Confused By The Euro Crisis?

I bet you are. Go on, admit it, you don't really have a grip on what is going on, do you? A big part of the reason for that is undoubtedly the shockingly poor quality of the reporting in the British media. I remember in my last years at school, my Dad trying to contact an executive at a paper that he was in the armed services with and receiving a stock reply about qualifications.

My Dad was more keen on my getting a job than qualifications so that was a dead end. Today one can only surmise that to write for national media, you have to be the thickest person you know and have no ability to understand anything more complex than a ready meal.

So day after day, the papers have stories, totally at odds with each other, but without any recognition of that fact, about the ups and downs of the markets and the likely success of the Euro/bailouts. Today the Greeks agree and the markets are up, tomorrow they disagree and markets are down. No-one points out that the markets make money on anything, as long as they predict it.

But here is the bottom line. The Germans are the only ones who can bail out the Greeks and they are not going to and never were. The delays and protestations otherwise, are just to keep the Euro stumbling along. The Euro is a political construct, not really a proper currency and saving it is mere politics too. The cost to the little people is entirely inconsequential.

The markets should be considered an irrelevance as they merely bark at cars. Certainly they can do a lot of damage and politicians need to pay them heed, but to us, the poor bloody infantry, they might as well be Martians. The markets will do what they will do. What we need to worry about, what we need to address (and urgently) is the bureaucrats of the EU. They are creating very dangerous paths for Europeans to follow that suit only them.

The Euro is going to fail. It always was and the inevitability of this outcome has been long predicted. Whether they will take it as far as war, only the politicians, driven by the bureaucrats can know. Greece may leave, Germany may leave it is all of a muchness; the Euro cannot exist - it is an abomination to nature.

If you do not believe that Britain should never have joined the EU and that we must leave it immediately, then you also wish for the Sun not to rise tomorrow. Ted Heath should have the same respect in Britain as Vidkun  Quisling in Norway, their faults are so similar.

Wither Europe?

No pain, no socialism as you might say. The EU needs to heal itself we hear, it is in dire financial straits. Well, maybe that is wrong, maybe we are letting the Left, the EU frame the 'narrative'. The only problem, as ever, with the EU and its Euro is political not economic.

If Greece was a sovereign country they could do what was necessary to recover, not 'negotiate' with Frenchmen and Germans. But then, that would be a country that also didn't drag down its neighbours or 'partners'. Again, politics.

If you look at the problems roosting today, you see it is the countries in receipt of EU welfare benefits who now need more and more. They won't help themselves (by paying their taxes!) and in many ways they can't, because the central power of unelected technocrats hold them in thrall. Greece is Waynetta Slobopoulos, but with a better tan. The people have become used to a way of life beyond their means and demand as a 'right' that it should continue.

That is the proper framing of this crisis; that it is a political one. A political crisis inevitable by the objectives of the EU from the outset and completely avoidable by the simple expedient of deleting the EU. It is not our national governments that duplicate the powers of the EU, but the other way around. At the simplest it is repeat government and therefore redundant; at the extreme it is an anti-democratic, totalitarian construct that will devour its children.

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.

The Euro

Governments, if they want you to know anything at all, will try to make sure that your view is from the perspective of their choice. Hence there is a 'eurozone crisis' but it is being dealt with. But there isn't really a eurozone crisis is there? There most certainly is a crisis in the eurozone, but it is an EU crisis, because that is the root cause.

Having a single currency across multiple countries was never going to work (and the eurocrats knew it, they just thought it would cause the countries to succumb to EU hegemony, such as they now are), just as countries have in the past tied their currency to the dollar and then couldn't sustain it.

The crisis is that the EU doesn't work, that the rules and regulations it spouts are just about political control and power and not good sense or even reality, but that they will not stop. It is like suggesting that it was the bullets and shells that were to blame for the Second World War, not the ideology and mental derangement of Adolf Hitler.

The EU doesn't work. It is as simple as that and the toy we have tolerated for so long is now dangerous and threatening us all. Our baby crocodile is no longer the entertaining plaything it may once have been supposed. The EU doesn't work and it won't stop. It has the power of a USSR and the ideology of the Nazi party and just like those it seeks to grab land, to build an empire. Who will stop it? It has been likened to the Emperor with no clothes, but it is not a fairy tale, it is a dangerous, warlike entity, that may soon have to decide what to do when denied its 'due'. Just as Hitler did, when he decided it was 'Poland next'.

What if Greece or Portugal, or Ireland decide that they don't want to allow the EU to buy their country, to invade with their bailout armies, what will they do? Will they accept it or fight it?