> Europe profited, households and industry had real savings (...) But you see, this is part of my disappointment with European decision makers. Yeah, great, Eu

> Europe profited, households and industry had real savings (...) But you see, this is part of my disappointment with European decision makers. Yeah, great, Europe "profited" in a financial and standards of living sense. But what these people seem to miss (but the Americans and Russians know very well) is that there's a harder tier of power above finance, which is military power. Sure, it's great having good GDP, but if your neighbor has more tanks and resents you because 50% of their population wants to be you[1] then your savings and finance don't matter much. Unless big brother America comes to the rescue, as they're doing, at which point parent's comment has a lot of truth in it... [1] 50% is made up, but it's a lot.