengthy imperialist and colonialist history was unfolding over 500 years. But now you see the light… except when you don’t and so you worry about the US and its propensity to start wars… ah my dear boy… so young… so naive… so amusing to have the American have to explain your history and the international environment to you… We could discuss French intervention in Africa but that would perhaps be pushing the point too much, right? and then there was the unilateral German action to recognize Croatia and Slovenia an action which many call the spark that lit the Yugoslav war… but nevermind… I think that my point has been made
fred, stop talking to yourself. The dude only said this is what Europeans tend to think. It’s a statement of fact. Whether they are right to think that is another matter and I am sure I speak for all in saying we already know your (boilerplate) take on that.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]At the same time the Irish government is running a circa 10 billion euro/year deficit, even though they have gone through multiple rounds of austerity-lite.
Spain and Portugal and Greece and UK and others all have differing stories. Germany and Austria and the Scandinavians have had a very different experience.
Greece is pursuing austerity because it has been left with no choice, being a small bankrupt nation at the behest of it’s lenders, the austerity program is a complete failure and will not succeed. It does not belong and never did belong in the Eurozone.[/quote]
I’m really curious where such a small place like Ireland which I assume is a shitty quasi-third world country is spending all that money. I mean, what economy do they have besides a few clean rooms/ labs where women get cancer, some tax havens for the double dutch/irish deal for folks like Apple, and then some sheep, and OK, they make Guinness.
Greece really didn’t belong. those guys are lazy all-around with so much black money floating around. Even my Greek friends left Greece for Canada because they accused the other Greeks of corruption (fakalaki (sp?)), lazy, etc.
Italy technically didnt make it into the EU based on their crappy books, but were given a pass by Germany-France for political reasons… and there it started, those guys gave passes to lots of countries like Greece (like they didn’t know the books were cooked), so they have no one to blame but themselves.
JB, I assume you are not being serious here and just trying to wind me up? Parts of the Irish economy are extremely strong and productive, other parts not. Average incomes are still very high for the majority in productive work. And even if all is not rosy in the emerald isle we didn’t destroy our own environment to get economic growth.
So there are economists who feel like austerity is the wrong direction after the crash.
I understand the working blue collar being against more taxes and spending, while those depending on social programs being against cuts to their benefits.
But in the end, which measure is going to be beneficial in the long run and starts to generate growth?
There’s a book by Malaysian historian Syed Hussein Alatas: The Myth of the Lazy Native.
Accusing people of being lazy and therefore unable to develop a strong economy was one of the “tricks” of Western colonizers. They assumed that people were lazy or primitive or backward due to their culture, and that there was no way they could develop other than the “guidance” of Western powers, which often meant exploitation.
Laziness or culture alone, though, cannot explain development. In the 1960’s, for example, hard-working Koreans, Singaporeans and Chinese were far behind Western Europe in terms of economic development. In China, thanks to a change in economic policy a people who had lived in poverty for centuries suddenly began industrializing at an amazing pace. In the 1980’s, Westerners would have laughed if someone had told them that China would have risen to 2nd largest economy by 2012. Exactly as they would laugh if someone told them that Africans or Greeks might fix their economies. But who knows?
I believe that among the factors that explain economic growth economic policy plays a major role. We have been adopting wrong economic policies ever since the 1970’s. The proof of that is East Germany. How do you explain that the East Germans survive through subsidies from West Germany? Since free-marketeers argued that a shock therapy through privatization of state-run companies would help East Germany, their economy collapsed and has never fully recovered. Within the same period, countries such as Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore have been growing constantly. I would like experts in the West to finally start studying the pragmatic, mixed economic system of those countries as well as that of the most successful West European economies: Sweden, Denkmark, Finland,Norway and Swiss, to see if there’s something we can learn. Instead, we’re bombarded night and day with neo-liberal crap that hasn’t worked anywhere except in the minds of those who earn money by propagating it.
As to Germans: they work less hours than people in many other countries, including Italy and Greece: bbc.co.uk/news/business-18868704. However, their productivity is higher, due to factors such as their education system and professional trainings.
Economic growth is complex, and it does depend on simple mathematical factors. Never forget their importance!
-It’s hard to grow at a high rate from a high base, conversely it’s much easier from a low base
-A big economy is harder to steer quickly than a smaller one
-Growth cannot be forever, growth and recession are part of a natural cycle, regression to the mean almost always occurs over time
Economic policy has a huge part to play in relative success of economies, and that’s what so interesting in the castigation of ‘government interference’ by Republicans in particular. Big government brought many of those great breakthroughs and industrial hubs that you see in the US today, such as the space industry, electronics industry, military industrial hardware etc. Big government investment helped create MIT and Caltech and post-graduate research and attracted the best and brightest from around the world to study and work in the US.
I too agree it is a prudent mix of economic policy of public policy with private investment that tends to achieve the best results. You don’t want to overdo it like the Chinese and Vietnamese are doing now with their SOEs (state owned enterprises), nor do you want to underdo it and drop massively valuable industrial niches like the UK did with auto manufacturing.
It is almost impossible for neo liberal Chicago school type business people to admit this, because it means that they wrong. And if they were wrong, what is the worth of their vaunted MBAs and their professorships and directorships. Why are they in the jobs that they get paid so highly for? Why did the MBA students pay 100,000 USD to learn something that is useless? What happens to trickle down theory?
The whole edifice comes crumbling down like Communism in the Soviet Union in the '80s.
“But do continue to rewrite your own history and to engage in delusional ramblings of Europe as an international law respecting entity except of course when its lengthy imperialist and colonialist history was unfolding over 500 years. But now you see the light… except when you don’t and so you worry about the US and its propensity to start wars… ah my dear boy… so young… so naive… so amusing to have the American have to explain your history and the international environment to you… We could discuss French intervention in Africa but that would perhaps be pushing the point too much, right?”
I am not so sure what you’re driving at.
I just wanted to explain why in my opinion the majority of Europeans prefer Obama, no matter if they’re right or wrong.
I am not “we”. Every European have their own brain to think and understand European history and I am only representing myself and my views.
Your patronizing attitude is a nice rhetorical strategy. The only thing that matters is the content of your post. Words like “naive” are only used to discredit other people’s opinions. Please try to be objective.
I absolutely agree as to the war in Libya. I was against it. However, it was backed by the UN and it seemed to have at least some sort of moral justification, so that I would say that people in Europe were divided about that issue. I remember having a conversation with a Mainland Chinese friend of mine in Europe at that time. He said the war was right and I said it was wrong.
The imperialist and colonialist history of Europe is known to everyone and I am definitely not trying to “rewrite” that bloody era of European expansionism. However, if we start talking about the past we will never end. European colonialism was over in 1945, when I and most of today’s Europeans were not even born yet. I will definitely not accuse contemporary Americans of crimes committed by their ancestors against native Americans or black slaves.
Just my opinion, but the English people I know like Obama simply because he appears to be a intelligent and decent person. They like him, not necessarily his party or their policies. The English (and most of Europe) have a long and weary history of hauling kings off the throne and lopping their heads off, usually after said king has lopped off one too many heads himself. As long as the person with his fingers on the controls isn’t a retard (Bush), a warmonger (Hitler), or a psychopath (Romney), Europeans are pretty happy.
The POTUS doesn’t have as much power to “do things” as people think he does (think health reforms), unless he can pack supporting roles with cronies (think Iraq war). It’s good enough to have someone in that position who’s relatively powerless, but at least can’t/won’t do any damage.
As long as Obama doesn’t turn isolationist I don’t think Europeans really care too much about his economic policy. His support for things like same-sex marriage and abortion rights puts him on the right side of The Enlightenment, something not always a given with the US presidency.
Care to explain how Bush is a retard and Romney a psychopath? I would say Europeans are in general pretty happy but ignorance is bliss. A more accurate description might be thus: a bunch of parochial has-beens discussing china and crystal patterns, while the world moves on and on and on… all with the best taste and finest decorum of course… except for the hooligan masses rioting or striking or those who spend their time either on vacation, as perpetual students, or on medical leave… yes… the brilliance of Europe and on the world stage we have seen so many fine examples such as… um… er… well, yes, um Blair but no cause he supported that illegal war in Iraq but then not Cameron either for condoning the illegal war against Libya but then Merkel except for her disciplinary Nazi tendencies but no Sarkozy, no too much like a narcissistic superstar but then surely Berlusconi, but no… um… Dominique Strauss-Kahn, yikes best not to go there how about paranoid Gordon Brown, whoops but then Mitterand and Chirac and Villepin… oh dear corruption and mismanagement and selling out the state to national enemies and maybe um Schroder and Fischer… dear those Russian mafia oil interests and then well Putin and Medvedev… yikes that Russian Today TV station… whoa! oh those two Polish twins… best not to talk about that either but then surely there are some in Scandinavia who are acceptably boring and clean but … hard to think of what they have done exactly so Greece? Hungary? Romania? Bulgaria? Oh there too all those nasty corrupt gangster-drive regimes… um… yes… quite right! so much better not to have a retard or psychopathic Republican American president… Thank God Europe doesn’t have to face that! :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
Care to explain how Bush is a retard and Romney a psychopath? I would say Europeans are in general pretty happy but ignorance is bliss. A more accurate description might be thus: a bunch of parochial has-beens discussing china and crystal patterns, while the world moves on and on and on… all with the best taste and finest decorum of course… except for the hooligan masses rioting or striking or those who spend their time either on vacation, as perpetual students, or on medical leave… yes… the brilliance of Europe and on the world stage we have seen so many fine examples such as… um… er… well, yes, um Blair but no cause he supported that illegal war in Iraq but then not Cameron either for condoning the illegal war against Libya but then Merkel except for her disciplinary Nazi tendencies but no Sarkozy, no too much like a narcissistic superstar but then surely Berlusconi, but no… um… Dominique Strauss-Kahn, yikes best not to go there how about paranoid Gordon Brown, whoops but then Mitterand and Chirac and Villepin… oh dear corruption and mismanagement and selling out the state to national enemies and maybe um Schroder and Fischer… dear those Russian mafia oil interests and then well Putin and Medvedev… yikes that Russian Today TV station… whoa! oh those two Polish twins… best not to talk about that either but then surely there are some in Scandinavia who are acceptably boring and clean but … hard to think of what they have done exactly so Greece? Hungary? Romania? Bulgaria? Oh there too all those nasty corrupt gangster-drive regimes… um… yes… quite right! so much better not to have a retard or psychopathic Republican American president… Thank God Europe doesn’t have to face that! :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:[/quote]
Exactly! At least they don’t have to face having a republican president whose base is Bible thumping social conservatives, anti-abortion even for rapes, anti-gay, and anti-science.
Oh yeah, Merkel has Nazi tendencies? Yeah right. Nice one there on the German head of state.
Putin and Medvedev? Russia isn’t in the EU, BTW. I would have thought that one of the “adults at the table” would have noticed that.
And the last 500 years? Switch tracks from the GW debate please. The only appropriate way to discuss modern European politics is in a post-WWII context.