 In an interview, Weisbrot described the book as critiquing the bad macroeconomic policies often imposed by European authorities, who are ultimately unaccountable to the citizens of the sovereign states that they represent.These policies, he says, prolonged the economic crises in the aftermath of the Great Recession in Europe, which had a much higher unemployment rate than in the U.S., and forced unpopular economic policies of more vulnerable European countries.Weisbrot has made these arguments in various contexts over the years, for example on Greece, on Spain, and most recently, in "The New York Times" on the 2017 French presidential election.