Watching Euro-Pangaea Break Up
Pangaea is the scientists’ name for the position of the continents hundreds of millions of years ago, when they effectively formed one giant combined landmass. In the last few centuries, transforming Europe into one giant, boundary-free landmass has long been the goal of European elites, from Napoleon to Hitler to the bureaucrats who created the EU. It just never seems to work out well in the end, though – “unexpectedly,” as a Bloomberg.com economist might say.
Which brings us to Real Clear Politics, where George Friedman explores “The Futility of European Elections:”
It is not the policymakers that are divided. Rather, the electorate is driving apart policymakers. The German solution to the problem is so unpalatable to the rest of Europe that traditional elite politicians supporting Germany’s plan, such as Sarkozy and former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, are being replaced. Their replacements tend to reject the German position.
Indeed, political reality has constrained the actions of European lawmakers. Until about five years ago, a broad consensus governed Europe when it came to EU matters, and politicians were free to align themselves with Europe. This is no longer the case — the solution for maintaining Europe has diverged. Most important, Germany has become the problem in the eurozone where once it was the solution.
Structural issues, such as German dependence on exports to the European Union, only partly explain the change in Germany’s public perception. More accurately, German methods for managing the crisis increasingly are seen by other countries as significant threats to their well being — there is not one anti-German coalition. Germany wants to find accommodation with France. The problem rests in how the French and German views are reconciled. France is not yet leading a coalition against Germany, but it is difficult to imagine a different scenario.
The more elections are held, the more the public will force their leaders in various directions. More often than not, this direction will eschew austerity and Germany. Over time this will solidify into a new map. While this has yet to happen, the recent elections at the least are not solving Europe’s problem. In fact, they may be further dividing the Continent. And there are many elections to go.
But in the EU, elections were always designed to futile — the EUrocrats considered that a feature, not a bug, as Mark Steyn wrote in America Alone back in 2006:
You could avoid some of the bloodshed if European leaders were more responsive. Instead, they’ve spent so long peddling Eutopian illusions most of the political class is determined to stick with them come what may. The construction of a pan-continental Eutopia was meant to ensure that Europe would never again succumb to militant nationalism of one form or another. Instead, the European Union’s governing class has become as obnoxiously post-nationalist as it was once nationalist: its post-nationalism has become merely the latest and most militant form of militant nationalism—which, aside from anything else, makes America, as the leading “nation state” in the traditional sense, the prime target of European ire.
It’s true that there are many European populations reluctant to go happily into the long Eurabian night. But, alas for them, modern Europe is constructed so as to insulate almost entirely the political class from populist pressures. As the computer types say, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature: the European Union is a 1970s solution to a 1940s problem, and one of the problems it was designed to solve is that fellows like Hitler and Mussolini were way too popular with the masses. Just as the House of Saud, Mubarak, and the other Arab autocracies sell themselves to the West as necessary brakes on the baser urges of their peoples, so the European leadership deludes itself on the same basis: why, without the EU, we’d be back to Auschwitz. Thus, on the eve of the 2005 referendum on the European “constitution,” the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, warned his people where things would be headed if they were reactionary enough to vote no. “I’ve been in Auschwitz and Yad Vashem,” he said. “The images haunt me every day. It is supremely important for us to avoid such things in Europe.”
Golly. So the choice for voters on the Euro-ballot was apparently: yes to the European Constitution or yes to a new Holocaust. If there was a neither-of-the-above box, the EU’s rulers were keeping quiet about it. The notion that the Continent’s peoples are basically a bunch of genocidal wackos champing at the bit for a new bloodbath is one I’m not unsympathetic to. But it’s a curious rationale to pitch to one’s electorate: vote for us; we’re the straitjacket on your own worst instincts. In the end, the French and Dutch electorates voted no to the new constitution. One recalls the T-shirt slogan popular among American feminists: “What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?” In the chancelleries of Europe, pretty much every part. At the time of the constitution referenda, the rotating European “presidency” was held by Luxembourg, a country slightly larger than your rec room. Jean-Claude Juncker, its rhetorically deranged prime minister and European “president,” staggered around like a collegiate date-rape defendant, insisting that all reasonable persons understand that “Non” really means “Oui.” As he put it before the big vote: “If it’s a yes, we will say ‘on we go,’ and if it’s a no we will say ‘we continue.’”
And if it’s a neither of the above, he will say “we move forward.” You get the idea. Confronted by the voice of the people, “President” Juncker covers his ears and says, “Nya, nya, nya, can’t hear you!”
As Mark wrote, “Only in totalitarian dictatorships does the ballot come with a preordained correct answer.” That was also the goal in early 2009 in America; both continents are currently seeing how well that notion plays itself out.
How will it end? Not well. “Dithering Europe is heading for the democratic dark ages,” London’s mayor recently wrote in his hometown newspaper, the Telegraph. And in his latest Bleat today, James Lileks adds:
Like many of you, I look at Europe, and think: this cannot end well. I can imagine civil order breaking down in Greece, riots, political paralysis, and a coup. Is it absurd to imagine Italy splitting? A German co-prosperity sphere with Euro-rule transferred from Brussels to Berlin? Perhaps I’ve been watching too many WW2 documentaries lately, but they have a necessary reminder: things fail. And another: tribalism is bred in the marrow. Everything modern about Europe is transnational – the architecture, the politics, the thin smear of high culture that passes for art, it has a brash modern style divorced from national identities. Divorced from Europe’s sullen husband, History.
People don’t want to be cut off from national identity; the more you suppress it, the nastier it gets when it’s let out of the hole. I think the idea of war in Europe is ridiculous – the question of “over what” is matched only by “with what,” but it just seems as if some Great Shuddering is due.
After that, I’m optimistic. I’m oddly optimistic in the long run. The bigger the bad idea, the more horrid the process of discrediting it – but once it’s done, the lesson has a better chance to stick.
I’m not sure I agree with that — some goals are so ingrained in elites’ minds that they’re impossible to stop reoccurring, no matter how much evidence is presented that they won’t work. (QED.) Besides, giving people their freedom reduces the possibility of government sanctioned graft.
Related: “Larry Summers Can’t Imagine How to Solve Europe,” J.D. Foster writes at the Corner:
Larry Summers, the former Clinton treasury secretary and more recently a top economic adviser to President Obama, has demonstrated two exceptional abilities. The first is an insightful review of conditions in the European crisis and why political solutions are so hard to come by. The second is he managed to get the same column into two of the world’s leading newspapers simultaneously. It was printed in the Financial Times (“Listen to the private sector and plan for the worst”) and the Washington Post on the same day. To quote Darth Vader: “impressive.”
However, the greater story is that after discussing conditions and issues, Summers observes darkly, “Not all problems can be solved.” And then to underscore that critical observation, he concludes with a wispy triplet of minimalist proposals, none of which bear any resemblance to the empty bailout proposals announced at the G20 summit. The real conclusion from Dr. Summers, the proverbial bottom line, is that Europe is about out of options for avoiding the wretched harvest planted a decade ago with an ill-conceived monetary union. Not all problems will be solved? Very few, if any, problems will be solved by Europe’s leaders to their or the market’s satisfaction for they have no solutions.
I blame epistemic closure; likely more on the part of the Europeans than Summers, though. In the meantime, “America Should Bet on Berlin, Not the Basket Cases.” David Goldman, whose Spengler imprimatur seems particularly appropriate on this topic writes. “Why should the U.S. prop up the fictitious wealth of Spain by making Germany poorer?”
Love the “Pangaea” reference, but the EU is also one big Ponzi scheme where everyone has their hands in each others’ pockets.
So many people talk about the inevitable collapse of the Eurozone, along with the equally inevitable collapse of the EU, as though it’s a problem that should be solved.
Instead, the collapse of the Eurozone and the EU is in the same category with that of the former USSR. It’s the curing of a cancer. It’s the unclogging and flushing of a vast cosmic toilet. It HAS to happen. Nothing but good can come of it. (And no, I don’t give a rat’s patootie about the Eurocrats and other oligarchical parasites who will lose their jobs.) The only real tragedy is that it has taken so long.
The other question is how long does Germany continue to want to try and prop up Greece or Spain, if to do so allows the people and politicians in those countries to continue to spend vastly beyond their means. Once a state finds it has an unlimited debt card, you’re neither going to see them try to restrain themselves nor will you see a pretty reaction if and when the card is finally cut off (and substitute “California” and “Illinois” for “Greece” and “Spain” and you get an idea where the U.S. is headed a few years from now).
Is it true do you think that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
Germany the european enemy needed defeating in the 1940s. After the Anglo/American/French/Soviet Union (coming late to the table) Allies did so, the Americans, to “help” rebuilding the devastated cities and demoralised populations of Europe designed the economic aid of the Marshall Plan. As a temporary measure.
BUT BUT, so ample and generous, admittedly self-interested, that aid with its child NATO as instrument of those paranoid Americans to a “perceived” threat from the erstwhile ally the Soviet Union became in effect permanent.
European “leaders”, specifically the French and Germans perhaps to save face after their less than imposing behaviours in that 1940s conflict designed the European Union with the baby steps of the EEC and onwards.
Elites, experts in economics, politics, propaganda and people management read control, and snake-oil “persuaded” disparate peoples of Europe to accept their designs. If persuasion didn’t work a fall back position could be recruited: compulsion.
As the cost of territorial defense – against a non-existent enemy “perceived” in the psyche of “those Americans”- were borne primarily by the American “cavalry”, the european leaders saw their chance for their great plan.
They did not have to use “public money” to any extent for defense. Their dream to assuage their humiliation at the hands of those upstart Americans could be fulfilled by their paradise on earth. “Public money” you know that “other peoples’ money” was available to bribe the populations with a cradle to grave “welfare system”. Et voila. The European Union. Oddly the Germans are once again the “enemy” of the Europeans and their allies.
To our chagrin Americans in politics, propaganda, education and 24/7/365 bread and circuses imitated that european plan to our very great damage. OUR RESPONSIBILITY for having marched with the Pied Pipers who promised paradise on earth. but did, now evident in Europe, what Pied Pipers do: led the trusting children who followed them to their deaths.
Because? Americans forgot to remember the road to Hell IS paved with good intentions.
Russia, China, Iran to Hold Large Exercise in Syria
http://rusnavy.com/news/navy/index.php?ELEMENT_ID=15374
“Pangaea is the scientists’ name for the position of the continents hundreds of millions of years ago,…”
Actually Pangea is the name of the supercontinent that existed hundreds of millions of years ago of which the modern continent of Europe was a part.
I don’t recall who said “things that can’t continue, won’t” but it’s true. “Europe” cannot continue. I’m waiting for the last chip to fall and war to break out. It seems unavoidable to me and I’ve tried to game out multiple scenarios. With the impending collapse of the welfare state combined with thecMuslim threat, I don’t see how war is avoided. Only if European men have become so emasculated by PC multi-culti BS can Islam win. I hope they haven’t.
The only way for the EU to actually “continue” is for a war to occur in which the idea of the member nations as sovereign states is crushed and the EU beceomes the sole soveriegn entity as happened in US during the War of Sucession.
Not sure what will happen though. Most EU members lack sufficient forces to actually wage war and have been too emasculated to actually do so, even in defense of their heritage and well being. The Socialists & Communists are similar to the Lotus Eaters, they live in a state of denial and (self) deception. What will the US do when NATO nations go to war with one another? They depend on us to defend them from external threats like Putin but what happens when Farce…er, France and Germany go to war…again?
Thatcher was so correct, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money.
Europe is just slightly ahead of the US. If they are the canary in the coal mine, the US is the miner carrying the cage. We are damn close to being so top heavy with unsustainable debt that a hard economic shock will be all it takes to send us over the edge. As soon as investors feel your a bad bet, it’s over.
We have about two years to begin to pull back from the point where we can’t service the debt. Once we hit that a similar European fate awaits.
Look at how vibrant our economy was in 1900. The federal government consumed 3.7% of GDP. Look at us now as the government eats 26% of GDP.
It’s all you need to know.
The driving forces behind the push for European political unity have been the historical memories of the destruction of both World War I and World War II. The current immigration of Muslims to Europe escaped those experiences personally and have had no stories and lessons to pass along to their children. They still contain veins of triumphalism that have been seared from European calculations. Thus, the indigenous populations may be able to call for European unity, but the future Muslim pluralities or even majorities will have to fight again (and whoever) until they also are purified of the need to rule others. If they hang on to their Islam, then they will have lost all hope of peace for their children.
One thing emerges clearly: George Friedman is often pompous, late to the party and adrift, whereas Mark Steyn gets better and more prescient by the day — not bad for a guy without a degree, huh?
Unfortunately for the entire planet, Junker is still around, lying through his teeth with impunity and now flanked by Barroso and Van Rompuy — a po-faced Baron von Munchausen joined by Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. Our problems are mild by comparison.
The short version of Lileks and Boris Johnson is this: you cannot hope to get away with using wealth you do not have to print paper money to create more debt to pay off your existing debts. Ring-Around-the-Roses always ends the same way: sooner not later, All Fall Down. EU elites think they’re immune and safe. For many it’s a race to the index-linked pension and the villa in Tuscany or the Algarve.
That’s the losing proposition of the young millenium. Dessicated bureaucrats burn well.
Jerry (comment #6) is right. Witnessing the complete destruction of the european continent twice in the last century, Europeans are motivated to prevent it from happening again. Their hope was that the EU would create a more European Germany. The Germans went along with it because they on the other hand thought they could create a more German Europe.
In the end both have failed. It remains to be seen how long Germany will continue to finance the rest of Europe’s drunken spending spree.
Should it be any surprise that the EU is on the verge of collapse? They have no common language, and their common history is one of killing great bleeding batches of each others’ populations.
Great post. Indeed Germany is so much holier than the other slackers in the EU – thrifty, hard working, responsible. A pity German debt has now reached 147% of GDP. More Euro irresponsibility, the Germans are no better. They really need to impose significant authority. If the people suffer, so be it. The global financial markets must be served.
In 2009, Germany imported more merchandises from China than from France…
“Germany doesn’t want more of your eurozone goods”
“The problem for the peripherals, is that Germany et al’s rising imports do not come from the eurozone”
yet from the eastern republics, that have accessed to the EU membership in the years 2004/2006, their products are a lot cheaper, because of low cost labour forces, and there’s no customs fees for importing them anymore
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/02/21/888021/germany-doesnt-want-more-of-your-eurozone-goods/
“At the end of World War II, Germany nominally owed almost 40% of its 1938 GDP in short-term clearing debt to Europe. Not entirely unlike the ECB’s Target-2 clearing mechanism, this system had been set up at Germany’s central bank, the Reichsbank, as a mere clearing device. But during World War II, almost all of Germany’s trade deficits with Europe were financed through this system, just as most of Southern Europe’s payments deficits towards Germany since 2008 have been financed through Target-2. Incidentally, the amount now is the same, fast approaching 40% of German GDP. Just the signs are reversed. Bad karma, that, isn’t it.
Germany’s deficits during World War II were mostly robbery at gunpoint, usually at heavily distorted exchange rates. German internal wartime statistics suggest that when calculated at more realistic rates, transfers from Europe on clearing account were actually closer to 90% of Germany’s 1938 GDP. To this adds Germany’s official public debt, which internal wartime statistics put at some 300% of German 1938 GDP.
What happened to this debt after World War II? Here is where the Marshall Plan comes in. Recipients of Marshall Aid were (politely) asked to sign a waiver that made U.S. Marshall Aid a first charge on Germany. No claims against Germany could be brought unless the Germans had fully repaid Marshall Aid. This meant that by 1947, all foreign claims on Germany were blocked, including the 90% of 1938 GDP in wartime clearing debt.”
-https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/economic-history
Should be interesting when Germans freeze next winter after the self-imposed destruction of their electric generation capability in the name of the green goddess Gaia.
Europe and the US are going bankrupt, Europe first. There are two solutions:
() Find a rich uncle to pay off all of your debts. Even better, have him pay without you giving up the lifestyle which put you into debt in the first place. Practice saying “Uncle, you are rich, don’t be so mean. That is just the way I am” while affecting a hurt look.
() Go bankrupt. You deserve it, and no one else should be crazy enough to throw good money after bad. You are going to wake up in the gutter anyway. It is better that your friends don’t waste their resources on you until you wise up.
Bankruptcy of the West
The West is bankrupt. The solution is to declare bankruptcy. People were stupid to loan resources to their governments, and they will receive the usual reward for their stupidity.
The meaning of government debt is that governments have taken real, current resources and have applied those resources to whatever is now built. Almost all has been wasted, building the wrong things in the wrong places, or building nothing. Politicians have nice houses by lakes and on beautiful hilltops. That is all.
Let the people who bought government bonds take the loss. Sorry, they should have looked into the plans and the planners before entrusting their wealth to those guys. Investing with crooks will always result in losing your wealth, especially when those loans are promoted as “riskless”. Their only expectation of repayment was by the use of government force to extract higher taxes from the populace. That expectation was ruthless and immoral.
Each day, a population participates in production or idleness. At the end of the day, it trades what it has produced. There is prosperity if most have worked on useful things. There is poverty if most are disorganized or misled.
Europe (and the US) can be prosperous, and it has nothing to do with current debts. Europe only needs to discard the rules which prevent the natural organizers and planners (business people) from doing those useful things. Otherwise, no bailout or financial arrangement will prevent poverty.