We face eurogeddon and dollargeddon

By Timothy Garton Ash, the Guardian

Call me Oswald Spengler if you must, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the United States and the European Union are currently engaged in competitive decadence. The two leading polities of the west seem incapable of tackling the debt and deficit burdens which their closely related versions of liberal democratic capitalism have built up. Their politicians dance like drunkards along the cliff's edge of default. If Thursday'scrunchtime meeting of eurozone leaders in Brussels does not reassure the markets, some part of the eurozone may fall within days. In Washington, the countdown continues to what Americans are calling D-day, 2 August, when the US government says it would no longer be able to pay its bills within the existing debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion. The two largest economies in the world teeter on the brink of eurogeddon and dollargeddon. It looks as if America will step back from the brink, though without fixing the underlying problem. And Europe? I wouldn't count on it.