LONDON — Memo to Naoto Kan, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, and Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh: Running an economy is like riding a bicycle — if you maintain a good speed, you can make progress; but if you reduce your speed, there is always the danger of losing your balance, stumbling and falling off.
There, unfortunately, the analogy breaks down. If you tumble from a bicycle, you can dust yourself off, remount and ride again. But with a stalling of a modern economy, people's lives and livelihoods are at stake, and it is not easy for many of the casualties to dust themselves off and get on their bikes again.
Indeed, after three recent trips to the United States and several European countries, it seems to me that many Western countries are about to fall off their economic bicycles without any ideas of how to get on them again. From trivial things to large issues involving the socio-political economy, country after country is failing to tackle the real issues. There have been some debates about when and where to apply the sticking plasters to staunch government deficits, but there has been little discussion about how to tackle not one but several cancers that are eating the hearts and souls of the West and of Japan.