One reader tells me that the Wall St. Journal‘s op-ed page has spent the last twenty years claiming that Europe is on the “verge of collapse.”
Googling “Wall St. Journal Europe ‘verge of collapse'” turns up little or nothing. In fact, my Econlog post is the fourth hit!
Can anyone confirm or rebut the charge against the WSJ?
Apr 6 2007
From Rolling Stone's review of Grindhouse: As the late critic Pauline Kael famously stated, "Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize." The whole movie's a fun ride, but Tarantino's half is much better.
Apr 5 2007
Once a teacher admits that his lessons have little or no practical use, he usually retreats to the view that it doesn't matter what his students learn. The important thing is that students are "learning how to learn." One thing I've been learning lately is that psychologists, under the heading of Transfer of Learning...
Apr 5 2007
One reader tells me that the Wall St. Journal's op-ed page has spent the last twenty years claiming that Europe is on the "verge of collapse." Googling "Wall St. Journal Europe 'verge of collapse'" turns up little or nothing. In fact, my Econlog post is the fourth hit! Can anyone confirm or rebut the charge agai...
READER COMMENTS
Eli
Apr 5 2007 at 5:47pm
I did a ProQuest search of the Wall Street Journal (including the Opinion section) from 1984 to the present. The phrase “verge of collapse” appeared in an article with the word “Europe” exactly 8 times. None of the articles have anything to do with the collapse of Europe. The article that comes closest to supporting the reader’s claim, from 1992, talks about the possible collapse of the market for ECU bonds. The lead sentence: “The market for bonds issued in European Currency Units, which just a year ago were touted as the new currency for the new Europe, may be on the verge of collapse.” I think it is fair to say that the Wall Street Journal has NOT spent the last twenty years claiming that Europe is on the verge of collapse.
Tyler Cowen
Apr 5 2007 at 6:18pm
Sure it has, try for instance this: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760
William Newman
Apr 5 2007 at 6:47pm
I’m not sure the Mark Steyn piece fully qualifies: claiming that demographics guarantees that things must fall apart in about a generation isn’t the usual meaning of “on the verge of collapse.” Would anyone use the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall to justify a claim made in 1963 that the USSR was on the verge of collapse? The “on the verge” phrase might perhaps be used for things 25+ years out in the case of something like a retirement system whose whole point is to stretch across generations, but seldom in other cases, I think.
James A. Donald
Apr 5 2007 at 7:41pm
I pretty sure that my views on the collapse of Europe are as extreme as you are likely to find, and I have been predicting major crisis and collapse of regimes in 2025 (as compared to what seems to be the usual more moderate prediction, major crisis and radical change in 2035)
Bryan Caplan
Apr 5 2007 at 10:03pm
Tyler, how does a piece claiming that Europe is going to go Muslim during the next few decades to a century count as saying that “Europe is on the verge of collapse”?
TGGP
Apr 6 2007 at 2:12am
Bryan, do you think that immigration to Europe (or America, or other such places) could cause a change in the political culture? In the Cato/ISI video you appear in you say political culture is extremely important, and you have also talked a lot about how non-economists underestimates the benefits vs costs of immigration. I’ve yet to hear you bring the two subjects together, but I would certainly like to.
Steven
Apr 7 2007 at 4:11pm
At least not in Review & Outlook, the editor’s own commentary, last year. Europe attracts a lot of criticism on these pages but I do not recall that Europe was referred to as being either on the verge of collapse or in a similar state. I read the Journal (European edition) every day and never skip Review & Outlook, so I am pretty sure of this, but I can not confirm the same for the other 19 years.
Comments are closed.