{"id":3693,"date":"2010-05-11T07:54:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T11:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=3693"},"modified":"2010-05-11T07:54:17","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T11:54:17","slug":"a-trillion-dollars-doesnt-buy-as-much-as-youd-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/05\/11\/a-trillion-dollars-doesnt-buy-as-much-as-youd-expect\/","title":{"rendered":"A trillion dollars doesn’t buy as much as you’d expect"},"content":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t, for example, buy exemption from the laws of economics<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said European governments need to consider pooling their national powers and create a joint economic government.<\/p>\n

“We can’t have a monetary union without some form of economic and political union and that is our big task for the coming weeks and the coming months,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said he would draft tougher rules for EU leaders to discuss in October that go beyond current EU limits on debt and deficit.<\/p>\n

The core problem is near-zero economic growth, high unemployment and governments unwilling to take painful steps to get people to work more and longer.<\/p>\n

Simon Tilford, an economist at the Center for European Reform think tank, warned that EU governments so far haven’t come up with anything “game changing.”<\/p>\n

“What Europe needs is a growth pact because without growth, public finances aren’t going to be sustainable,” Tilford said. “The bond markets are going to be forcing them to make those kind of changes.”<\/p>\n

Even EU president Van Rompuy warned that the bloc risks irrelevance and the end of its expensive welfare programs if it can’t speed up economic growth, forecast to expand by just 1 percent this year.<\/p>\n

“With 1 percent growth we can’t finance our social model any more. With 1 percent structural growth we can’t play a role in the world,” he told the World Economic Forum in Brussels. “We need to double the economic growth potential that we now have.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So even with a trillion dollar injection, you still can’t spend more than you make, year after year, and hope to carry on as if there wasn’t a problem. Who knew?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t, for example, buy exemption from the laws of economics: European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said European governments need to consider pooling their national powers and create a joint economic government. “We can’t have a monetary union without some form of economic and political union and that is our big task for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62],"tags":[71,337,545,118],"class_list":["post-3693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","tag-debt","tag-eu","tag-socialsecurity","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Xz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3694,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3693\/revisions\/3694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}