Monday, March 30, 2009
Europe to U.S.: stop spending
The segment has clips of his greatest hits, including my favorite:
"Prime Minister, you cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit."Sometimes English is best spoken by the English.
Now, this may not go down in history as one of the great quotes in British History, such as:
"I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea."which was spoken by John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, addressing the House of Lords as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1801 (some 107 years before the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk), but there is a certain pithiness in common that is distinctly English.
The segment also includes a discussion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement made in reference to urgings from the White House to stimulate the European economy, "I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money." Other EU members have expressed similar reservations about increased spending in Europe and the high level of planned spending in the U.S. We live in strange times indeed if Europe has moved well to the right of the U.S. in terms of fiscal policy.
It was clear during he campaign last summer that a clear majority of Europeans, and most of the elected and appointed officials in Europe, very much wanted Senator Obama to win the election (and many U.S. voters hoped for better relations with Europe as a result). Is Europe now experiencing a case of be careful what you wish for?
2 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Mar 31, 01:00:00 AM:
Gregor Peter Schmitz, Germany's Spiegel Online, 30 Mar 09:
"Europe was ecstatic when Barack Obama got elected, but the enthusiasm has dampened since he took office in January."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,616279,00.html
By Dan Kauffman, at
Tue Mar 31, 01:31:00 AM:
I read once that Black Americans encounter a bit of Culture shock when they visit Africa and discover they are treated in certain ways not because they are Black, but because they are American.
I wonder if it comes as a shock to Obama to discoer that being an Ameircan President outweighs being a Black President?
