This woeful situation demands effective action and not more victims and scapegoats.

That leaves the third undesirable possibility, the search for unprotected scapegoats upon whom public anger can be dissipated. Unfortunately, several countries are taking this path, with undocumented immigrants and Muslims being the first targets.

But any clear division of tasks and responsibilities between governments and central banks has, it seems, been jettisoned. Government action in many problem countries ultimately ends in finger pointing Europe, the ECB, and Germany, with its (relatively) responsible policy, have all been scapegoats.

Politicians who seek scapegoats might argue that they mean no harm to their targets, and that they are helping their societies to avoid worse possibilities. But, as the 1930 s showed, it is hard to imagine any possibility worse than where this type of behavior can lead.

In the years preceding the financial crisis, increasing globalization and technological advances made it much easier for central banks to deliver both solid growth and low inflation. This was not the case in the 1970s, when stagnating productivity and rising commodity prices turned central bankers into scapegoats, not heroes.

Its government has run the country s economy and society into the ground, overseeing the world s steepest decline in output, highest inflation rate, and second highest murder rate, not to mention shortages beyond compare. And now it is systematically lying about the causes of the mess it created and inventing scapegoats.

The Decade of Roma Inclusion provides a blueprint for how to achieve integration and equality, and to eliminate unlawful discrimination. But these goals can be achieved only if the EU resolves its financial crisis, embarks on a sustainable recovery, and, above all, becomes an inclusive economy.Otherwise, Roma will inevitably serve as the EU s convenient scapegoats.

The Decade of Roma Inclusion provides a blueprint for how to achieve integration and equality, and to eliminate unlawful discrimination. But these goals can be achieved only if the EU resolves its financial crisis, embarks on a sustainable recovery, and, above all, becomes an inclusive economy.Otherwise, Roma will inevitably serve as the EU s convenient scapegoats.

Such laws also transform HIV victims into scapegoats for a societal problem for which the governments and broader societies are failing to undertake effective, and sometimes politically or culturally risky, steps that can defeat the disease. Sadly, these risky steps include things as rudimentary as open discussion of the disease, education, and encouraging people, and especially men, to undergo testing.

But China s rulers permit discussion of the Cultural Revolution only within this official framework, suppressing any and all unofficial reflections. The generalized official verdict, and the use of Lin Piao (once Mao Zedong s Vice President and designated heir, who rebelled against him) and the Gang of Four as scapegoats, obscures the crimes of Mao and the Party, as well as the entrenched flaws in the system.