Europe's Problems In A Few Words

Europe continues to grapple with its serious debt and banking crisis.  "Europe: Grimmer by the Minute" is the headline CNN/Money is using today.   MSN.news leads with "Unknown Territory for Europe if Summit Fails:France".

Why is it so hard for the Europeans to come to grips with reality?  First, consider that they are dealing with 27 different European Union members.  Second, the Europeans are not known to look for simple solutions.  They believe that more government, more regulation and more bureaucracy is better. Consider the following and ask why we would ever want to follow them down any path relating how to govern ourselves or run our economy?

Pythagorean Theory...................................................  24 words
Lord's Prayer..............................................................66 words
Archimedes' Principle................................................ 67 words
Ten Commandmants.................................................179 words
Gettysburg Address..................................................286 words
U.S. Declaration of Independence.........................1,300 words
U.S. Constitution with all 27 amendments............7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage................26,911 words


This is compliments of Grant Williams from his newsletter, "Things That Make You Go Hmmm..."

A couple other factoids on the Europeans fascination with regulating their economy from Williams.

THIS IS HOW EUROPEAN BUREAUCRACY WORKS, PEOPLE!!!!

Millions of Euros spent on days of ‘talks’ to come up with solutions that fail to address any REAL problems.

Don’t believe me?

Article 47 of the Common Fisheries Policy will ensure that every fish caught by an angler is notified to Brussels so that it can be counted against that countries quota. If you go out for a days fishing and catch a couple of cod or mackerel you will now be required to notify the authorities or face a heavy fine.

There are EU regulations on the greenness of the person on the pedestrian crossing lights.

There are 3 separate EU directives on the loudness of lawnmowers.

Regulation (EC) 2257/94 - a great read, by the way - stated that bananas must be ‘free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers’. It also contained stipulations about ‘the grade, i.e. the measurement, in millimetres, of the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis’ ...

And then there are cucumbers:

Under regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 cucumbers are only allowed a bend of 10mm for every 10cm of length.

Do you think any of those were drawn up in 10 minutes on a single piece of paper?

How does Williams see the European debt crisis playing out?

Europe is broken and the people charged with trying to fix it are clearly not up to the job. There are way too many vested interests, too many national peccadillos and way too many good, old-fashioned egos in play for it to come down to anything but a last-ditch solution when they are forced into it - and that solution WILL be the printing of money in some shape or form which will help to magically inflate the debt away. The other alternatives are either just too painful (default/ forgiveness) or plain unworkable (growth).