The Merkozy preferred plan for tighter fiscal Euro consolidation, with sanctions for member nations that fail to reach budget targets, requires a change to the Treaty of Lisbon, which covers not just the 17 countries in the Eurozone, but all 27 member countries in the EU. If that route is pursued, any country that vetoes the treaty change would effectively block it. And that brings Britain into the picture.

As many as two million public sector workers are on strike against austerity and slashing pensions in Britain today. This is the biggest strike in Britain in 30 years, when the protests focused on another purveyor of austerity, Margaret Thatcher.

we have more evidence today of how crippling austerity measures can be for an economy trying to come out of a deep recession. Unemployment in Great Britain is now the highest in 17 years.

Like America, European nations have been pursuing spending cuts and other austerity that lead to declining GDP growth numbers and fears of a double dip recession. Europe embraced austerity more quickly than did the US, and it’s predictably depressing, so the expected results are occurring: Britain, which ushered in a mass austerity program, is paying the price with zero growth and may now be reconsidering whether to pursue at least some monetary stimulus.

Various explanations for the riots in London in the past week have been flouted. Diversity, white liberals who control the media, rap music, people who scream racism, multiculturalism, infantilism, victim-centers narcissistic politics, black people, liberal dogma, the breakdown of family, no threat of capital punishment or deportation to Australia for the underclass and the “social engineering industry” have all been suggested by various right-wing commentators. Others contend UK austerity measures, including the closing of youth clubs, are partly to blame.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron says gangs are responsible for the chaos and disorder in London over the past days.

US companies are hoarding some cash in preparation for the possibility that no debt limit deal is reached by next Tuesday, as well as lining up additional sources of financing in case the credit markets suffer. But executives are going way too far by blaming the debt limit crisis for things that were in place well before this was thought to be an issue.

I know it is too much to hope for regarding Rupert Murdoch, but I want more schadenfreude.

Apart from taxes & tyranny, warm beer and the Beatles, Robin Hood and Royal Weddings, what has England ever given us? For starters, the rule of law.

We talk about it here a lot, about how it no longer seems to apply to government and corporate elites. Like a hole in the sidewalk on a snowy day, that creates a slush-filled pool. We can step in it day after Groundhog Day. Or we can learn more about what “the rule of law” means and repair the crack.

France and Britain are getting impatient with the NATO mission in Libya. I guess France now thinks, in the aftermath of their conquest in Ivory Coast, that they can snap their fingers and bring down a government. But Libya is a different animal altogether. What they’re asking for is unrealistic.

Turd sandwich, indeed.