Algemeen·NRC·5 sep

America has a whopping debt. But Europe has the whopping debt problem

To be European is to experience fine cuisines, walkable cities and constant nagging about the many ways in which your economy is falling behind America’s. In recent years weighty reports bemoaning Europe’s lagging productivity have become a literary genre in their own right. So news in recent weeks that America’s government debt had passed $40trn, raising questions about how long bond-market types will keep funding its persistent budget shortfalls, have been greeted in some European quarters with a degree of Schadenfreude (or whatever the Greek equivalent is). This is a continent that knows a thing or two about spiralling debt crises, after all. How refreshing it might be if the tables were turned, and Europeans could be the ones making recommendations about how politicians in Washington should be running their economic affairs.