EUROPE: EU “Fab Four” Meet and Fail in Rome.

The euro is significantly closer to failure and Europe is closer to a meltdown after the leaders of the four biggest eurozone leaders met in Rome and made no progress whatever. The “Fab Four” (Spain’s Mariano Rajoy, France’s Francois Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Italy’s Mario Monti) reaffirmed a pre-existing agreement to make some mostly symbolic adjustments to European policy, whomping up an air souffle that the Club Med countries plus France can claim is a “growth” package, but it is mostly made of old money and spin.

Other than that, they seem to have just wasted time repeating the stale old things they have been saying to one another for more than two years. The Latin caucus told Germany how very nice it would be if Germany would pay more money to reduce their borrowing costs and Germany thanked the Latins for the advice but declined to share its ATM card and PIN with its hungry friends.

In other words, nothing.

America currently has the worst political class in its history. But if Europe doesn’t, it’s only because of how very bad it’s been in the past. . . .