Where the News Ends

...will most probably have gone on to higher standards...

...Therefore, America would either have to put Europe on a perpetual pension or accept the necessity of continuous discrimination by Europeans against American goods...

...Meanwhile European nations have been fattening their gold and dollar reserves...

...The six-nation Economic Community which includes the 165 million people of France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries is far more than an area of free trade...

...But in an increasingly prosperous Europe, nationalization on a wholesale scale and all-out state planning have lost much of the appeal they possessed in the bleak years immediately after the end of the war...

...Great Britain is the principal partner in another group, the "Outer Seven," which, like the six nations, will do away with trade barriers between each other within the next 10 years...

...There is indeed a "dollar gap...

...ran an unfavorable balance of international payments of $3.4 billion in 1958 and seems likely to end 1959 in the red to the tune of about $4 billion...

...The U.S...

...All the mentioned countries are far ahead of the Soviet Union today, not in space rockets, but in almost everything that ministers directly to individual comfort and satisfaction, and there is every prospect that they will stay ahead...

...At the same time, if we hope to hold our own in foreign trade in the more competitive era that lies ahead, we must check inflationary trends and wasteful practices that could have the effect of pricing us out of world markets...

...The three straight victories of the Conservatives over Labor in England, of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's Christian Democrats over the German Social Democrats, indicate a setback for European Socialism, even though conservative and moderate parties have accepted a good many social welfare measures originally championed by Socialists...

...It also requires a revision of some out-of-date stereotypes in the American view of Europe...

...This change is nothing short of revolutionary...

...Under present conditions there is a sound basis for Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson's suggestions that European countries should abolish remaining discriminations against U.S...

...The currency that is often spoken of with the greatest misgiving as to its immediate future is the dollar...

...but it is in Europe's favor...

...exports and play a larger role in plans for aid to underdeveloped areas...

...Europe, like the fabled phoenix, has risen from the wartime ashes of destruction, frustration and poverty and has become very much of a going concern...

...That theory today seems to belong with the dinosaurs...

...By that time the U.S...

...per capita standards in food, housing, consumer goods, automobiles, television sets and other appurtenances of modern living...

...There has been a dramatic reversal of conditions since the time when Europe seemed foredoomed to indefinite economic dependence on the United States, when the theory of the "dollar gap" was popular among some economists...

...This reporter would place a sizable bet that more than one European country (Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden are perhaps the best prospects) has a very fair chance within the next decade or so of matching present U.S...

...It might also be reasonable to propose a revision of certain financial arrangements in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, where these involve disproportionately heavy U.S...

...And when one visits European capitals and financial centers in 1959, the "sick man" among currencies is not the mark, or the pound, or even the French franc...

...standard of living...

...Europe in 1959 makes the impression of becoming more federative and less socialist...

...This successful recovery and advance—in most cases, well beyond prewar standards of production, consumption and foreign trade—is one of the most conspicuous successes of the bipartisan American foreign policy which initiated the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic alliance and which actively supported every European move toward self-help and inter-European co-operation...

...outlays of foreign exchange...

...It is a close economic federation and customs union, in which efforts are already being made to harmonize taxation and social benefit legislation...

...And to a visitor who has seen all the visible signs of prosperity in one European country after another, there is a suggestion of pathetic whistling in the dark about Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's boast that the Soviet Union will overtake the present U.S...

...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Economic Phoenix In Western Europe LOOKING BACK to Western Europe after a trip of 15 weeks which took me to eight countries (Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria) one impression predominates over a score of minor ones...

...This theory was that Europe could never furnish an equivalent in goods and services for its essential imports from the U.S., Canada and other countries in the dollar area...