George Will goes after the Europe-US-IMF bailout of Greece here.
When Chancellor Angela Merkel decided that Germany would pay part of
Greece’s bills, voters punished her party in elections in Germany’s
most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. How appropriate….Greece represents a perverse aspiration — a society with (in the words
of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan) “more takers than makers,” more
people taking benefits from government than there are people making
goods and services that produce the social surplus that funds
government. By socializing the consequences of Greece’s misgovernment,
Europe has become the world’s leading producer of a toxic product —
moral hazard. The dishonesty and indiscipline of a nation with 2.6
percent of the eurozone’s economic product have moved nations with the
other 97.4 percent — and the United States and the International
Monetary Fund — to say, essentially: The consequences of such vices
cannot be quarantined, so we are all hostages to one another and hence
no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its
recklessness….Britain’s debt, Europe’s worst, is the result of increasing
government spending from 37 percent of GDP to 53 percent in a decade.
The London Spectator says no other European nation “has expanded its
government as quickly — over this or any other decade in postwar
history.”The U in the EU — the unifying thread — is indiscipline. Increasingly, it also is the unifying characteristic of the USA.
