PJ: When I read statements from US politicians and political pundits I get the impression that they believe that their "Founding Fathers" all believed in the same things and that the product of all those 'like' beliefs are written in the Constitution. But real history tells a very different story about debate, disagreement and compromise where there were winners and losers in those debates and that the end result is the framework that founded US-styled democracy.
The Economist
Alexander Hamilton and the EU
The ten-dollar founding father does Brussels
Feb 14th 2012, 17:56 by M.S.
I'M GLAD Charlemagne summarised the appeal of the idea of a "Hamiltonian moment" to many European politicians these days, because it helped me process something that happened a couple of weeks ago that otherwise would have seemed extremely weird. Towards the end of a meeting with the Dutch parliament's finance committee, Olli Rehn, the soft-spoken Finnish guy who is currently the EU's Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, suddenly launched into an extended rant about Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. This seemed particularly odd because since the ratification last fall of the "six-Pack" of reforms strengthening European fiscal and policy integration, Mr Rehn, as unassuming as he may seem, now more or less wields the power to reject the budget of any state in Europe. So he's a very powerful guy.
In fact, today Mr Rehn appeared before the European Parliament in Strasbourg to announce, for the first time, which EU countries aren't making the grade. The occasion was the presentation of the European Commission's first-ever "Alert Mechanism Report on Macro-economic Imbalances", ie economies that are listing so heavily for one reason or another (international indebtedness, trade deficits, etc) that they need to start bailing and plugging holes, lest they soon need injections of ballast. Twelve countries ended up on the list: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and Britain. There had been widespread fear in Germany and the Netherlands that they might be placed on a "structural imbalance" list for running high trade surpluses, rather than deficits. But it appears this isn't going to happen just yet.
Anyway, what does a guy like Mr Rehn get out of the debate in 1791 between Hamilton and Jefferson over whether or not the nascent federal government should assume the Revolutionary War-era debts of the several American states? Well, I'm not really sure I understand it just yet. The general thrust seems to be that he sides with Hamilton because his advocacy of federal centralisation of the national finances laid the groundwork for economic dynamism in America, much as a Brussels-based commissioner like Mr Rehn would hope that centralisation of Europe's finances would lead to economic dynamism in the EU. The funny thing, though, is that the actual mission he's been charged with doesn't seem to be doing what Hamilton did. To a great extent, after all, the macroeconomic "imbalances" of individual European states are part of the process of European integration. Insisting that every European state's economy rest on its own foundations seems to some extent like a mission to fight EU integration, not facilitate it. In America, states can "balance their budgets" only because the great majority of spending (on national defence, social insurance, and infrastructure) has been assumed by the federal government.
Then again, maybe that's exactly what Mr Rehn would like to see happen. What I'd like to see happen is for European politicians to talk a whole lot more about Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and, heck, maybe Betsy Ross and Sacagawea for good measure. It's fun to hear "James Madison" pronounced with a Finnish accent.
No comments:
Post a Comment