Stimulus Sours Obama's European Honeymoon

European leaders’ love affair with President Obama has hit its first snag: Obama is pushing Europe to spend more to battle the financial crisis, while Europe would prefer to focus on stricter regulation, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The Americans should be more modest about giving lessons, because the crisis comes from them,” said France’s recovery minister.

Obama does agree that tougher regulation is in order, but his emphasis on spending could increase tension at this weekend’s summit of finance ministers in London. The Europeans are hardly unified in any case: Britain has leaned closer to Obama’s recovery model than to Europe’s; the French and Germans, meanwhile, aren’t quite in sync with their own goals. (More financial crisis stories.)