Saving Europe: Anatomy of a Dream

The author of this book is both a professional journalist and a professor of political economy. The combination gives a clear narrative writing style to a discussion of the complexities of the European economic crisis. The result will appeal to many readers interested in economics and politics. This new edition updates the book to current events by adding new chapters. The author’s perspective is that the euro crisis has caused more economic damage to Europe than both world wars, the solutions tried to date have been ineffective, and the responses of various national governments and presses have relied heavily on stereotypes and prejudice. Southern Europe paints northern Europe as selfish and heartless, and the north paints the south as incompetent and lazy. According to the author, the evidence shows the economic crisis was caused by national policies designed to encourage economic globalization without paying a political cost. Since individual nations couldn’t adjust the value of the Euro and wouldn’t adjust relative prices, most simply pushed the costs of globalization onto others: future generations (increasing national debt), nonvoters in their own countries (domestic austerity policies targeting the poor, youth, and immigrants), paper (false accounting), or foreign taxpayers (profit schemes using foreign currency, forcing other nations to adopt austerity measures). Each country failed at the point where they had hidden the costs. The book argues that the economic crisis is now a crisis of democracy. European national governments can no longer exercise economic sovereignity individually, so they must do so together, by having a central banking system and a sense of political unity. The argument may be familiar to students of early US history: if we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately. The executioner of Europe in this case is economic globalization with nationalist politics and finance, the parts of one creature attacking each another without awareness that the injury is to all. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)