April 30, 2013
A front page Washington Post article (print edition) had the headline “in impatient Europe, some see more debt as answer.” It would be interesting to know on what basis the Post has determined that Europeans are impatient. Would it, for example, consider Americans impatient because they voted Jimmy Carter out of office when the economy was doing poorly in 1980 or George H.W. Bush in 1992? It is common for people to be upset by economic policies that are causing recessions and high unemployment, this might better be called “common sense” than “impatience.”
The article also editorializes in the second paragraph, describing Europe as the “debt-ridden continent.” It would be at least as appropriate to describe it as the unemployment-ridden continent” given the double-digit unemployment in many countries. It also questionable whether “debt-ridden” is an accurate description since in many countries the interest burden is not especially high. Arguably this is the best measure of the burden of the debt.
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