Overstimulated.(The Week)(global economic crisis)

THE radicalism of the Obama administration has startled even European lefties. Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland remarked on the spectacle: "[Obama] and Brown stand together, supposedly the representatives of Anglo-American turbocapitalism, struggling to push the statist French and Germans--and this is the bit that was in nobody's script--leftward."

President Bush seemed to revel in the European indignation his policies aroused, but Obama seems genuinely surprised. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in his failed attempt to convince Europeans to launch Keynesian atomic bombs at the economic crisis.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy made a classic French drama out of his rejection of "Obama-style" stimulus. Czech prime minister (and current head of the rotating EU presidency) Mirek Topolanek warned that Obama's plans could destabilize world markets, adding that "all of these steps, these combinations and permanency, is [ sic] the road to hell."

As a result, European policy has been fairly calm in this storm. The chart at right indicates how dramatically U.S. policy has diverged from world norms this year. It compares the fiscal impact of the stimulus package that Obama and the Democrats enacted to the impact of similar packages adopted by European countries from 2008 to 2010. In ...