> missing something here? Europe has *very* high unemployment. The US doesn't.
> As far as I can tell, monetary policy is largely responsible for the
> difference. There are literally millions and millions of Europeans who would
> be working today if the ECB were as expansive as you claim it is.
> But again, maybe I'm missing something.
No, you're not missing anything at all. As Adorno would put it, only the extremes are true in late capitalism. The ECB is both hardcore monetarist *and* Euroindustrialist. The former was the larval form of the latter, as it were (kind of like the way Mike Milken was the embryonic form of Andy Grove: speculative form pending its silicon content). It's just that the ECB in 1998 saw Asia melting, and saw the Kohl government fall apart, and drew the logical conclusion -- cut rates or Europe will explode (something which IG Metall had been openly saying since 1994). It was a bailout operation, sort of similar to the vast Japanese bank bailout. The point is that the EU has to shift from mere fiscal easing to genuine redistribution -- rebuilding its welfare states and giving its semiperipheries money.
-- Dennis