organized chaos

ringing endorsements

First, we have EU President and the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, and his comments about the stimulus:

From the New York Times (which has sounded rather sensible on fiscal issues lately)-

The European Union’s crisis of leadership during the economic downturn was thrown into sharp relief on Wednesday, as the current president of the 27-nation bloc labeled President Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

But perhaps this guy is an outlier, and all the other Europeans are on board with this new massive spending — that takes the bad precedent set by the Bush administration and explodes the deficit by an outrageous amount.  Or maybe not.

More from the Times:

Mr. Topolanek is not alone in his concern that Mr. Obama’s stimulus package, which will push the United States budget deficit this year to 10 percent or more of gross domestic product, will put a huge strain on global financial markets. German officials have also criticized the evolving American program, and many other European nations have declined to create fiscal stimulus programs anywhere near as large as that of the United States, arguing that too much extra money will lead quickly to inflation.

If even some of the European countries – some former Communist countries, some not — believe that this stimulus is a bad idea, and that more state interference in the economy is an undesirable thing, maybe we should rethink President Obama’s grand plan.
Next up we have the colossal smackdown of unfortunate British Prime Minister Gordon Brown by Conservative MEP (member of the European Parliament) Daniel Hannan in all its YouTube glory.  For what it’s worth, this guy looks like he should be running for a higher office in the UK in place of the leader of the Tories, David Cameron.  But that’s just my outsider’s opinion.

Watch and enjoy:

Poor Gordon Brown. He can never seem to catch a break. But will this criticism stop President Obama and PM Brown? Who knows? They haven’t shown signs of caving yet, but there’s always HOPE of a CHANGE in policy.