Europe’s Risk Aversion Comes With Consequences
Europeans generally favor slower, managed growth to America’s faster, more disruptive version — but that choice has costs.
Looking for safety.
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP
As I watch Europe’s deepening existential crisis over its grim growth prospects, I often think back to a speech I heard 16 years ago in Paris. I was a lowly consultant for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, but for some reason they had let me in to a fancy lunchtime reception, where I listened to a senior staff member describe how the financial crisis proved the validity of the European economic model. Slow, steady and highly regulated growth, she explained, was superior to the American boom-and-bust version of capitalism.
What a difference a decade and a half makes.