2011 – The Year for Europe !
First, let me send you sincere greetings. In reviewing your comments and level of attendance of this blog, I feel privileged to have you as readers and commentators. This conversation initiated in October 2008 continues and is enriched.
Having crossed yesterday Indian villages for a whole day and saw how poverty and the abandonment of many of them do not improve, it seems strange to me to return to our Western realities and risks involved in 2011 whose We just celebrated the birth.
It seems increasingly clear that the way Europe will be able to develop policies that allow both the responsibility and solidarity will play an important role during the coming year. This does not mean that Europe is the only cause of some problems that trouble our financial markets and economies. The United States and Japan are not in a good posture. The impact of (re) European action and solutions to the crisis in public finances, will go into effect well beyond the borders of Europe.
Faced with this challenge, finding the New York Times is hurting: Europe continues to operate under its own pace without changing either its procedures, nor its means of action. It is bogged down in decision methods that do not change at a time when we should develop a more radical and faster, manage imbalances. A form of "radical new thinking".
What is also striking is the world's attention toward Europe. After all, the problems facing the Eurozone are not inherently impossible to solve, even if the fundamental solutions will take time. What the world expects is a form of determination and common visions and the challenges of this first crisis of Euro-zone growth. Printing is a lack of consensus on the fundamentals of a common currency area, characterized by the same currency, monetary policy and a common central bank.
Excessive government spending and excessive debt levels are common problems for households. The recipes are not particularly revolutionary: to reduce their lifestyle, increase revenues and gradually reduce its debt.
What kind of action he need to take in 2011?
First honest transparency that goes to the bottom of the problem, not the child and sometimes hypocritical attempts to hide the harsh realities: the lack of income due to the fact that these are taxes on consumption (VAT) , real estate and wages and other labor income, which provide the bulk of tax revenue. Harmonization of taxation of capital income would also be desirable utopian. By cons, corporate tax is totally inadequate for the social cost of business. It is always easier to attack the individual.
On the cost side, the thing is obviously painful: the reality is that budgets are incompressible. At least drastically reduce military spending (that Greece should have done long ago and nobody requires it), the cost of health care and education, representing over three-quarters of the budget, there is not great leeway other than reducing the social cost of public service and managed public service. This is immediate, but it's not fair.
In the present situation, however, further steps must be taken and, in some cases, they must be invented. Basically, the question of charging interest and repayment of public debt should be reviewed. The first is a spread that burden over time: the consolidation over the medium term (the term no longer exists) the obligations of European governments and public sector must be implemented urgently. It is indeed not indifferent to whether a country's debt is repayable in its great majority At maturity and two or three or five to seven years.