Another Reagan-Thatcher Moment

[The Finman]

<h2><font color=#003399>Another Reagan-Thatcher Moment</font></h2>
Is there an English-speaking interest-rate hike sweeping the world? More important, will English-speaking economic growth principles rule the waves? Most likely, both are correct.

The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its policy rate a quarter of a percentage point this week, and the venerable Bank of England quickly followed suit.

These precautionary moves to maintain price stability actually caused stock markets to rally in both countries.

It doesn't always happen, but U.S. rates frequently follow British rates.

And while interest-rate futures are suggesting a Fed rate hike next winter, the Fed should follow rising real interest rates as economic growth, investment returns and jobs rapidly pick up steam in the Bush boom.

Freedom-loving Great Britain and Australia were of significant help to the United States in ridding the world of Saddam Hussein and fighting the global war on terrorism.

This is why Australian unemployment is an enviable 5.6 percent.

And in Britain, Finance Minister Gordon Brown has been teeing off on European Union (EU) bureaucrats for being completely wrong on growth policies.

While year-to-date gold prices in U.S. dollar terms have increased 10 percent -- indicating a looser monetary policy -- Euro gold is essentially unchanged on the year, despite the fact that the European economy is in worse shape than America's.

Filling out this strong position on growth, both Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair have flatly told the European Union that Britain will never enter the Eurozone if English tax-and-welfare and labor-market regulations have to be harmonized with the European Union.

The Margaret Thatcher legacy has given the United Kingdom a much more pro-growth tax-rate structure and an environment of social-service spending restraint.

This is why unemployment in Europe is about 9 percent, while British unemployment is 5.9 percent.

At a recent media breakfast in New York City, EU president Romano Prodi criticized an op-ed in the Financial Times co-authored by the prime ministers of Britain and Estonia.

In the piece, the two leaders argued strenuously for competitive tax and budget policies as a means of exerting pro-growth policy pressures on "old Europe."

But Prodi labeled this "unfair competition," and insisted on harmonization among tax and welfare policies.

The free-market English-speaking world, with economic policies that are still to this day driven primarily by Reagan-Thatcher capitalist principles, has persistently outgrown Europe over the past 20 years.

The latter is stuck in a big-government central-planning time warp that favors income leveling over entrepreneurship and maintains deep bootprints on all manner of private enterprise.

The 10 new Eastern European countries recently liberated from Stalinism are scheduled to enter the European Union soon.

Their low-cost, free-market incentivized economies will pose strong competition to old Europe's stodgy state-planning.


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