New Europe Returns to Old Habits

Washington Post ^ | November 29, 2006 | Steven Pearlstein

[baseball_fan]

/Snip/ While each country presents a somewhat different political profile, the common thread has been the breakdown of the political consensus around reform and liberalization. Governments are weak, institutions have become politicized, and corruption and nationalism are on the rise.

Now the International Monetary Fund has raised a warning flag about a possible financial crisis in a region that has several of the characteristics of the Asian economies of the mid-1990. /snip/

The biggest problem is in Hungary, where things began to unravel this spring after the newly elected prime minister was overheard on tape telling party colleagues that he won the election by lying to voters about the state of the government's finances for years. /snip/

In Poland, the twin Kaczynski brothers, now president and prime minister, have launched a radical agenda /snip/ included challenging the independence of Poland's central bank and driving out its governor /snip/

With its flat tax, liberal labor laws and generous business subsidies, Slovakia had become the sentimental favorite /snip/ reformers were ousted in June /snip/ left the government in the hands of a populist coalition with a strong odor of corruption about it.

/snip/ in the Czech Republic, its /snip/ unlikely to be able to push through the spending cuts necessary to get the country's budget deficit under control.

The danger is that these countries are sliding toward an economic model that is less like that of the United States, Britain or even France, and more like Vladimir Putin's Russia.

/snip/ the Russian economic model has more to do with Don Corleone than Milton Friedman

/snip/ it is particularly curious why the Bush administration would choose this moment to remove a last barrier to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. /snip/ the United States has sent the worst possible signal /snip/

[baseball_fan]

"it is particularly curious why the Bush administration would choose this moment to remove a last barrier to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization"

please let there be a good explanation