The hope among experts and economists is that the changes, if carried out with skill, may allow Europe to further isolate Greece and its unsustainable debts from other countries, reducing the risk of contagion and buying time for other countries to fix their budgets and work on how to better centralize control of fiscal policy.
The mixed economy is working in China, and its dispassionate control of fiscal and monetary policy should be the model for the Western world, especially the United States.
"Given the growing perception that Washington is out of control on fiscal issues," they wrote, "focusing more of our communications message on brake-related issues might increase our ability to achieve the 'gas now, brake later' strategy.
As the euro has faltered, for instance, the commission has urged more European control of countries' fiscal policies.
While he referred to the devastating impact of Israel's offensives into Palestinian areas, he spoke more about what Palestinians could do to take control of their fiscal destiny, peppering his presentation with words like "transparency," "audit," and, repeatedly, "credibility".
Even less evidence suggests that southern European voters are willing to allow the external control of their fiscal policies that such an arrangement would imply.Political leaders may press ahead anyway.
In the end, it may even necessitate mutually guaranteed Eurobonds (see article).Honesty is the best policyAny or all of these measures have three things in common: they involve stronger countries giving more support to weaker countries; to offset this, they require intrusive outside control of national fiscal policies.
In Paterson, an industrial city once known for its silk factories, district officials rolled out SchoolStat last spring to help turn around a school system that has been under state control since 1991 because of fiscal mismanagement and poor academics.
As wrenching as it would be, the option that would do the most to defang extremists of the left and the right would probably be to abandon the euro immediately, with each country regaining control of its own fiscal and monetary policy and seeing what options open up.
Because Europe's governments have signed away national control of interest rates, fiscal policy is the only tool to hand if the single monetary policy leaves their economies growing more slowly than they might, or faster than they can sustain without pressure on wages and property prices.
In every major country in the EU, there are nationalistic political groups unhappy with the existing political order and wanting greater sovereign control of immigration and fiscal policies.
