5 Responses to “ Hollande Sets Off Austerity Backlash Across Europe ”

1. USA / Roy G says:

   18 May, 2012 at 8:26 PM

   Obama hosts a G8 beginning today at Camp David, where the main topic will be the Euro debt crisis. Here is a C-Span vid from his remarks this morning with the newly sworn in Hollande >
2. USA / Jeff says:

   11 May, 2012 at 11:17 PM

   Here is a good update today on YouTube:

   
   
   
3. Canada / Pat (B/P editor) says:

   8 May, 2012 at 9:55 PM

   Martin; great point you make about the Marshall Plan. I’ve heard no one in the media coverage bring it up. But it should be a perfect example of what to do this time in Europe. This is the Wikipedia page for it in case people don’t remember their history class!

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
4. UK / Martin says:

   8 May, 2012 at 3:11 AM

   Only in recent weeks when it became more certain that Hollande would win, did ramifications right across Europe from the French vote, come into view. Nicolas Sarkozy, had been allied with Angela Merkel and Germany’s demands for deep austerity measures in exchange for bailouts that would keep weak EU members afloat.

   To be fair to Chancellor Merkel, she could not rightly ask her nation to be the continent’s banker without reasonable assurances that it’s deficit spending would be brought under control. She has done her best to balance the competing needs and interests, and yet it remains clear that the interests of Europe’s working class drew the short straw.

   Her solution to the European financial crisis in tatters, one wonders how long the German coalition government she helms, will hold.

   David Cameron will likely also be made more vulnerable, depending on spending infusions Europe gets that UK does not. He can hardly back away from his own austerity measures that likewise have not yet delivered economic renewal. There is rising talk of a Robin Hood tax, which Mr. Cameron will oppose at his peril.

   These are plainly the worst times for Europe and UK, since the dire austerity which held sway at the close of World War II. And perhaps a lesson to wit. That continent-wide depression was turned at least partly, by a massive transfusion of public funds from USA known as the Marshall Plan.
5. USA / Roy G says:

   7 May, 2012 at 2:25 PM

   And so far today, Wall Street has not crashed… ;^)

   The French and Greek votes yesterday are a big, big deal. For 3 years since the 2008 global financial meltdown and recession – caused by false laissez-faire policies of Bush Republicans in power through the 2000′s in USA (taxes cut on wealthiest few, zero regulation on banks) – center-right governments in Europe have been trying to offset massive budget deficits / sovereign debt by slashing social safety-nets of their populations.

   Leaving them disenfranchised by the millions, while that protected elite continued to not create jobs from the private sector. Clank! This isn’t working. That is what the electorates in France, Greece – and earlier in the week at the local level in UK – said by their votes. They want a change in direction that factors in the needs of people – not just those of untaxed corporations, banks looking to be repaid and the shielded 1%.

   Not advocating a storming of the Bastille and decapitation of the Queen here, just a proper & sensible balancing of a badly tilted table across the First World. Europeans are finally rejecting austerity solutions that only ask sacrifice of workers, and not of elites. Next it is time for Americans to wake up to that same bill of goods forced upon them by Republican governors and a U.S. House of Representatives, that last year even threatened to default the debt of the United States if it didn’t get all it’s spending cuts. (Which were of course all on social services, no military cuts, no tax increases on the 1% which the GOP is clearly beholdened to).

   Yesterday in Europe, ordinary citizens kicked the defenders of a failed status quo, out of office.