Europe raises spectre of an ungovernable world

The International Monetary Fund asked the economist Barry Eichengreen to come up with some out-of-the-box ideas for reforming the global financial architecture. The Wall Street Journal calls the result "Eight Ways to Radically Remake the World," and that's not far from the truth. The most significant -- indeed, the idea that a lot of the other recommendations seem to depend on in practice -- argues for the creation of a global financial regulator:

I finally got around to reading Noam Chomsky’s much-criticized statement on Osama bin Laden and there’s really something almost amazingly naive about his opening line: It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. Contrast that with, say, the United Nations Security Council: [...]

Joel Kotkin used to annoy me with his anti-urbanist punditry, but now it seems he’s moved on to other things: In a book due out next month, the international futurist says China isn’t likely to overtake the United States as the world’s economic superpower in coming decades, countering predictions of some forecasters who believe the Chinese economy will be the global leader by 2020. [...]

(cc photo by niemster)

A Paul Krugman post gives me an excellent excuse to make a point I’ve been sitting on since Saturday. He says his approach is broadly Rawlsian in nature:

1. The fundamental cause of the financial crisis has been people and institutions thinking they are wealthy than they are; this spread to Europe as well and now we are seeing the comeuppance.

My observation the other day that the country has become ungovernable has been treated with general scorn by the right-wing blogosphere. Glenn Reynolds, for example, had the simple quip “Funny, that dumb cowboy Bush seemed to get a lot done with fewer votes in Congress.” Well, okay, but did he get a lot done?