Final Word from Friday, January 9, 2009
Mirek Topolánek named an impressive group of economists, bankers and businessmen to his National Economic Council. They'll no doubt do an exemplary job of advising him on how to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's becoming clearer and clearer that almost no one in government or big business, whether in the CR, EU or U.S., is truly interested in taking the fundamental steps needed to resolve the economic crisis. The Czech(oslovak) government had a wonderful opportunity to lay a solid foundation in the 1990s and instead jumped head first into the same kind of policies that have landed the West where it is today. The Czechs are now merely a few years or months behind the curve. The Council will devise fancy schemes for combatting the crisis, but if they aren't based on the premise of reducing borrowing, waste and theft, they'll merely mask the symptoms instead of attacking the cause.[Czech Republic European Union Czechoslovakia United States of America financial]
Glossary of difficult words
counsel - advice, esp. that given formally;
exemplary - representing the best of its kind;
to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic - to make superficial changes that do not address the impending disaster;
to jump head first into something - to undertake something without sufficient forethought;
to be behind the curve - to be less advanced than the average in a given respect;
to devise - to plan or invent by careful thought;
premise - thesis, belief;
to mask the symptoms (of an illness or disease) - to take medicine or steps to alleviate pain or other manifestations of illness without addressing the cause of the ailment.