Europe’s economic crisis spins out of control

[Donnachaidh]

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pers-a20.shtml

The crisis of the world’s stock exchanges and financial markets is increasingly spiralling out of control. Governments are being driven by developments which they are unable to influence.

On Tuesday, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the leaders of the fourth- and sixth-largest economies in the world, met at an emergency summit with the aim of calming the markets. Two days later the stock markets responded with the biggest fall in three years.

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The bitter experiences of the 1930s threaten to repeat themselves—not only economically, but also politically. The decline of the world economy is accompanied by growing national tensions, threatening the continued existence of the European Union, and increasingly brutal imperialist wars, as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The current crisis is even more fundamental than eighty years ago. At that time, as Europe slid into fascism and war, the American bourgeoisie responded with a program of social reforms, in the form of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The United States emerged from the World War II as the dominant economic power. Today, the US is itself the focus of the crisis, and no country or alliance can assume its role as the anchor of the world capitalist economy.

More at the link --