EU on Tony the Tiger: "He's grrrrrrrrreat! (except in Denmark)

■"Corn Flakes Clash Shows the Glitches In European Union: Nations Retain Separate Rules That Business Leaders Say Hobble Economic Growth; How Much to Fortify a Cereal," by G. Thomas Sims, Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2005, p. A1.

The E.U. is becoming a sort of weird, rules-engine superpower, meaning they create rule sets that will determine much of the emerging global rule sets on a host of issues, with food safety being a key one (just watch them on the avian flu and poultry).

And yet, sometimes the E.U. gets so wrapped around its axle on these things that it gets awfully self-indulgently counterproductive.

This article is a hoot, showing how the states in the E.U. fight over the weirdest little bits about folic acid, Vitamin D, etc. That means Kellogg still needs to generate four versions of corn flakes for sale in the E.U. Imagine such a thing here and you start to realize what a real model we are for the future of globalization.

But it's not just food, as the article points out. Caterpillar must make special vehicles for Germany, where back-up horns need to be louder than in the rest of the E.U. Germany's also a place where you basically can't hired a temp, unless you buy them for days on end. So companies buy temp workers for far longer than needed to comply with the law. As the head of Manpower (based in Milwaukee) put it: "It's lost GDP."

This is the number one reason why Korea, Japan and especially China haven't switched their dollar reserves to euros: you basically buy a slower rate of growth with Go-Slow Europe.