BRUSSELS — A summit meeting of European leaders collapsed Friday amid bitter discord over a new budget for the European Union, delivering a further blow to a 27-nation grouping already struggling to contain a debt crisis, social discontent fueled by rising unemployment, and doubts about the long-term viability of the euro currency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/europe/european-union-budget-tal...

The "good news" for the United States may be the fact that an unresolved EU debt crisis forestall's closure scrutiny of U.S. fiscal compacts and may even attract further inputs of foreign capital searching for the elusive "safe harbor." The bad news, of course, may see once again, U.S. policy-makers kick the budget "hot potato" a little futher down the road. No doubt, for many of our leaders, the feeling boils down to this: "I, nor my supporters, created this budgetary mess. Why should I put my political neck on the line and do the heavy lifting than can only upset my constituents even as it necessarily contracts the U.S. economy?"

Hell no, we won't go!

Alas, the fiscal day of reckoning is pressed deeper into the mind to be dealt with when we must, but not a moment before then!

Similarly, officials and the public mind may be now convinced that public finances are hopeless! We simply CANNOT agree on the required spending cuts or tax increases that will be needed to make the budget balanced and put programs and the government, generally, on a sustainable path; so, they stay on an unsustainable course with data warnings flashing louder and louder! Check Engine!

One wonders when the anxiety over the impasse and the long, hard waiting for a solution will begin to cause more harm than that which will be caused when policy-makers impose austerity and put the system back on a paying basis?

When does the worrying become worse than dealing with the problem? (Perhaps leaders are conducting a secret experiment to measure anxiety and stress levels among the public? I always liked Alfred E. Neuman's stance on pending problems -- What, me worry? Of course, that was a comic magazine and not actual advice to public stewards .... )