Europe Spending Itself to Death -- Stefan Auer, Real Clear World/The AustralianNicolas Sarkozy's problems in France are a foretaste of fundamental challenges to Western democracies: the inability to govern with growing sovereign debt.
The problem is not new, but the radicalisation of protests in France is giving it new urgency. Over time, Western governments have accumulated financial obligations towards their electorates, which they can no longer serve. The problem was described in January this year by a US economist, Gene Steuerle, in USA Today as "fiscal sclerosis", or "fiscal democracy". According to Steuerle, the US was broke because its mandatory spending consumed all its income, resulting in all its discretionary expenditure being financed from unsustainable debt. Every single dollar and cent earned through taxes last year had to be spent on serving past commitments and interest payments. "Fiscal democracy" is not much of a democracy, because democratically elected leaders have no space to manoeuvre, as their hands are bound by 'the programs and ideas of the past - even dead - policymakers".
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Update: IMF: Emerging Europe Must Cut Deficits -- Wall Street Journal
My Comment: Democracy at its finest .... the only good thing I can say about it is that it is vastly superior over all the other alternatives (i.e. Communism, Fascism, Islamic theocracy, dictatorship, etc ....).