Europe must confront crisis of legitimacy (Financial Times criticism of austerity)

[alp227]

In Europe’s comforting crisis narrative, the financial crash of 2008 was imported from the US, a land of reckless alpha bankers and subprime borrowers as ignorant as the former Republican president.

The myth of the dumb and dangerous Other across the ocean served a transparent purpose in the elite European project of building a common, supranational identity.

Alas for Europe, no myth can displace political and economic realities for long. Today’s reality is that the financial crash, whatever its origins, is stirring a potentially far-reaching crisis of legitimacy in Europe’s political system.

This goes beyond the fiscal deficits and sovereign debt market turmoil with which European Union governments have grappled since Greece confessed to its budgetary sins in late 2009. It goes beyond whether Europe’s monetary union, and the EU itself, will survive.

It concerns the ability of mainstream European political parties to convince voters that they will deliver jobs, decent wages, financial stability and enough economic growth to preserve the backbone of the universal welfare state. By and large, this is what the parties have done and been rewarded for since the 1950s.

Full: http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4e2c793c-8d50-11e1-8b49-00144feab49a.html

[Vincardog]

1. The cancer of unbridled corrupt capitalism is devouring countries now and the "Legitimacy" of the

state's responsibility to its' citizens is the question?