Supranational Government in Europe?
UPDATE: Spain’s economy minister Christobal Montoro June 5 ”called for outside support for the first time to battle the financial crisis,” asking for help to recapitalize Spnaihs banks, which he claims don’t need “excessive” amounts of money.” He’s lying.
Great swathes of southern Europe operated as a fiscal scam within the European Monetary Union, we know now. Greece lied about its economy to get into EMU and then ran its national debt up to 130% of GDP to feed a kleptocratic patronage machine. Spain’s banks fed a real estate bubble that, in relative economic terms, is three times as big as America’s, by issuing bank bonds that amount to an astonishing 110% of GDP. The difference between America’s subprime bubble and the European equivalent is that the latter was concentrated in a few countries where the government and financial institutions conspired to misuse the borrowing capacity they derived from membership in the monetary union to turn the local economy into a Ponzi scheme. Greece is now bankrupt, with its debt worth 20% to 30% on the dollar depending on the trading day.
Now the European Commission bureaucracy wants European countries to cede sovereignty to Brussels in return for a German-financed bailout. Germany, the only major European economy with financial resources to spare, faces an unpleasant choice: either it will assert its own interest and refuse to bail out the Bernie Madoffs of Club Med Europe, or it will endorse the bureaucracy’s pitch to dissolve Europe’s states into a regional government. Germany’s conservative newspaper Die Welt broke the story over the weekend, and today’s Wall Street Journal writes:
Germany is sending strong signals that it would eventually be willing to lift its objections to ideas such as common euro-zone bonds or mutual support for European banks if other European governments were to agree to transfer further powers to Europe.
If embraced, the move would deepen in fundamental ways Europe’s political and fiscal union and represent one of the boldest steps taken by the bloc since the euro was launched. Germany has never before been willing to discuss the conditions it believes necessary to move toward assuming common risks within the euro zone. Now, although the end may be a long way off, it appears willing to discuss those conditions.
“The more that other member states get involved with this development and are prepared to give up sovereign rights to get European institutions more involved, the more we will be prepared to play an active role in developing things like a banking union,” a German official familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal. “You can’t have one without the other.”
The Obama administration, George Soros, the International Monetary Fund, and liberal opinion in general believe that no crisis should be wasted: an enlightened supranational bureaucracy should emerge as the ruler of Europe.
I find this repulsive for the most elemental of reasons: the further that government is removed from the electorate, the more prone it is to abuse. The Brussels bureaucracy is responsible for the catastrophe in the first place, and one doesn’t normally give the gasoline monopoly to a bunch of arsonists.
As an old investment banker, though, I think that consolidating all the European scams into supranational entities will fail disastrously. The lifeboat itself will sink under the weight. Some of the scams are simply too outrageous to be rescued. The same Keynesian quackery that has kept the US in recession for the past four years festers among the Eurocrats.
In today’s Asia Times, I published an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposing that Germany take the situation in hand instead. Spain can’t be bailed out; France must be, at least in part.
Here are some extracts from my open letter:
….Ultimately, you will have to sacrifice Spain. That will compromise the French banks, which in turn will require German support. Spain is unsalvageable. It is better to take the pain early and deliberately, rather than later and chaotically. Dealing expeditiously with Spain, moreover, should convince Italy to adopt the reforms which can prevent it from following Spain and Greece into de facto national bankruptcy.
And all this time, I thought Germany had lost WW2 . . .
Since Europe wants another Holocaust to exterminate the Jews – and not just in Israel, who else to turn to but Germany to lead the way?
They did, but for almost four decades after VE Day, it was the Western part of Germany that kept the Russians out of Western Europe. Being that it was occupied by the U.S. Army, the British Army Of The Rhine, various Commonwealth contingents like the Canadians, and the Bundeswehr, who had enough tanks on their own to be able to say to the Soviet Army, “Want to invade NATO through the Fulda Gap? Bring it on, tovarische!”
As a result, today Germany still has the biggest, and more importantly best-trained and best-equipped, army on the Continent. Poland is a close second, and (surprise!) is largely equipped with German hardware. (The two countries are a lot closer than you might think, considering their past history.)
What this has to do with the present discussion is this. The elements in the coalition running Germany’s Parliament right now are, for the most part, from the left. The Green Party (or, as I tend to think of them, the Paleolithic Nihilist Party) want Germany to cease doing, well, anything, and go back to mud huts. The Social Democrats want everything the way it was under Willy Brandt. The rest of the left-of-center contingent are united only in their dislike of the present situation in Germany and the rest of Europe; nobody has to obey their orders on pain of death. This irritates them no end.
The Brussels clique’ sees Germany as the key to total control of Europe. It has the kind of government they approve of (leftist/progressive, dogmatically anti-civilization,insulated from reality), and an army big enough to act as a very good club to beat everyone else over the head with.
I suspect their big dream is to declare a “United Europe”, and tell the Greens & Co. to use the Bundesheer to make sure nobody steps out of line.
If Merkel and her group lose this next election to the left (as seems likely) the odds of this increase dramatically.
In terms of whether or not it would actually work if they tried it, yes, it’s a pretty remote possibility in reality. (For instance, nobody is asking the Bundesheer’s opinion of such a dingbat idea.) But the EU Council, the Greens, and their allies are, if anything, even more delusionally reality-challenged than the Obama White House.
If their dogma calls for it, they are apt to try it, even if seen in realistic terms it falls into the “Incredibly F**king Stupid” and/or “Good Luck With That, Dumba**” categories.
As H.Beam Piper once observed, the unrealistic worldviews of politicians are what soldiers- and civilians- often end up dying of.
clear ether
eon
Having run the economic table, I really don’t think the fugal Germans and related tribes are going to ration out their chips to the siesta nations by volunteering to manage those nation’s fiscal chip consumption. Why put up with the political aggravation that a real fiscal union would entail rationing out chips and dip for the never ending party? I suspect any fiscal union would turn out to be a meaningless farce at the German’s expense after giving up sovereignty. I think it’s going to turn out to be a BYOB party or hit the road Jack, or Jill, or Jose, or Adonis. See ya.
David, are you perhaps being overly sanguine about Italy’s ability to act on the example of Spanish politico-economic overhaul? By this I mean that my impressionistic understanding of Italy’s political/administrative echelon is that it is far more compromised by Cosa Nostra/Ndragheta/Camorra-type influence than anyone cares to admit. I’m aware that there have been sizeable public rallies against this problem, even ones taking place in Palermo for example; but then again, EU-ers seem to love rallies for their own sake anyway, and the crime families probably view the rallies as a least-bad way for the public to blow off steam (and also a good way to photograph the leadership of their opponents!…).
Dear Mr Goldman,
Did you really send the letter to Mrs. Merkel?
I really hope so. But it would become a nightmare for the Southern countries, as it is already hard.
My former exchange student friends from Spain are heading for Latin America or even Africa (!) to find jobs, even though they’re excellent. When I visited my Greek friends the Parliament and the embassy quarter were heavily guarded by anti-riot police. Prices were the same or more than in Germany because of the consumer tax increase. Meanwhile my employer (engineering start-up) has problems to find employees so there are now almost more foreign than German engineers and clerks.
This whole situation feels odd. They were all excellent, smart and hard working, and now the places where they have been educated and raised should go broke?
—+++—
Anmerkung zom Asia-Time-Artikel, ohne Sie belehren zu wollen: Am Schluss fehlen die Abstände zwischen den Wörtern.
“Spain calls for new Euro fiscal authority”
So what exactly would be the purpose of electing national governments? To run a foreign policy, ha? I seriously doubt the individual Euro governments will be allowed to set their own immigration or cultural policies. So what exactly would they do?
This whole thing is pretty scary: World government by unelected bureaucrats. No emphasis on individual rights. Forced secularization (except in regards to Islam). The EU is just becoming a pacifistic USSR.
The failure of the EU takes me back to Spengler’s ‘Hockey Moms and Capital Markets’ article from 2008 on Asia Times. Europe is inaccessible to Hockey Moms.
“The Obama administration, George Soros, the International Monetary Fund, and liberal opinion in general believe that no crisis should be wasted: an enlightened supranational bureaucracy should emerge as the ruler of Europe.”
Ah, so if a bunch of idiots screwed up, the solution is to give the problem to a much larger bunch of bigger idiots. This sounds like the same kind of “subprime” thinking that said if you combine enough C credits together and have a big investment bank sell it, it becomes an AAA bond. Clever.
McKinsey Global Institute
MGI’s mission is to help leaders in the commercial, public, and social sectors develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of the global economy and to provide a fact base that contributes to decision making on critical management and policy issues.
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/People
Those burocrats are saying such BS, there’s no aware government that would buy into their analyse, may-be zimbadwe
talk about all these officines , mainly from the Anglo-Saxon world, that want to sell their silly disgnostics, hey, not gratuitous, a bet they’ll add more debt into your debt ! Even the Swiss Bank UBS that laid down a scenario, in case of Germany and the EZ countries would abandon the euro, didn’t reach these results (and them know who are the rich Europeans, for good reasons their accounts are in swiss banks)
While BIS has official numbers:
“The BIS has released its Quarterly Review — and with it those infamous foreign claims numbers.
According to the new figures, a preliminary release of which went out in April, French banks have $56.7bn of lending exposure to Greece while German banks have about $40bn. But look closer, because the BIS figures have something new — a breakdown of credit exposure by type. On that basis, German banks are the most exposed to Greek government debt with $22.7bn held. French banks have $15bn.”
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/06/06/585381/bis-the-burdensharing-new-greek-exposure-numbers/
(and you can download the BIS Quarterly Review for free)
France and Germany are equally involved in Spain debt
-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696
McKinsey Global Institute
MGI’s mission is to help leaders in the commercial, public, and social sectors develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of the global economy and to provide a fact base that contributes to decision making on critical management and policy issues.
-http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/People
Those burocrats are saying such BS, there’s no aware government that would buy into their analyse, may-be zimbadwe
talk about all these officines , mainly from the Anglo-Saxon world, that want to sell their silly disgnostics, hey, not gratuitous, a bet they’ll add more debt into your debt ! Even the Swiss Bank UBS that laid down a scenario, in case of Germany and the EZ countries would abandon the euro, didn’t reach these results (and them know who are the rich Europeans, for good reasons their accounts are in swiss banks)
While BIS has official numbers:
“The BIS has released its Quarterly Review — and with it those infamous foreign claims numbers.
According to the new figures, a preliminary release of which went out in April, French banks have $56.7bn of lending exposure to Greece while German banks have about $40bn. But look closer, because the BIS figures have something new — a breakdown of credit exposure by type. On that basis, German banks are the most exposed to Greek government debt with $22.7bn held. French banks have $15bn.”
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/06/06/585381/bis-the-burdensharing-new-greek-exposure-numbers/
(and you can download the BIS Quarterly Review for free)
France and Germany are equally involved in Spain debt
-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696
Suppose the EU puts a German Banking Kaiser in charge of every region of the troubled countries. Is there enough productive capacity in Germany the solvent rest of the EU to provide sufficient resources to bail out the wrecked economies and get them running on their own? If there is enough, will the populations of the bailed out nations restructure their societies according to the directions of the Kaiser, or will they rebel?
Greece lied about its economy to get into EMU and then ran its national debt up to 130% of GDP to feed a kleptocratic patronage machine.
Some say the central flaw to socialism is that it doesn’t account for human incentive, in other words, motivation. I say it’s the inherent inefficiency in allocation of resources, whether financial or human. Where you get socialism, you get central planning, with a small number of centralized committees displacing millions of individual local decisions. All this entails democracy, of course, which led up to the Greeks being able to lie their asses off while soaking the Germans for a good time. Not only are bureaucrats expensive, they’re suckers.
But, even if the Greeks (and the Spaniards, and others) had been truthful, they’d still be a mess cuz of the inefficiency socialism brings to the game.
Maggie was right about sooner or later running out of other people’s money. We’ve seen it time and again through a long list of socialist flops. But the question isn’t so much the fact of running out of money, the important question is why socialists always meet that grim fate. The answer: millions of local informed decisions made by people with wealth on the line displaced by dozens of remote committees making the same decisions with no money on the line.
It is better to take the pain early and deliberately, rather than later and chaotically.
Spengler, would you please talk to Rep. Paul Ryan? He’s mixed up the art of budgeting with that of channeling human behavior. Dr. Ron Paul is right: it must be a sudden jolt fixing the mess more or less all at once. Doing it over a few decades relying on the good will of the socialists and RINOs over that period has zero prospects of succeeding.
We’re not Spain, not by a long shot. The analogy is inappropriate. Spain is bankrupt, which means that a trillion dollars or so of private wealth will be wiped out to give the banks a clean slate. America has problems, but the tumor is operable. Ron Paul IMHO is an idiot.
Goldman Sachs shares are 91 bucks a pop now, less than they were more than a decade ago, for the most prestigious financial institution in world history. On the other hand, gold was the best mainstream investment of the 00′s. Ron Paul is only “wrong” because men with machine guns and tanks say he’s “wrong”, and back fiat paper. At least for now.
But, you can only fool reality for so long. The “Keynesian quackery” you describe only exists because of the inherent reality of fiat currency. You can’t have a cake and eat it too.
Spain went from sick to moribund by pumping up a housing bubble, destroying the financial health of young families. Of all things to bubble (why not a space program or a fake alien invasion?), housing (and often education too, these days) was deliberately chosen to kill the Spanish people. China laughs last and best.
“Of all things to bubble (why not a space program or a fake alien invasion?), housing (and often education too, these days) was deliberately chosen to kill the Spanish people.”
Care to expand on that?
Communists don’t merely sell bonds for a profit, like capitalists do. They do so to fund bad investments made by insiders to artificially choke the system and defeat their enemies. Both systems fail in the long run, communism independently, and capitalism dependently (on cheap communist money).
Keynesians could simply make bridges to nowhere, and a few innocent ones truly believe it. In reality, their investments de facto are engineered to destroy the real economy.
This doesn’t even have to happen on a geopolitical scale. Think of Japanese corporations dumping their products in the short run, for a long run profit.
Germany is pondering its ability to scoop up Spain, versus China or France or anyone else. The dogs will get the Club Med economies in the end.
Fiat currency is one of the greatest inventions in the history of human civilisation. The gold standard, on the other hand, proved to be an abject FAILURE.
Dunno what this columnist is talking about, the US wasn’t in a recession for four years, that is a BLATANT LIE.
I didn’t endorse Dr. Ron, but he’s absolutely right that to work the cutover back to a free market economy must be abrupt. Decades of incremental steps towards socialism impelled by mooches and crony capitalists, enabled by a long series of lawless decisions from the Supremes, cannot be reverse incrementalism; it must be abrupt. He’s right on that. For me, the only candidate of interest was Bachmann, because of her adherence to the Constitution. It’s a happy fact that it, the Rule of The Land, allows only for such a sudden change if the government is to return to legal, and therefore free, government.
Relativism does not work when it comes to freedom. One doesn’t need to be a fool on Islam to know that.
Paul is fixated on the money problem which is only part of the issue, and that’s what makes him a crank.
Spengler, what would you focus on, or do differently if you were running?
Let us play ‘If you were Presidental Candidate for a Day…’
(Myself, I would simply like to see a Wiki of connections, similar to Horowitz’s ‘Discover the Networks’. Full transparency, to begin with.)
Failing Up seems to be the biggest Industry in the world.
It is amazing that there has been no public debate on the key issue of whether to cutover all at once, en masse, by returning to the Constitution as the written rulebook it is, or to attempt a long term, incremental program with the a plan to return to freedom in two or three decades. The absence of that debate tells that the Republicans wouldn’t know what to do if they did get control of the White House and both houses of Congress. What would they do? Half-baked, dissembling, triangulating, excuse making, deal flubbing, cowering before the all powerful mass media, the RINOs will be there to botch even a great victory. That’s what they do, except not so much the great victory part.
Mr. Goldman,
I agree. If, for example, urging people to buy gold is the “golden standard” (sorry, couldn’t resist!), then there’s a guy hawking gold in TV commercials on the Fox News channel, who is just as qualified to be president as Ron Paul.
But Mr. Goldman, I wonder if you could validate or refute my theory, since you seem to travel to Germany relatively often. My own experience is limited to four weeks spent there in 1986. But I remember, after those four weeks, realizing, to some surprise, that I had seen perhaps a single advertisement for a credit card and I never saw a single German actually use one. To me, that accounts at least partly for Germany’s fiscal and financial soundness. The proper realm for credit, I believe, is in business, where the credit is used to income-producing assets, which income pays for the loan; the problem in the U.S. is that too many people use credit to buy goods and services that not only produce no income, but drain the income one already has.
Are Germans as frugal today as they were when I visited in ’86?
What you find repulsive, many in European leadership positions find refreshing. I’ll be surprised if Germany does not agree to further integration of the banking sector and subordination (at least of Club Med) to Brussels. Germany gives us every reason to think that letting Spain fail as you recommend is for them a political bridge too far.
“As an old investment banker, though, I think that consolidating all the European scams into supranational entities will fail disastrously.”
Not to mention that Germany eventually will tell Brussels to go to hell and we will have the frickin third reich all over again. Never give germany that much power again!
Wouldn’t it be the fourth Reich?
I believe the real reason you find ever closer European integration “repulsive” is because it will lead to ever more Continental independence from supranational bankster klepocrats based mostly in N.Y. who have their own self serving agendas and strategies to implement. A Europe that is able to differentiate itself politically and look after its own interests is a threat to their financial hegemony.
“Ultimately you will have to sacrifice Spain”, really now? How presumptuous of you to advise Germany to advance your agenda to divide Europe. “Sacrificing” any European nation is not in the long term German national interest. It’s in your interest. Your comments are indicative of your desire dissolve the EU and the euro so the likes of you can control the European economies easier. It’s too late for that strategy now, regardless of the current difficulties, European integration has gathered enough momentum as to be unstoppable. It might evolve into something else but you can’t reverse it. Learn to live with it.
The EC bureaucracy are the worst sort of bankster kleptocrats, namely state-connected monopolists. There are no worse bankster kleptocrats than the Spanish, whose equivalent of the US subprime problem is three times as bad as America’s. They are the monsters who ate the Spanish economy — the American banks are midgets by comparison. I can’t see how it’s in German’s interest to stand surety for $1.6 trillion of worthless Spanish bank paper. Ohne mich, Freundchen.
Thank you David P Goldman for joining in the conversation. Why are there so few authors and big thinkers who show up to rebutt/confirm their audience?
Benjamin Franklin said that the Founding Fathers needed to hang together or they would hang separately. The EU seems to have found a third choice: hanging together.
Spengler, can you explain to a non-economist like me why the USA, with a national debt now exceeding the GDP, is NOT a basket case, but some of these European countries with comparable national debts are basket cases?
It’s a question of total debt and earning power. You’ll find some useful data here:
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Financial_Markets/Uneven_progress_on_the_path_to_growth
Spain, for example, has bank debt equal to 109% of GDP. In the US, it’s 36% (those numbers from the BIS world debt survey). And Spain has little earning power relative to its bad debts.
Looking at total debt numbers is meaningless. Earning power is also key. Think of two firms with the same debt: one invested most of its money in a busted suburban subdivision, the other in KFC franchises in China.
“I can’t see how it’s in German’s interest to stand surety for $1.6 trillion of worthless Spanish bank paper.”
It’s because you’re “fixated on the money problem which is only part of the issue.” Luckily the Germans are not. They know what will happen to their export driven economy, and indeed country, if the European experiment ultimately fails.
In all fairness, you are right about the EU bureaucracy. A process of deep reform is needed in Brussels to root out the “Eurorat” kleptocrats whose lack of effective oversight led to this eurozone crisis in the first place. The Greeks, Irish, Spanish or Germans didn’t lead Europe to this mess each single handed, they all share part of the blame. And the more they stick together the quicker they’ll get through this rough patch just fine.
Why should Germany care about exports to Spain, as opposed to Malaysia, for example? Who cares whether it’s geographically part of Europe? Germany’s main interest in Spain is cherry-picking smart Spaniards to work in Germany, where there’s a serious skilled labor shortage. Take out the cows, and burn the barn.
“Why should Germany care about exports to Spain, as opposed to Malaysia, for example? Who cares whether it’s geographically part of Europe?”
I’m certain Germany cares about both. German exports would be priced out of world markets if her national currency exchange rate truly reflected the current state of her economy. A (relatively) weak euro enhances German competitiveness.
Without the artificial euro valuation, German exports would plummet,(but you know that), even if she collected all the cows on the continent to milk. Again as I previously stated, your agenda here is to divide the Continent or you simply don’t realize there are considerations here other than pure economics/finance. Having followed you column for a year now, I know the latter is not true.
Sounds like a EU-phile is whistling past the graveyard. It doesn’t matter what, or how many, the “considerations” are. The entire EU experiment, common-currency has failed and is collapsing under its own weight. Contrary to your accusations, people, such as David Goldman and myself, who saw this day coming, need do nothing stand aside and watch the fun as the entire EU house of cards collapses under its own weight.
You really do hate the U.S. with a passion, don’t you? Pathetic.
How you could possibly deduce that I hate the US from my comments is indicative of the fantasies you base you analysis on.
As for the EU collapsing, I hope you enjoy standing cause it’ll be a long wait.
I never really quite understood what the need for the Euro and the European Union was? For over 50 years after World War II, Europe had individual countries with their own currencies but were united by a Common Market. It seemed to work fine, the European countries got fat and rich and spent their own money like crazy. Not wanting to leave well enough alone, then the Europeans got this stupid idea of “uniting” Europe with a common currency just so they could try and stick it to the United States ecnomically. Well, how’s that plan working out for you these days, Hmmmmm?
I think all of the European countries would be much better off as independent nations again with their own currencies. They would be able to manage their economies better and would be forced to deal with the idea that if they screwed up financially, there would be nobody out there to bail them out. A country like Greece would have to devalue their currency and make the tough economic choices to stay financially afloat. Instead, all these countries now are looking to Germany and France to pay all their bills, turning them into nothing but freeloaders. Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have all gotten bailouts and will need more of them if they intend on staying solvent. I just doen’t see why this is a better system than what they had before, which seemed to be working out just fine for these countries.
Europe “needed” the European Union in order to help the behind-the-scenes big money steal more money. The politicians went along with it for the profit and power.
The European Union was not voted in by the people of Europe, it was inflicted on them by those in power.
I actually logged on to ask exactly that question, and scanned the comments first to see if t had been covered. I’m hardly learned about the subject, but I always surmised that the EU was created to hasten and make mandatory the process of trade liberalization and allow labor to flow freely and be allocated efficiently. Clearly, the common currency and the inability of its member states to control their own monetary policy is the biggest issue. I wanted to ask Mr. Goldman what drawbacks there would be from dissolution, as surely there must be some, even if they would be more than counterbalanced by the appropriate distribution of risk and responsibility.
“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Russia “fell” and Europe surrendered Marxist Socialism!
South American Countries are falling like dominoes to Marxist Socialism.
The United States, is falling to Obama’s Marxist Socialism.
Most of Asia is already there.
Globalization under the UN is well under way.
The management of the world will be according to the UN’s Agenda 21, the groundwork for which is already being enforced by our Gestapo EPA.
When are people going to wake up?
Or is it already too late?
Will we be living in an Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”?
We must not give up our sovereignty and personal freedoms to megalomaniacs.
Vote “NO” to Obama and to all so-called “Progressives” who in reality are Marxist Socialists.
I am an Arizonan who’s come late to the party. For the last 4 years I’ve been playing catch up (not easy for a 67 year old grandma).
I love how you expressed the dilemma our country is now facing. I would like to use some of your comments, with your permission, to others I know because what you explained in a few sentences would take paragraphs for me.
Please keep spreading the word. We all need to do our part. I hope to get a reply with your permission to use some of your summation you posted with David Goldman.
I clearly hadn’t had enough coffee, because when I first saw the title, I read it as:
Supernatural Government in Europe?
Actually, that might be the only viable solution at this point.
+1…………
“The EC bureaucracy are the worst sort of bankster kleptocrats, namely state-connected monopolists.”
Pure, unalloyed beauty in truth, that.
Failing UP!
I’m so tired of rants about the ‘corporations’- they are merely agents of the ‘sovereigns’: Crown corporations.
GoldSachs doesn’t create Treasury bonds, it just packages them for sale.
Obama Lunges Toward Global Government
http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2012/06/05/obama_lunges_toward_global_government
Unfortunately we have in Germany no conservative party, they are all left wing at the moment, that means what they wish for is more important than reality (Wunschdenken). But when the wind changes it goes in opposite direction, a typical reflex here.
I still hope there will be more clear analysis and right decisions.
Thanks to David P. Goldman for the letter to Mrs. Merkel.
“Paul is fixated on the money problem which is only part of the issue, and that’s what makes him a crank.” Well at least David uses the term bankster for some (but not most) of his erstwhile colleagues. There is progress.
Then per the comment above, there’s the slouching of Berlin toward Moscow and Beijing if their export markets in the rest of Europe collapse. D.C. won’t like that.
The Gernans(to re-use an old quote), have fettered themselves to a corpse!
Some PJMEDIA writers are in a gernamnophilic bubble this week.
Virtuous Germans:
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=272813
Its not about holding the sons accountable for the sins of the fathers. It’s when the sons commit sins of their own.
David, you will forgive some of us if we could not care less as to the fate of Germany (or Europe, for that matter), or care much for the wonderfulness of its industrious virtues.
I see in you some of what I saw in my father, a Jewish ‘mitteleuropean’ from a German speaking town in Bukovina.
Till the end of his life, and despite the sufferings and deaths visited on his family by WW2, he enjoyed speaking German, reading and writing German, German cars, German cameras, visiting Germany . . .
It was partly pathetic, to me, in a way. Why do grown men act this way?
Truly no offense meant. But it is a phenomenon among many Jews of his time and place.
It is simply an admiration for things done well, and cleverness, and hard work and skill with the hands and mind? Or is it something Freud would have fun making up theories about?
Offhand, I would prefer a Churchill or a Thatcher to any German Chancellor, even one so intelligent and so supportive of Israel as Angela Merkel. But it is what it is.
My God states that people pay for their own sins, not for the sins of their parents. If I had the opportunity to strangle a German who actually murdered Jews (or other innocents) I would do so happily. Germans who were not born in 1939, or were very young (e.g., Pope Benedict XVI) and who repudiate Nazis must be judged on their own merits. Some of my best friends are German, and I enjoy speaking German. It is another thing to discuss the flaws in German culture; in some ways, Goethe leads to Heidegger and his disgusting amoralism (although Goethe himself was a good as well as a great man).
Interesting. Churchill was a great man in the balance, to be sure, but as regards our people, greatly oversold.
Not so Merkel, who seems a great friend, though her inability to sever links with Iran is troublesome. Siemens must have quite a bit of influence.
I hope we do not once again see a day when German equipment contributes to Jewish deaths, but it is a distinct possibility.
He allowed the colonial office to steal and maneuver Palestine from the Jews and solidify the Arab hold on the ancestral Jewish homeland – directly and indirectly resulting in excess Jewish deaths.
Though fewer than Roosevelt, to be sure.
And what does one make of poll after poll showing German man-in-the-street antipathy towards Jews and Israel?
Do you think the Green fascists and anarchists in Germany would have any moral qualms about allowing Israel to be overrun, never mind the German hard right?
I’m not bitter, I only sound that way
EU sucks.
UKIP ftw.
Most Germans (like most Europeans) are disgustingly anti-Israel and to some extent anti-Semitic–perhaps 55%, from the polling data. But there are plenty of Germans who are very pro-Israel. The German left are awful, as well as the extreme right. I feel quite comfortable in Berlin. Dresden would be a different story.
Exactly. Regarding modern German anti-semitism (also applicable to non Muslim European anti-semitism elsewhere), Freud would have an easy time figuring out that one.
Does the 55% represent enthnic Germans only or does it also include the well-established Turkish Muslim community & their German-born children? I would have thought the ethnic French were more anti-semitic.
Antissemitism has usually been more virulent across the Rhein, and in Mittle Europa
http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/as_poll_2009#Germany
-http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/as_poll_2009#Poland
-http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/as_poll_2009#France
Would someone please remind the Europhiles that (at least as I read history) in the history of European Colonialism, the WORST practitioners were the BELGIANS!. They should ponder that before they take any irrevocable steps. Which is better, to be Governed? Or Ruled?
Impeccable reasoning, timely advice, appropriate measures.
All destined, alas, to fall on deaf ears. You are asking an
entrenched ruling elite to resign their place in the House of Pride.
Please excuse me but the effort is foredoomed.
You are not talking to the moving parties of the French Revolution,
circa 1790, but to the Russian Imperial Court, circa 1913.
They understand well enough that their position is untenable
in the long run- even in the medium term. What they are doing is
attempting to string matters along until it’s somebody else’s
burden to make the fateful choice. Just as in the USA,
California in particular. For pride and power, our masters will sacrifice everything. Including us.
“This whole thing is pretty scary: World government by unelected bureaucrats. No emphasis on individual rights. Forced secularization (except in regards to Islam). The EU is just becoming a pacifistic USSR.”
Per the commenter above who accused David of having an “agenda” (besides the agendas Spengler’s quite open about, like being pro-Israel or anti-Erdogan) my larger issue is that I think David like Pajames Media is being dragged kicking and screaming into discussion of whether transnational bureaucratism represents a very real ideological threat to our way of life and republic (see Hudson Institute’s John Fonte). No longer can discussion of ‘one world government’ or ‘EU=USSR lite’ be confined to the late night talk radio or Alex Jones fringe, or be pushed as just something the hated Ronulans or LaRouchies came up with during their cult meetings. Sure, the little minions like Clifford Kincaid or Tucker Carlson’s boys can do their darndest to make the discussion about a bullhorn-wielding rabble rouser rather than who actually met at Bildeberg and waht was on the agenda last week. Nonetheless, these efforts are so transparently about changing the subject or shooting the messenger (and Mr. Jones has his mental issues) that they’re almost comical in effect.
If you want a supreme example, look at this Twitter feed: @ReginaldQuill
Where all goldbugs, Ronulans, and ZeroHedgers are part of a vast Kremlin conspiracy to subvert the West and turn the U.S. back to the neo-Confederacy, or some such bull$%^&. Anything to avoid discussing whether the Federal Reserve and even the Obama Administration itself have been subverted by foreign powers, whether the ECB, NATO, the UN, or offshore bankers or hell, even the Saudis and Qataris in the case of the Libya and now Syria interventions.
I use Mr. Quills as he’s an excellent example of what I see as the emerging pro-drone, pro-Establishment, pro-unlimited money printing “Right”. You can run off crazy old Uncle Ron but you can’t defuse the looming fight for the GOP once Mittens beats Obama — if he does in fact do it.
Plus all we’ve ever heard about when it comes to the future of Europe is Russia this, Russia that. As if shale gas or cheap LNG from Libya or Qatar was never going to cut into Gazprom’s market share and the Kremlins would be able to dictate energy policy to the Eurocrats forever.
Now we see despite the trasnantionalists’ hopes for turning Germany into the vehicle for their one-Europe then one-world currency ambitions the German question one again rearing its head. Of course hardly anyone in D.C — certainly not at Heritage, or at AEI, or over on the ‘progressive’ Soros-funded side where the Center for American Progrss echoes their masters’ voice in calling for a massive $3-4 trillion U.S. (Federal Reserve printing?)bailout of Europe dares describe this as a transnationalist coup with Germany and her banks as the the chosen vehicle. But the German question won’t go away, because most of the German people if they weren’t just shutting up and doing what they’re told would gladly take the DeutscheMark back in a heartbeat. They don’t really want this project but as with WWI their elites are foisting it upon them.
I thank David Goldman for his stimulating analysis. It will take awhile for me to assimilate it in a critical manner. Some of the comments are worthy of consideration and, alas, some slide into denigrations of one or the other European country. Indeed, it sounds like “Europeans” (sic) talking about each other behind their backs in their own press or in personal conversations. I do not like it, neither from “Europeans” (sic) nor from Americans, as such judgmental judging helps not a bit. Goldman’s article does offer aid for serious reflections. I need time for such reflection and will refrain from substantial comment until, perhaps, later. However, I would like to touch here on a “psychological” point not mentioned in the article nor having arisen to consciousness in the mind(s) of “Europeans” (sic). (The reason for the “sic” will become clear.)
I am, perhaps, the only really real PAN-European I know, precisely because I possess no European nationality, rather I am American. In my 30+ years in Europe (headquarters = Germany) I have obtained a doctoral title from Germany, one from Spain and studied in Belgium and spent significant time in France. So I feel at home or equally not at home everywhere I stay. That grants me my “pan-” status. I am not afflicted by any European nationalism. Of particular interest for me is Germany, in part because I have financial interests here, but mostly because of my familiarity with German culture as that of my grandparents. From my viewpoint as a “pan-ist” I have concluded that in many ways Europeans (this time without quotation marks) are historically benighted. They fail historically to grasp what it means to have an “European” identity such that one can speak of a new country. Euopeans have a long history, but seem unable to understand the slowness of historical evolution. As a preface to focusing upon the benightness of “Europeans” (sic) relative to eachother, I should like to illustrate how “thrifty” Germans exemplify an inability to understand others, in this case Americans. Take a current example. The Tea Party is scorned here in the German media, dependent upon the MSM from America, which paints a negative picture. Yet, when I hear a German energetically aggravated with the idea of paying for the “sloughful” lifestyle of the Greeks or any other sloths from the PIIGS, I proclaim him/her/it a “Tea Party-ier”. This astounds my listner. I point out that the Tea Party had is origins in a reaction to Obama`s overspending with the result that “we” American citizens will have to pay for it. Suddenly a light goes on in the eyes of the beholder of me. I become a guru. There is in Germany a notable sense of being taken advantage of. Once the German can grasp that “we” Americans have that feeling relative to Obama, understanding arises. What does this moment of englightenment have to do with Germans(or any other European nationality) being a “European” (sic)?
The next step I follow in my role as an American guru, a not so innocent abroad, spreading the good word in Old Europe is to relate some American history. It might be recalled that General Lee of the Confederate Forces was not particularly for succession, etc. But, once the State of Virginia joined the South, Gen. Lee, a born and bred VIRGINIAN, joined the battle on the side of the South. What is the point here? At that time in American history the “Americans” (sic) did not identify themselves first and foremost as “American”, rather as a citizen of this or that state. (I believe that a national feeling came to be in the 1880s, about the time that the “Pledge of Allegiance” was written and became popular.) I find a parallel provinciality relative to the “Europeans” (sic) of today’s Old (and so tired) Europe.
When it comes down to paying for others (Germans)or being forced by others to realize a serious austerity program (Greeks, Spanish etc.), suddenly being “European” is seen to be but a “sic”. One can find in the Spanish press or media statements about Germans that reflect an ugly resurgent neonationalism that feels even that their banks are being “insulted” by Germany. Alas, the German tv reports from Greece leave me wondering if a sort uncivil war, still just verbal, is already taking place against Germany. Even the German Nazi WW II abuse of Greece can be mentioned as, let us say, a typfication of “the” German as he really is. A virulent NEOnationalism lurks in the background. This leads me to the psychological problematic mentioned above.
To the degree that Old Europe tries to find or “create” a TRANS-national body (= “The State of Europe”) that will solve its financial problems, it might soon become evident that what exists is a trans-national body which, if it survives and dominates, will be experienced as a foreign body to the residual nationalisms still existing (as the identification with one’s fed. state still existed in the American mind in the 1860s). My personal experience with European trans-national bodies (as a guest of The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung) is that they consist of “new” Europeans who have cast asude their national identities in favor of some (imaginary) European directorate (I am purposely borrowing a term from the Jacobins). Will these supernationals, if they obtain institutional enforcement powers, constitute a collective Abe Linclon that enforces a new TRANSNATIONAL identity? I possess a fascinating book by Alfonso Ávarez Villar, Psicología de los pueblos primitivos (The Psychology of Primitive Peoples). Change the term “primitive” to “benighted” and one would have the subject matter for a fitting psychological study of the “Europeans” (sic) of today. It was obvious actu creationis that the euro was doomed from the beginning (and many a German Herr Professor made it clear on tv and some still do). Monetary policy without transnational fiscal control is a receipt for, well, that which has taken place. I suspect that the “really real” driving force behind the euro and the highly undemocratic way the EU was forced upon national states, at least for German politicians (still burdened with WW II guilt, but also with the war waging history of Europe), was NOT primarily monetary, rather the desire to found the political entity “Europe” (sic). The foolishness of the euro may end up as the fiscal mechanism that forces, velis, nolis, the political unity of the “United Provinces of Europe”, a truly transnational Bankcracy (which seems to me to be what Obama along with Bernanke is attempting, so long as the imperial president controls the bankcracy).
I return to Goldman’s penetrating article. To the troublesome picture he paints I would like to add to the problematic by bringing in some “cultural psychology” proper to benighted Europeans. Words fly about, sort of a verbal civil war! That is sad, but no one dies (yet). I am suggesting with my psychological point is that the “Europeans” (sic) with a benighted monetary policy may be forcing benightly a political union long before psychological identity with said union is culturally possible. I make no predictions as to what will happen, though I suspect turbulent days ahead. I hope for the best, but retain my American passport so that I can move on.
Dear Prof. W,
Thanks for your learned response. I have never quite believed in a Europe of the Fatherlands, because “Europe” predates the individual fatherlands; even the vernacular languages owe more to Church Latin than to autochthonous dialects. I’ve written a bit about this, for example, here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KK17Aa01.html
There are good reasons for the Europeans to shy away from nationalism, and good reasons to reject absorption into the EC; but what are they to become? Gert Wilders, whom I like, wants to bring down the EC, but what sort of Dutch identity is viable these days? And what sort of German identity would replace the bland Europeanism that has prevailed since Adenauer? I expect the Europeans to keep lurching between unacceptable alternatives.
“Monetary policy without transnational fiscal control is a receipt for, well, that which has taken place. I suspect that the “really real” driving force behind the euro and the highly undemocratic way the EU was forced upon national states, at least for German politicians (still burdened with WW II guilt, but also with the war waging history of Europe)”
Bizarrely, who is talking of war these days? Merkel, she is using this argument to implement german austerity rules, or justifying her stalmating at solving the euro crisis before any move from Germany as a warrantor of the EU cohesion, while the other EZ counties understand as a attempt to subjugate them, as the results are unemployment, starvation… while Germany pick up all the good cards, and that money only floads into Germany.
The latin club begins to understand that Germany was using them for her self development, that the EU construction was only made for the benefits of a few, with Germany at the basis. It’s not a question of religion identity, but of tribal identity, no ways Germans were accompanying the French and or the Spanish into crusades ad or world explorations, the german world was self centered during the Holly Roman Empire, through trades and vassality to a elected abstract emperor. This system worked well for the Germans, but it never was ours, nor Britain’s, and extensively Spain, Portugal Italy… we are opened countries to larger perspectives, seas and oceans shaped our mind images and our relations with the world, as the geographical dimension of our state too. We can’t remove these historical roots of our nations, just by decreating it, or to submit our future to the gold calve, that has become the norm of the economists these days, and that these same “enlightened” want to sell us as the only salvation.
Such a authoritarian governation that the EU has become in the Germans’ hands, will end like Yougoslavia, there are people that will not be absorbed, not because of their religion, but because they have differnt cultures and languages, this is not the US, where people were ask to forget their past for a new identity, we are ask as sovereign countries to abdicate our independance, it will not work, and certainly not for the benefit of Germany, that hasn’t demonstrated that she wanted to accept us as equal partners, but as sub-Germans !
Dear Mr. Goldman
You have revealed a delicate situation here in good old and tired Europe. Your very last sentence says it all, i.e., taken as a prediction of what might come to pass. If time permits for another day, I will attempt a few suggestions about Europe of the future. (Please do not forget that there is slowly becoming a Moslem problematic here in Germany, not to speak of France and England. Heck, also Sweden and Holland. Relative to a growing Islam, some moderate and some NOT (alas, as France in particular is evincing), I see a new religious factor relative to which I am unable to begin a rational judgment as to its effects and that concerns me. However, you made a remark which unintentionally stimulates woeful speculations. You note the role of CHURCH Latin (so MUCH easier for me than the “Golden Age” of Augustus) played an important role in the evolution of the vernacular. There is more involved here. Christianity through Church Latin did more than just give an impetus to linguistic development. The Church in the West, taken as a cultural producing instituion — and I think here particularly of the papacy — contributed to generating something like an European Fatherland as a cultural feeling. (I in no way am overlooking the most abominal abuse of Jewsih poplulations realized by Christianity at various times. — In this context I suggestion Emmet Scott’s “Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisted” and Scott’s thesis that Islam contributed to a remaking of Catholicism in the Middle Ages into a image of Islam. Wow, that adds a new dimension to augmenting Islam today in tired Europe.)
What I am “lurchingly” hinting at is that the decline and almost fall of the Church (in this case Catholic or Protestant) in the West, certainly here in Germany, is leaving a culturally binding “Fatherland”-feeling in a vacuum which, I doubt, will be filled with a securlar TransNation fiscally controlled by the ECB or any purely “secular” institution. I find it hard to believe that Judaism would have survived the trials and tribulations of its history in Europe without its religious dimension. Even a “rationalistic” Jew, Moses Mendelsohn (who has appeared in my study of his good friend, a pastor’s son, E. Lessing) or the hard thinking neo-Kantian Cohen entails a religious dimension. What I experience, often painfully, here in good old and terribly tired Europe is the lack of this religious dimension or, indeed, an augmenting antithetical thrust. The “religious” dimension answers no monetary problems nor solves any technological problems. But what binds people together does need a religious or spiritual dimensiion. A sane and moderate nationalism is fine. (Indeed, I believe that Obama is destroying such a unifying nationalism in America and has aided to unleashing a “Kulturkampf”). I pose a question that I cannot easily answer. I suspect that you can do so better than I. Did Judaism die with the Roman conquest? Of course not! What held dispersed Jews together during the ages? Certainly not “women’s rights” to sterilization. I apoligize. I am under time stress and I find myself wandering too much. But, I will dare a final thesis, namely that the deepest crisis in “old” Europe is of a spiritual nature. I doubt Germans, French, Dutch, Spanish, etc., etc. will feel themselves to be “European” without a “sic” until a common spiritual value system reigns. And in this matter. I am very pessimistic.
You complemented me for my “learned response”. I hope the above has not disappointed you. We Americans are mostly jusr Europeans on a new continent. Their troubles are in many ways ours. If so, my passport will allow me to escape any violence that might return to Europe, but not my “European” self. Thank you for your kind reply
Dear Mr. Goldman,
It was a pleasant surprise to read a shortened version of your latest essay on the Eurocrisis in the Flemish business newspaper De Tijd. Another newspaper, on its website, http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20120608_069 , called it “remarkable, pulling no punches”
Hope to see more of that.
Kind regards
Dear Mr. Fleming,
Thanks very much for calling this to my attention. I was aware that De Volksrant in the Netherlands had translated my letter to Chancellor Merkel, but had not seen the versions in the Belgian press to which you kindly called my attention.
Best regards,
David