Europe's Other Crisis - WSJ.com

Europe's Other Crisis - WSJ.com

Having lived in the US and now in Europe, the variations in the countries here seem remarkably similar to the differences that used to be more profound (and are now once again getting to be so) between the different American states.

The southern US states many years ago used to be mostly poor and backward. They turned that around - certainly from the 1980's onwards. Meanwhile, economic powerhouses like Michigan, New York and California have overspent and over-socialized and are tax pariahs.

Clearly the unions and governments in Greece and Portugal see higher taxes as a solution to no growth that is truly no-solution. Rather than make themselves attractive places in which to locate a business, they'd rather squeeze the last bit of economic juice they can out of what hasn't left and give it to the left.

Ah well, the implosion usually comes at some point. Hopefully, sanity will prevail and the European banks get forced to take the hit for their fiscal and economic investment blinders - worn, as they were, to ignore the risks of lending to sovereigns when business wasn't interested in borrowing.