This weekend’s “29S” and “30S” demonstrations brought people into the squares in Europe’s capital cities. There might have been a million demonstrators yesterday just in Madrid and Lisbon. It is too early to get a good sense of the numbers in Paris and elsewhere today, but those may add up to a quarter million. Some of the signs just say “No” — “no” to the “permanent austerity treaty” under consideration in Europe.
Spain was the model for Occupy Wall Street. If the protests in Europe are so much larger than those of the United States this month it is because the austerity measures are that much more severe. If the United States goes down the same road of bailouts and austerity next year, the same scenes could be seen in New York and Washington.
