In Greece, Ireland and Spain, in France and Germany, the governments are adopting budgetary policies in full awareness of the fact that they cannot count on the inflation tax to solve their fiscal challenges, challenges that all advanced societies have to face. Can we consider this to be a problem?
Let me conclude on a broader issue, related to the title of the conference: Transatlantic Relationship in an Era of Growing Economic Multipolarity. At many of the conferences on trans-Atlantic relations that I have attended in the past, participants often discussed the decreasing relevance of these relations in the light of the new emerging global powers.