Edward Hadas

The euro zone debt crisis shows that something is seriously wrong with Europe. But what is it?

Most financial professionals think the problem is economic. They have long considered continental Europe something of a mess – slow GDP growth, inept governments, smothering regulation and a culture that doesn’t “get” markets. European residents seem equally gloomy, especially about the economy. In the most recent Eurobarometer survey, 71 percent of respondents did not expect the crisis to be over two years hence.

The economic worries of both financiers and citizens are misplaced. Even if the slow patch does last a few more years, the European economy will continue to do what a modern economy is supposed to do. European consumers are basically as well off as Americans after adjusting for longer European holidays and different lifestyle choices. There is probably greater justice in the distribution of incomes and consumer goods in Europe than in the United States. The euro zone’s low trade deficits – less in total since 1990 than the United States ran in the last six months – suggest that Europe is globally competitive. Europe probably has a worse unemployment problem than the United States, but national governments are belatedly trying to remedy that.

Where Europe is really weak is not in economics but politics. A lack of political cohesion turned relatively minor financial problems – one small reprobate government (Greece) and two small careless ones (Portugal and Ireland) – into a disproportionately large struggle to avoid a devastating financial meltdown. Despite the risk, politicians and bureaucrats spent years bickering. They may have finally found the necessary toughness and solidarity, but there are enough unanswered questions to suggest that further crises are a lively possibility.

The indecision and discord needs to be kept in proportion. Politically, Europe is far more stable than it was a century ago, when a much smaller trigger set off the First World War. It is more unified – fiscally and financially – than it was in that war’s aftermath, when the anti-solidarity policy of reparations and the anti-flexibility of the gold standard wreaked havoc.

Still, Europe could do better. I suggest a three-pronged effort to make the region stronger.

The first is supposedly underway: balanced national budgets in normal economic times. An earlier effort to mandate this, the Stability and Growth Pact, failed, but the intervening crisis may have concentrated minds and strengthened resolve. If it hasn’t, then the euro project is liable to topple over as soon as economic challenges arrive.

Second, national politicians and the European Central Bank should agree – and state it publicly in no uncertain words – that the fiscal compact implies that the cost of future national fiscal failures will be shared between debtor and creditor nations. There will always be disputes about how to apportion the losses, but those can be resolved if everyone accepts the principle of shared responsibility. A bad loan is a sign that both sides messed up. A multi-country currency union cannot survive without solidarity among its members.

Third, Europe needs to make the economy the servant of something greater, something with more political resonance than a prosperity pact. A merely materialist agreement will always be vulnerable to economic downturns.

Half a century ago, when the predecessor to the European Union was founded, there was a good reason to emphasise economic unity: other sorts of multi-national convergence were much more challenging. Europe is not like the United States, which can boast of a single “American way of life” both culturally and politically. (U.S. states’ rights were effectively crushed 150 years ago in the Civil War.) Nor is Europe like China, which established a national language and culture three millennia ago.

On the contrary, European nations have basically been moving apart for centuries, developing their own national languages and cultures. The nations often behaved like teenage gang members, convinced of their own superiority and always up for a mutually destructive fight.

After the biggest fight, World War Two, the peacemakers followed their profession’s best practice: build trust by focusing on a common effort in the least controversial area – the economy. It has worked, although almost every step has been difficult. The last step, the merger of monetary and fiscal policies, proved traumatic.

But after 60 years of economic success, it should be clear that greater unity need not destroy national diversity. Italians may never be as much like Germans as New Yorkers are like Californians, or as Shanghainese are like Beijingers. But Europeans should be able to find enough common ground – if only as an entity able to hold its own against the United States and China – to give the EU stronger support than mere economic self-interest. If not, there really will be something wrong with Europe.

“It’s the economy, stupid.” The words date from Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, but the basic idea that political shifts are the visible manifestations of hidden economic developments was first articulated by Karl Marx, who wrote before the word “economy” had its current meaning. When he declared, in 1848, that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” the notion was truly revolutionary. It has become a commonplace. Pundits ferret out economic causes for everything, politicians strive to present voters with economic good news, and careful studies show that economic trends influence elections.

Like most often-repeated generalizations (“Germans are orderly” or “an army marches on its stomach”) the claim that politics is fundamentally about economics has some truth to it. But I think pundits, politicians and voters would all benefit from a bit of revisionism. It’s not always the economy, and when it is, politicians cannot do much about it in a hurry.

Start with the expert commentators. I’m thinking of the people who confidently declare that the Arab Spring was caused by the increased cost of food. Or the ones who explain the poor performance of Vladimir Putin’s party in the recent Russian parliamentary election as a reflection of stagnating average incomes. The invasion of Iraq? It was the oil, stupid. The rise of anti-immigrant parties in Europe? Look no further than the job market.

Such claims cannot be disproved, since they concern motivations which are unknown to the actors themselves. I may “think” that I want to get rid of a kleptocratic government or that I’m uncomfortable with the president’s autocratic tendencies, but I’m just being, well, stupid. Idealism and xenophobia are mere covers for a calculation, possibly erroneous, of economic self-interest.

But it is the pundits who are being simple-minded, if not devious. Most of the leaders of the Arab revolts had prospered under the old regimes, and the recent elections in Tunisia and Egypt have been won by parties with a clear religious agenda but only vague economic plans. When protesters say they thirst for justice and when voters indicate they desire holiness, there is no good reason to think their stated views hide a more ignoble reality. An excessive focus on economic issues makes the pundits unreliable guides. They should remember that economic issues are sometimes crucial in people’s lives, but more often not.

Politicians do need to worry about the economy, if only because government spending in the G7 group of rich countries was equal to 45 percent of GDP in 2011, according to the OECD. The political decisions on how those sums will be extracted and spent – not to mentions the laws and regulations that shape the private economy – are crucial for the economy and important for the nation.

Politicians too often exercise their economic responsibilities in an irresponsible way. It takes years for policies that encourage investment, innovation and employment to bear fruit, but leaders often focus on creating enough good news to win the next election. That often leads them to increase fiscal deficits. These may seem painless for a while, but eventually politicians have to choose between fiscal austerity, which makes them unpopular right now, and continued fiscal recklessness, which will wreck the economy quite soon. Greek and Italian politicians were not up to making the choice. The best they could manage was an agreement to let non-political, technocratic governments introduce sensible but painful policies.

There is a better way. Politicians should stop trying to work economic magic. That means they should admit — publicly and loudly — that the only sustainable way to produce desirable statistics on incomes and unemployment in any month is to have made the right decisions many years ago. Consistent and sensible economic policy is the best support for durable prosperity.

Of course, politicians behave the way they do largely because voters seem to demand it. The American political debate is particularly disheartening to anyone with a minimal knowledge of economics. The nation’s combination of high fiscal deficits, stimulative monetary policy and a persistent trade deficit is an invitation for disaster, but neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to admit it. They are following polls and focus groups, which tell them recklessness is all right.

The irony is great. If politicians were willing to teach and voters to learn, governments could put their economic houses in order. Of course, the transition would be much easier if politicians had not spent decades putting off virtuous behavior until after the next election, but in a rich country such as the United States the pain of getting policy right would still be modest, especially in comparison to the woes that will come whenever foreigners stop funding the government. Then it really will be the economy, thanks to some remarkable – and avoidable – stupidity.

PHOTO: Workers place construction chains at the Karl Marx sculpture of the Marx-Engels monument in Berlin, September 8, 2010. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz