Train Wreck

The difference between the United States and Europe regarding the financial crisis that looms over the planet is far from being a train wreck. In the same way that the tense standoff between President Barack Obama and the Republican opposition to overcome the crisis put the U.S. on the verge of bankruptcy, [the U.S. and the EU] also seek a way out of the impasse to save the euro. Both failures would have been resounding and would drag down not only the political class, but also an establishment that guaranteed a relative equilibrium on both sides of the Atlantic.

Without the scare of acid rain, contradictions involved lessons, especially for countries like the Dominican Republic, which behaved as if nothing happened. That the country survived the 2008 debacle, which an economy as powerful as the U.S.’ has not recovered from, was due, as public officials confess, to Petrocaribe, through which Venezuela finances part of the petroleum industry. There are those who say that debt and temporary factors were key to minimizing the repercussions of the crisis. The U.S. president, who gambled with Wall Street regulations to avoid another catastrophe, has warned that the European fiscal crisis has frightened the world, accusing its leaders of not acting quickly enough in their decisions. Obama favors more radical methods against the deficits. His worry is logical, although the storm regarding the euro has dissipated with Germany’s approval of the creation of a rescue fund. At other times, the dispute generated its extremes, but today it provokes panic for the half of the world dependent on those two large markets. The standoff between the U.S. and Europe warns of nothing good, even for large emerging economies.