As he traveled across the European continent, President Aquino told people back home that he was on a fruitful trip of economic significance. The man on the street, who had seen the ancientness and grandeur of Paris and Madrid on TV screens, largely agreed. Europe, the major destination of our hardworking domestic helpers, is, by our reckoning the other land of milk and honey. The US, of course, is first and foremost.

Yet, Europe, from where Mr. Aquino promised to return with  “a long list of accomplishments” is no longer the Europe of prosperity and economic stability. He can’t bring home anything from there, given the region’s prostrate economy. “Europe is at risk of secular stagnation,” Lawrence Summers, one of the world’s top economic minds, wrote recently. Summers was treasury secretary to Bill Clinton, former top economic adviser to President Obama and former president of the World Bank and Harvard University.