EU finds Obama debt plan too extreme

Despite urging from Obama, the EU is refusing to march off a cliff:

Disagreements between the European Union and the US over how to combat the global recession widened on Tuesday as EU governments made clear they had little appetite for piling up more debt to fight the collapse in output and jobs.

Finance ministers from the 27-nation bloc insisted in Brussels that it was doing enough to support world demand and did not need at present to adopt another fiscal stimulus plan, as Washington is urging.

Separately, it is still amateur hour at the US government.  While it is normal for an incoming administration to keep some holdovers to smooth the transition, Pres. Obama decided otherwise:

It also emerged that Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, was struggling to organise the summit. Britain’s most senior civil servant claimed it was hard to find anyone to speak to at the US Treasury. Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary, blamed the “absolute madness” of the US system where a new administration had to hire new officials from scratch, leaving a decision-making vacuum.

“There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,” he told a conference of civil servants.

PREVIOUSLY, a graph of Obama's plans for the US deficit was shown here.