Politics and Conspiracy Theories

This is harsh. Keep in mind that it is an opinion piece by a columnist at The Wall Street Journal.

Having said that, Bret Stephens’ piece entitled “Europe’s Crisis of Ideas” gets at some of the issues we’ve talked about in class about why the “macroeconomics” portrayed by politicians and the media is so different from what is in the texts.

… Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou offered a view on the source of Europe's woes. "This is an attack on the euro zone by certain other interests, political or financial," he said, without specifying who or what those interests might be. In Madrid, the government has reportedly ordered its intelligence service to investigate "collusion" between U.S. investors and the media to bring Spain's economy low.

Maybe the paladins of Spanish and Greek politics seriously imagine that hedge-fund managers sit around dimly lit conference rooms like so many Lex Luthors and—cue the sinister cackles—decide on a whim to sink this or that economy. Or maybe they think there are political dividends to reap by playing to peanut galleries already inclined toward these kinds of fantasies.

Whichever way, the recrudescence of conspiracy-theory politics, among governments that supposedly belong to the First World, is just one symptom of Europe's intellectual malaise. On the other end of the spectrum is the view that the Greek crisis is the perfect opportunity to expand the regulatory reach and taxing authority of Brussels. …