Gabor Steingart

Tuesday, February 2nd 2010
Obama is not visiting the EU summit in Madrid this spring. The Europeans are more than disappointed. “It’s your fault”, said the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Obama’s absence will highlight a major problem of the European Union. “Who is in charge?” the Journal asked. The new full-time president Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the EU commission Jose Manuel Baroso or the rotating presidency, a position which is held every six months by a new country? I think the real reason for the withdrawal from the summit is that the American president is in charge of too much already. He has to fight back a deep recession, he has to introduce a new health care bill, he has to fight several wars and last but not least he has to push back the Republican surge. If politicians would talk frankly, the White House would declare: Sorry dear Europeans, but our one and only president has too much on his plate. Bottom line: Maybe the Europe-style three-headed leadership is not that bad?

Monday, February 1st 2010
It seems to me that America has not learned that much from the last financial crisis. We are in this mess because there was too much trust, too much debt, too much spending. And how did the White House respond to the burst bubble? With even more trust, more debt, more spending. The new budget which Barack Obama introduced today is a 3.8 Trillion Dollar spending plan. For this XXL-government budget he needs to borrow 1.3 Trillion Dollar. That means 33 Cents of every single Dollar the government spends will be borrowed. Uncle Sam is still addicted to debt. “How long can the world´s biggest borrower remain the world biggest power?” Obama’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers asked one year ago. This year he has zipped his lips. But he should stand up to his Yes-We-Can-President and say the following: Mr. President, no, we can´t.