Angela Merkel Buying Euroland without Maxing Out her Credit [BLOG]
Germany flexes muscles and France strangely compliant: the world looks at the EU's coming implosion with relief, argues Martin Cole
There was a much used expression in my boyhood during the post-war austerity period of buying things on tick. The connotation was you wanted something for nothing - hence, the correlation with on the never, never. Such is what Frau Merkel hopes to achieve in Euroland before next September's German general election. Remarkably she appears on course to realise it.
It almost beggars belief that French workers, trade unionists and their elected government, appear to be pleading for a return to Vichy-style governance. Only then it seems will their society accept the common sense disciplines of the market place over wages, working hours and retirement ages. Elsewhere the need for an outside force, perhaps to replace the discipline which the Red Army backed while other Member States were under communist control, seems the only sane explanation for the driving desire to abdicate responsibility for independence, self-governance and the right to national sovereignty.
What rational and sensible planning can France's few remaining entrepreneurs undertake when the French representative on the ECB Board, Peter Praet, is quoted in an interview with the business reporters of Le Figaro newspaper as saying this past week, regarding the Euro and Euroland: "The risks of catastrophe and the exit of certain countries which haunted the markets have disappeared."
In contrast, while President Hollande's man at the ECB seems happy to promote the fantasies increasingly overtaking the government of his home country, Joerg Asmussen, Chancellor Merkel's chosen purveyor of German dreams at the Central Bank for the euro area, is busy peddling the latest methods preferred for the real Bismarckation of Europe. Such plans were best reported, I found, in Western Australia, as may be read from this link. The quote from Asmussen that will add substantially to my ironic Christmas cheer is: "The more the financial sector can be bailed in, the less it has to be bailed out." This visualised in a normal world of properly financed and functioning economies means, potentially bankrupted institutions had best rescue themselves before they get into deeper debt. A deposit insurance scheme is feasible at the start of a boom, but impossible towards the end of a bust!
EurActiv, that ever reliable internet source for regular conveyance of all that is the most absurd in the EU (delivered in several of Europe's most used languages), also gravely informed us (read here), that Europeans were entirely absent from a US magazine's list of the world's top 10 global thinkers. This would be hardly surprising given the complete detachment from reality of all in Europe over the past two years of the common currency's crisis, were it not for the fact that coming in at number twelve, was none other than Angela Merkel, herself, the main culprit for the complete chaos that must shortly now overtake Europe not too far into the new year.
The key word that excludes Europeans from inclusion at the head of the list of top thinkers is "global". The insularity of the EU has always been among its greatest failings. Britain once thought globally before falling victim to its self-serving schemes; so too, did France, Portugal and Spain. That is not the case today. There lies the cause of Europe's decline, and given that today, such has become unarguable fact. Hence, the world can view the coming EU break-up only with relief. Mankind will be considerably better off all across the globe without the euro and the insular greed it has come to represent.
West Country born and bred, Martin Cole was a navigating officer in the merchant navy before embarking on a successful oil industry career. No stranger to politics, be they in the boardroom or otherwise, his horror at the non-democratic course taken by the EU inspired him to write his first novel, Millennium Blitzkrieg. Martin also runs some politically themed blogs, mainly Ironies Too, and tweets and comments almost unceasingly about the erosions of our liberties.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.