MEANWHILE, EUROPE IS (STILL) BURNING

[Geee]

American Spectator:

In case anyone missed it, the sick man of the global economy is getting much sicker. And it’s not just “peripheral” economies like Greece asunder in a sea of stagnation. Some of the European Union’s biggest players are in serious economic trouble. What’s especially striking, however, is so many European governments’ continued inability, and often unwillingness, to respond appropriately.

 

In this connection, Italy and France — still two of the world’s biggest economies — feature prominently. France hasn’t managed two quarters of consecutive growth since François Hollande became President in May 2012. Despite promising fiscal constraints, France has engaged in a series of typical and probably extra-legal Eurozone fudges to try and disguise the fact that it has failed again and again to cut its fiscal deficits to a promised 3 percent. That’s called “non-austerity.” In fact France’s finance minister Michel Sapin recently conceded this target won’t be met until 2017: two years later than promised. In the meantime, unemployment in France reached 3.4 million people in June this year: 11 percent of the workforce.

 

To France’s southeast, Italy’s unemployment crisis — fueled by a situation of jobs-for-life for some and unstable part-time contracts for others — has entered the realm of high farce. The country’s youth unemployment rate stands at 42.9 percent, while the overall official unemployment rate is 12.6 percent. But no one should be surprised. A recently released World Economic Forum report, for instance, ranked Italy 136 out of 144 economies on labor-market efficiency, just outpacing exemplars of economic success such as Zimbabwe, Iran, Venezuela, and Argentina.