Confidence is High

From Walter Russel Mead's Blog:

Wretched as Washington is, Brussels is almost infinitely worse.

Well, that's inspiring, no?

This in a post where he's hoping the markets respond favorably to the EU's bailout of Greece and don't swing against the PIIGS.

It's a fairly vain hope once one recognizes how wretched "Brussels" is, but it may just work. Then, later, when the house of cards comes crashing down at some future date, we can all blame bankers again. Huzzah!

There's also this, for all those who think government is the only way we have to make the world a better place¹:

Ten years ago, the European Union with great fanfare unveiled the “Lisbon Agenda”, a ten-year action plan to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

How'd that go?

It flopped. Europe is less of a factor today than it was ten years ago in the high-tech world.

Well, lets do emulate Europe, as so many want to do: It's working out so well for them, after all.

From his previous post on the subject:

The point of the protesters is that the rich should pay the costs of the economic crisis not the ‘blameless’ ordinary people whose only sin is to have voted for generations of demagogic politicians who promised to give them the moon and pay for it with other people’s money.

Nothing like that could ever happen here, at least...

¹As commenter "Roland" put it in a response to my post of the below at WindsofChange.