U.S. Crisis Gratuitously Self-Inflicted

In both Europe and the United States, the current public debt woes are attributable to mistakes made by political leaders going back more than a decade. In both cases the magnitude of the debt problems has only become evident for all to see recently, by which time it was too late for the straightforward policy solutions that were viable options before. It is hard to judge whether it is Europe or the United States that has screwed up worse.