euro-downfall

Downfall: Europe's Failed Political Class:

.. another cause of reform-failure is that most European politicians have little-to-no experience of life in the business world.

Five years ago, a survey of the French Senate revealed that a mere 30 of its 331 members had ever worked in the private sector. Not surprisingly, they turned out to know little about hum-drum matters such as how to meet a payroll, why heavy labor market regulation makes you reluctant to hire people, or how high taxes dampens your entrepreneurial enthusiasms.

Hence, no-one should be surprised that so many EU politicians' response to the continent's current problems is to advocate more centralization of economic policy and more regulation, and all in the name of more European-wide "coordination." Nothing could be more foreign to such mindsets than imagining that they and their rather sheltered outlook on life might be part of the problem.

Time, however, is against them. As Europe's crisis worsens, the ancien régime's efforts to control matters through yet more intergovernmental loans, bailouts, and accounting sleight-of-hands will continue yielding meager results. Unfortunately, like the Bourbons, most of Europe's political class have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. And, as in the past, it will be ordinary Europeans rather than their political masters who pay the price.