Debt adjusted: EU rebrands bankruptcy
Published time: February 20, 2014 13:58
Even by the acute standards of Euro-buffoonery, a new report beggars belief as the EU seeks to offend nobody but, as always, ends up running from reality.
The terrifying point about EU policy is how often some tiny kernel of idiocy can be written in a report and then find itself doing the equivalent of going viral amongst the Brussels bureaucrats prior to developing into yet another law to add to the burden of paperwork which strangles enterprise throughout the 28 nation, er, free trade zone. The EU is increasingly bound together by red tape as opposed to being free to trade with the much more competitive economies of Asia and elsewhere.
The EU is, to put it diplomatically, embarrassed. Deeply economically embarrassed. We must be careful not to state anything more bluntly here otherwise you see I may cause offence. Yes, those getting on for 30 percent of folks in the Mediterranean who have barely any hope of gainful employment in the damned, doomed and stagnant eurozone, may well be rendered incandescent if I explain the reality of their situation which is economically grim. Indeed, for those facing bankruptcy. Well, fret no more.
The European Union, that finely tuned agent of commerce (er, killer of jobs I mean, surely?) has just produced a report which is really worried about bankruptcy. It’s not actually too worried about bankruptcy itself per se. No! Rather, it’s worried about the stigma of it all.
How interesting therefore to compare the situation in the USA with Europe. Even with the stunningly anti-enterprise President Obama delaying recovery with unaffordable healthcare provisions and automakers unions which, actually few want to join, going bankrupt is tantamount to a rite of passage.
In dreary old Europe, the idea of making bankruptcy easier to go through appears tedious to lawmakers, but of course, there is a politically correct twist. Yes indeed folks, the EU is proposing a marvelous reform to bankruptcy: calling it something else!
