From Bloomberg via MSN, December 7:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.
“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”
While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.”
Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”
On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.
“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”
He said the US should help....
....MUCH MORE
There are early indications that the EU could become a Chinese satrapy.
And then? It appears that one of Beijing's options is to let Europe die on the vine and wither away as a business center, with Shenzhen, Shanghai and even Hainan island assuming some of the various roles that Europe has played over the years.
And if Europe is no longer independent of China it faces the possibility of becoming a colonial backwater but one that is so overbuilt it ends up as an urban hellscape.
Which, of course, would be ironic as all get out, the quintessential (in popular imagination) colonizer becoming a colony. For some reason I think of those South American outposts of industry that served their extractive purpose and were left to be reclaimed by nature.
Here's the hospital at Fordlandia:
And if interested, Amusing Planet, November 2015:
Fordlandia: A Modern Industrial Ruin in The Heart of Amazon
It would take a couple decades for the pattern to run it's course in Europe but already we are seeing hints:
It's not all downside though. Related, October 2021:
"Basta! Romans say enough to invasion of wild boars in city.
Do I smell prosciutto?*
