America’s Economic Crisis and Europe’s Hamletian Dilemma

Abstract

The current paper aims to present briefly, yet clearly, the key developments of the complex phenomenon that is usually labeled as the ”global economic crisis”. Furthermore, the paper reveals some of the contagion mechanisms that transformed the American banking crisis into “Europe’s existential crisis”. The paper builds on a general consent that seems to be emerging among scholars and politicians – “the crisis in Europe is existential. It is a question of whether the EU survives as a recognizable entity.” (Giddens, 2012). We totally agree with the fact that the American crisis and the European crisis could (and should) be now treated as two separate realities. However, these realities have emerged from the same root cause, which means that in order to understand why Europe is now struggling with its Hamletian dilemma, one should first take a close look behind the scenes of global economy.