Many countries need years of austerity and reforms to regain lost competitiveness.
"It's all part of the same parcel: public sector indebtedness needs to be cut, it needs a lot of austerity, and it hit the central governments first, and now is hitting local bodies," said Philip Brown, managing director at Citigroup in London.
Germany has long been one of the loudest proponents of the need for austerity.
Against today's background of financial markets with global reach and widespread invocations of the need for austerity in which governments are seldom challenged as they ritualistically turn their pockets out and complain that the cupboard is bare, neither disease causation nor health ethics can sensibly be separated from politics and economics.
"It took a long time for them to get to the view we need a balance of austerity and growth," Mr. Odell said by telephone this week.
The decision to forgo a carrier-borne strike force caused consternation among naval veterans, military analysts and others who have joined the opposition Labour Party in accusing the Cameron government of hastening the defense review to meet the needs of its overall austerity program.
Greece, in recession after two years of austerity, needs an 8 billion euro ($11 billion) tranche of aid in October to pay government-owed wages and pensions.
Yet how will the capital and other fast-growing cities pay for the things they need in an age of austerity unless they generate more revenue for themselves?
On the Continent, France's official accounting agency warned on Thursday that France would need a severe dose of austerity in the form of spending cuts, saying the country could no longer rely on tax increases to fix its finances.
Delivering more than 1,000 pages of diagnosis and policy prescriptions on the dire condition of the European economy and on how to try to end almost three years of euro crisis, the commission said Europe needed the right balance of austerity measures and growth.
