LIKE all good B-movies, “The Incredible Shrinking Man” is deeper than it seems. After his body’s growth is sent into reverse by a wayward encounter with a radioactive cloud (yes, this is 1957), Scott Carey, the film’s hero, finds his relationships destroyed and his self-esteem dripping away. Richard Matheson, the screenwriter, said it was a “metaphor for how man’s place in the world was diminishing”. Today he might say the same for the old continent. Beleaguered by crisis and shorn of confidence, Europe seems to be shrinking by the day.
It might seem an odd time for such a claim. This week came news that the euro zone grew by 1.6% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and the European Union, lifted by a pre-referendum Britain, by 1.8%. This, as Eurocrats wasted no time pointing out, was a good clip faster than the United States. In most countries budget deficits are under control, and after years of austerity the euro zone is at last enjoying the mildest of fiscal expansions. Outside Italy its banks are in better shape. A pan-EU investment scheme launched, to much scepticism, by the European Commission last year is starting to...Continue reading
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