The Hour of Europe (Again)

Germany Falters in Ukraine and Greece, Newsday, February 22, "German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently negotiated a cease-fire in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Within days, Ukrainian troops lost the city of Debaltseve to a new Russian-backed rebel offensive. At the same time, European negotiations on the Greek financial crisis broke down in acrimony. This is the hour of Europe, and it's a disaster."

The Brexit Prize and the IEA

And the Prize for Britain’s Exit to the EU Goes To . . ., Heritage Foundation Foundry, April 11, 2014. "The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London awarded its prestigious “Brexit Prize,” a 100,000 euro award for the best plan for a British exit from the European Union (EU), earlier this week. The winner, Iain Mansfield, is the director of trade and investment at the British embassy in the Philippines. Thankfully, there are evidently still a few civil servants who have not succumbed to the British establishment’s decades-long bias in favor of the EU."

A Case for Public, Not Private, Austerity

As Spain and Greece Burn, Estonia Offers a Lesson, with Ryan Bourne, Heritage Foundation Foundry, September 28, 2012. "Usefully, the Eurozone crisis has provided a natural experiment in how to deal with a severe downturn. The results of that experiment have not favored the unsophisticated Keynesian view that more borrowing is the answer. The highly indebted Southern European states decided to run big fiscal deficits in the aftermath of the crisis, and now face suffocating debt burdens and still-uncompetitive labour markets. On the other side of the spectrum, the Baltic nations (especially Estonia and Latvia) cut government spending and liberalized their economies. While the short term effects were painful, these two countries grew by 8.3 percent and 5.5 percent last year—remarkable when you consider that Greece, Spain, and Italy are in recession."

The EU's Explicitly Elite Approach

The EU’s Pursuit of Stability Über Alles, Contentions, September 12, 2012. "The EU turned from an instrument for restoring a degree of stability to one dedicated to the preservation of the status quo. That approach – and Dalrymple is absolutely right about this – is bound to fail. It means the EU, which still talks a lot about increasing Europe’s power in the world, is more interested in pursuing policies which guarantee Europe’s continued relative decline. It also means that the reality of German dominance of the EU – politics win in the short run, but economics win in the long haul – is becoming ever more obvious to most Europeans, which is one reason why the EU is less popular now than ever."