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The United States, during the past week, has been consumed by the Supreme Court announcement upholding the Affordable Care Act.
Yet something of significant importance was going on in Europe as well. A European economic summit was held to try to resolve the crushing debt burden on many countries in the European Union.
The resolution, or so it seems from initial reporting, is that Europe is going for the quick fix by agreeing to lend more money to struggling nations and banks within the European Union. A European Union central bank has about $625 billion available for lending.
Prior to last week’s summit, those funds were subject to strong austerity demands, primarily to significantly cut spending before the loans would be made available. Now it seems that relaxation of such demands has been decided as the better course for Europe to take to help countries such as Spain and Italy, perhaps even Greece.
It seems Europe is now attempting to stimulate economic conditions much as we tried to do in 2009 with our $825 billion government stimulus to lower the unemployment rate and ignite more economic growth. We wonder if the European stimulus will be any more successful than our own attempts.
In our view, the underlying economic problem in Europe and the United States is that we spend far more than we can hope to collect in taxes. That creates ever-increasing debt in our collective democracies. The long-range solution is to begin to live within our means as democracies.
We tried a quick fix through a huge government stimulus using borrowed money. Now, the November presidential election may well depend upon the voters’ views of the success of that stimulus and plans for long-term stability in our economy.
Europe seems now to be heading down the same path. We wonder how Europe might deal with the results three years from now.
Opinion
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Discussion
Our View: European bailout
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Your View: Terrorism is terrorism
In the May 13 issue of The Joplin Globe there was an Associated Press article concerning the New Orleans shooting.
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Your View: Should we be outraged?
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Your View: Terrible injustice
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Other Views: Conflicts in SEC
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Phill Brooks, columnist: Missouri Senate did what Founding Fathers had in mind
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Our View: Fixing failure
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Herb B. Kuhn, guest columnist: Delaying Medicaid reform could hurt rural Missouri
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Kevin Wilson, guest columnist: When fear wins out, so do the terrorists
I’m going to make a bold statement that’s sure to draw a lot of comments, but hear me out before reaching for the keyboard to type a rebuttal.
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Marta Mossburg, columnist: Maybe government is tyrannical after all
Less than two weeks ago President Obama stood in front of graduates from The Ohio State University and told them to reject those who warn of government tyranny.
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