On Thursday, President Barack Obama said that Europe would be much better off had it just mimicked Mr. Obama’s economic moves:
“We’ve still got headwinds. Europe is still … in a difficult state, partly because they didn’t take some of the decisive steps that we took early on in this recession,” said Mr. Obama at a private 70-person fundraiser in Seattle, Washington.
It’s unclear exactly which “decisive steps” Mr. Obama was referring to. A senior administration official told Reuters that Mr. Obama was likely referring to “early stress tests on banks, requirements that banks bolster their capital cushions and an aggressive early response by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank.”
In a speech yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that there is “no magic bullet” to solving the Eurozone’s problems except to attack its “horrendous debts”:
Overcoming the crisis will be a long and difficult process that will only be achieved if we attack the origins of the crisis, which are the horrendous debts and a lack of competitiveness in some European countries.
According to CBS News, in three years Mr. Obama has added $4.939 trillion to the U.S. national debt, more than the $4.899 trillion President George W. Bush added in eight years.