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Some Europeans are gloating over America’s economic crisis
“The End of Arrogance,” chided Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper. “America Loses its Dominant Economic Role.” It seems that America’s financial crisis — which of course is also the world’s crisis — has at least some in Europe laughing all the way to the bank.
The article, written and reported by several reporters, said that a new America is on display these days — “a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.”
Also on display, according to the article, is the end of arrogance. “The Americans are now paying the price for their pride. Gone are the days when the U.S. could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else — without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.”
Of course Der Spiegel isn’t the only newspaper that’s gloating at U.S. misfortune. London’s Guardian newspaper also wrote this week that the global financial crisis will see the U.S. falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. “The era of American dominance is over,” wrote John Gray.
He said that a historic geopolitical shift has occurred. “The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over,” he said.
And he seemed pretty pleased about it.
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