Thursday 10 November 2011

Eurozone, A Designed Disaster

The Euro is the child of two maladjusted cultures. Firstly, France seeking hegemony in Europe as it always has, decided this was the ultimate trick to con sovereign nations. Secondly you have Germany. Economically powerful, it felt it had the right to control Europe and using a currency mechanism made absolute sense. The French of course, were happy for them to pay for the project.

What is kept out of the current news stories, even though this crisis is of monumental importance, is the fact that the whole problem is the Euro itself. Although France and Germany hoped putting a currency in place before political union (which actually means France running a European empire) would cause a crisis, it was supposed to be small scale and as soon as it emerged, the elites would say the only answer was union and that would be it. Job done.

However, on the back of a worldwide downturn, events are running out of control (although there is also the irony that, as the EU is so badly run it allowed these Southern European countries to lie about finances and generally be unreliable on tax collection). All the talk of bailouts and debt cancelling is to save the political EU, nothing else. France and Germany consider that they are able to tell Greece, Italy et al what to do. Introduce austerity measures, cancel democracy, don't hold referendums, all to support their politics.

But what these impoverished countries need to do is to float their currency and work and export their way out of crisis. In the Eurozone, they cannot do this, so the only way to balance the books is to raise taxes (and actually collect them) but don't spend anything on public services, just repay the French and German banks.

Is this the Europe we want, the one David Cameron cleaves to? A single nation, based on a Leninist style of rule by elites, a cadre of unelected technocrats of no discernible ability? The Euro is a much worse disaster than it was designed to be, not least because the desire behind it is one of empire-building greed, of megalomania. Unless France and Germany are faced down by strong politicians the future is bleak but predictable. But the world is dominated by centre-Left idiots like Cameron and Obama, with the scheming Chinese hovering in the background, helping the French to be stupid.

No comments:

Post a Comment