But European austerity also reflected willful misdiagnosis of the situation. In Europe as in America, the excesses that led to crisis overwhelmingly involved private rather than public debt, with Greece very much an outlier. But officials in Berlin and Brussels chose to ignore the evidence in favor of a narrative that placed all the blame on budget deficits ..
.. Indeed, Mr. Draghi’s heroic efforts to provide liquidity to nations facing speculative attack almost surely saved the euro from collapse.
An Aging Europe in Decline
As important as good economic policies are, they will not fix Europe’s core problems, which are demographic, not economic. This was the point made in a speech to the European Parliament in November by none other than Pope Francis. As the pontiff put it, “In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother,’ no longer fertile and vibrant.”
.. It is true that good monetary and fiscal policies are important. But the deeper problems in Europe will not be solved by the European Central Bank. No matter what the money supply and public spending levels, a country or continent will be in decline if it rejects the culture of family, turns its back on work, and closes itself to strivers from the outside.
Vox: How MH17 is affecting Europe’s Russia policy
The Netherlands is not a geopolitical powerhouse, but they do have two interests that bear directly on Russia-EU relations. One is that the Netherlands is a major tax haven for Russian oligarchs, and a center for activity verging on money laundering that has the ability to hit influential Russians in the pocketbook. The other is that the Netherlands is home to a large and currently underutilized terminal for importing liquid natural gas. If EU-Russian relations deteriorated sufficiently to halt Russian exports of gas to Europe, the Dutch terminal would be the big winner.