I’ve an “article”:http://democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6773 on the horrible mess that is EU economic politics in the new _Democracy._ The bit I’d most like people to take away:

bq. austerity measures will not lead to economic stability. They will never be applied to strong member states, and will fail to address the problems of weaker ones, which are more likely to face problems of overheating in the private sector than over-reliance on public borrowing. They are also extremely crude, and would provide little flexibility for states faced with asymmetric shocks. Most importantly, the emphasis of austerity hawks on fiscal rectitude and nothing but is not politically sustainable. They would reproduce the problems of the early twentieth-century “gold standard” system, in which economies responded to crises with chopped wages and swingeing increases in unemployment. As Barry Eichengreen has emphasized, democracies cannot credibly maintain such a system over the long run. European citizens are suspicious of the EU because they do not understand it. If they come to see it as a set of shackles chaining them in economic squalor and misery, their suspicion will be transformed into positive detestation. EMU cannot survive widespread public loathing. Yet such loathing would be the ineluctable result of enforced austerity programs.

But also (following on from yesterday’s review), you should really read “Jacob Hacker’s piece”:http://democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6772 in the same issue on the politics of healthcare reform going forward.

bq. Reformers may have won the war in 2010, but they lost the battle for public opinion: Americans were convinced reform was needed, but not that the federal government should have the authority to make sure it was done right. Reformers cannot afford to lose the second battle for public opinion. Winning it will require organization and narrative. It will also require that progressives coalesce around a broad vision, as they did in the years after the passage of the Social Security Act. That vision should have two sides: the case against insurers and the case for government. … They can begin by resisting insurers’ self-serving entreaties to be freed from the requirement that they spend at least 80 percent of their bloated premiums on the actual delivery of care. … But making a case against insurers is not enough to justify the stronger federal role that is essential. Reformers … should not be afraid … to point out where the law needs to be strengthened, especially when that also means pointing out where private insurers continue to fall short. And nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the public option.