Reframing Europe's economic blame game

BY TONY LOBL

The Tendency Of Human nature to look for someone to blame for collective ills has been starkly evident in the United Kingdom recently. When the media exposed the multi-million-pound pension agreement of a CEO, whose bank needed billions of pounds of public funds to remain solvent, he instantly became a lightning rod for public ire. A lynch-mob mentality followed the media stories of this man's personal gain in contrast to his company's pull on the public purse-strings. (His house and car were vandalized by a group calling themselves "Bank Bosses Are Criminals.") The public anger was echoed, and arguably aggravated, by populist statements made by government ministers. In the process, more important issues slipped out of the headlines for several days.

In other parts of Europe, too, the banking crisis and the ensuring recession have been accompanied by finger-pointing. In the European Voice of March 19, an unnamed correspondent put it this way:

"Was it all a conspiracy? It is not the first time in eastern European history that the question has been asked. Wicked manipulators from the West were a staple of communist-era propaganda" ("Blaming the wicked West for the economic crisis").