David Ignatius
At the risk of taking contrarianism to extremes, let me offer this suggestion: The global economy needs a "tea party" movement in Europe to lobby for fiscal conservatism there.
Many "mainstream" analysts deride the tea party agitators as a right-wing fringe group, and in many respects, that label is deserved. I wouldn't want them running the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve. But these conservative populists do perform the useful function of focusing American political attention on the need for fiscal responsibility. They make a good point, for example, in arguing that we shouldn't add a major new entitlement program for health care until we've figured out how to pay for the entitlement programs we've already got.
Europe, by contrast, lacks this sort of potent conservative movement to constrain government spending. Given Europe's experience last century with virulent right-wing populism, this wariness is understandable. But it means that Europe lacks a strong voice for reducing public-sector spending and debt.
Europe is in many respects an economic never-never land. It has a central bank to run a coordinated monetary policy, and a single currency, but it has several dozen finance ministries pursuing separate fiscal policies, many of which can be summed up as: Spend, spend, spend. In fiscal terms, "Europe" is often a riderless horse.
In Europe, Time for Tea
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