Originally posted by: irwincur
btw when we hit a recession the EU will follow suit just like they did the last time we had a recession in 01-02.
Hell, the EU region has not even recovered from the recession in the early 1990's. Another one over here may really set them back. There has only been a single year of greater than 3% growth in the EU region GDP over the past 15 years. Average growth is much lower than that.
Europe is functionally the largest stagnant economy in the world. Even more sad however, is that no one has a solution the the problem that will make anyone happy. The real world solution is to dissolve the welfare state - it is literally sucking Europe dry. I doubt any of the now welfare and government dependant Europeans will be overly excited with the prospects of this.
But, if they want to save Europe, prevent the bankruptcy of France and Germany, and quite likely prevent yet another major conflict, they will have to accept this.