Re: Czech President Says Europeans "Living In a Dream World" Of Long Vacations & Welfare

"Arnold Wolfcastle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031124-110833-1781r.htm
>
> Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Europeans are living in a "dream
> world" of welfare and long vacations and have yet to realize "they are
> not moving toward some sort of nirvana."
>     The Czech Republic is a candidate for European Union membership,
> but Mr. Klaus, who was elected president in February, made clear in an
> interview his distaste for the organization.
>     However, he conceded during a visit to Washington last week that
> "the political unification of Europe" is now in "an accelerated
> process ... in all aspects and in all respects."
>     Mr. Klaus said the movement toward a single political entity of 25
> European nations "will not change until people start thinking and
> realizing they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana."
>     The Czech president remains convinced that "you cannot have
> democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state."
>
> Muslims crawling all over Europe are about to give the Euros a rude
> awakening and the endless German urlab (vaction) is about to end.

Maybe he read the article in The Economist
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2227506

"In the long run we are all broke

Nov 20th 2003
>From The Economist print edition


How to stop governments going bust

INVESTORS have good reason to worry about states defaulting on their loans:
Argentina and Russia provide chastening recent reminders. But both were
dysfunctional economies with troubled political pasts. Surely, there is no
need to worry about the indebtedness of the governments of stable, advanced
countries?

Maybe not, but take a look all the same at the table below. Most countries'
explicit net debt-issued as bonds and traded every day in financial
markets-is at manageable levels, relative to GDP. However, embodied in
current tax and expenditure policies are a lot of obligations for which
governments have not yet had to make explicit provision. This implicit
liability arises mainly from future increases in spending on pensions and
health care. Include it, and total debt vaults to levels last seen (for
explicit debt) in wartime. Governments often fall into bad habits when their
debts are so high, usually by resorting to the printing press and using
inflation to cut the real value of their liabilities.

Credit-rating agencies are alerting their clients to the danger. Standard &
Poor's gave warning last year that many European governments will be
relegated to the second division of borrowers if they do not tackle spending
commitments that are set to soar as populations age. So far, however,
investors do not appear to be charging higher risk premiums on explicit
debt-the sanction that would most concentrate the minds of finance
ministers.

Yet the long-term budgetary risks are real and looming ever closer, says
Peter Heller, deputy director of fiscal affairs at the International
Monetary Fund, in a thought-provoking new book*. These risks arise not only
from the effects of an ageing population on pension and health-care bills,
but also potentially from medical technology, global warming, security and
globalisation. Irrespective of ageing, advances in medical technology are
likely to push up public spending on health care: the more medical science
and public health services can provide, the more people will want. Climate
change may increase the incidence of floods, storms and droughts-"extreme
weather events"-after which governments often step in as insurers of last
resort. Some governments are already under pressure to spend more on
defence: the "peace dividend" made possible by the end of the cold war is
exhausted. And globalisation may limit governments' ability to exploit their
national tax bases as both capital and labour become increasingly footloose.

There may be some pleasant surprises to set against this catalogue of doom.
  .............[more in original article]".   Darren.