The fate of the Eurozone is an excruciatingly slow reenactment of The Perils of Pauline. The latest beaming photo opportunity — as another emergency agreement was made last week and more than a score of European national leaders preeningly tried to appear relevant, if not exactly statesmanlike — will be as fleeting a source of comfort and celebration as its many predecessors. The idea of a tightly enforced injunction against any repetition of today’s debt-raddled impotence and chaos, without any suggestion of how to cure the current bout of the affliction, is nonsense. It is so even by the most otherworldly standards of the pandemic Europhoria that has for most of the life of the Eurodream prevented evil from being heard, seen, or spoken.
Last week, I wrote here hopefully of Germany’s imposing a regime in which countries in default would admit the fact, make the best deal they could, and Eurobonds, essentially on Germany’s credit, would be used to alleviate their fate, as long as they took an economic-growth pledge, including work incentives, entitlement reform, and labor-market-flexibility measures. Spanish unemployment is over 20 percent, and youth unemployment in that country isnearly 50 percent, because it is financially punitive to lay anyone off. I still believe in my beatific vision of last week, but still believe it will come in installments.
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There is progress, as Germany is effectively taking fiscal control of the signatory countries. There are millions of Europeans who remember yet the echo of the hobnailed jackboots of the Nazi conquerors on the cobblestones of the old Continent. They rightly celebrated the end, with the European Union, of five centuries of squabbling over irredentist patches of territory between the principal European nationalities — Alsace-Lorraine, Silesia, Fiume, Savoy, Danzig, etc. — and endless dynastic and ethnic abrasions. Their stupefaction must now be considerable at delivering themselves into the arms of a benign but exigent German paymaster in the person of Chancellor Angela Merkel, a stout East German chemist and daughter of a Protestant clergyman, flush with Euromarks.
Under the soft-left, twinkle-in-the-eye ministrations of the Bill Clinton of Germany, former Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the Germans reluctantly — but with Teutonic will that could have earned the kudos, if not the filmic enthusiasm, of Leni Riefenstahl — reformed German labor markets. And Frau Merkel has lightly but determinedly tinkered with the tax structure and fought for simplification, while pulling Germany’s deficit back to just over 1 percent of GDP (an eighth of American fiscal incontinence). By purposeful self-help, Germany now has an economy in which almost half of GDP is in exports, and most of that in very high quality engineered products, the fruit of the enviably diligent and capable German professional and executive elites and work force. In the last five years, German unemployment has declined from 9.6 to 5.5 percent. In today’s world economy, Germany, amazingly, now plays the strongest hand of any country, including China, which is slowing and stumbling with one leg stubbornly mired in the Third World of millennia of backwardness compounded by remnants of the Communist command economy.
France, a naturally rich and proverbially clever, if cynical, country, is the second power in Western Europe, but has accepted the trans-Rhine hegemon in order to ensure German money, via the European Central Bank, for the French private-sector banks that overinvested in debased Euro-sovereign debt. President Sarkozy has commendably increased the work week and the retirement age in the teeth of the usual caterwaulings of the devotees of the minimum-work state, and cut the deficit as a percentage of GDP back almost a quarter, to 5.8. But he has also raised the VAT (a value-added tax assessed largely — with the usual Euro-addiction to Orwellian Newspeak — on items and transactions in which no value has been added) and raised taxes on corporations, the wealthy, capital gains, and home sales.
In terminology widely emulated in Europe (as French style usually is), these are described as measures of “solidarity.” The “solidarity” consists in piling on to the productive sectors and groups of the economy the costs of the social safety hammock that is the Danegeld postwar Europe has paid organized labor and the small farmer. It is debt reduction achieved at the expense of economic growth by forcing productive society to pay more blackmail to the economy’s retardants.
Except for Ireland (which is staging a doughty recovery), Germany, Estonia, Finland, Malta, and Luxembourg, the Eurozone and even Britain (in the EU but not using the Euro) are all dancing to the same tune — though some other non-Eurozone EU countries (the Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles) are not.
Anglea Merkel is driving Europe to the ground; with is obsession of Sticks and no Carrots, is repeating the mistakes of the past that allowed nationalist movements to rise in Europe. She is wasting a big opportunity for lasting opportunity for reform, because the backlash of her actions is going to be catastrophic. She is partially right, but the way she has gone about it is going end up costing the Europeans economies trillions of euros en premium interest payments, that could have financed a durable transition.
Instead this mess is going to end up in tears. The best we can hope is that in ten years european economies will be more competitiveness; afters years of hardship; worst, nationalism; instability or worst.
Ummm….unless you want to live united under the grand European Union of Socialism, the imposing World Soviet Commitern, a glorious Islamic Caliphate or even an imperial Latin American Bananadom, I’d say nationalism is not a bad thing Mr. EdBellamy
Conrad Black ridicules the notion that the European Court can impose fiscal austerity on one hand, yet he somehow also believes that German leadership can effectively change the national character of the southern European peoples.
'tis NATIONALISM that reminded Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, Letts, Estonians and Lithuanians that they were not russians under another name;
'tis NATIONALISM that reminds Puerto Ricans that they are not gringos under another name.
Do you know for how long Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were russian territory? For much longer than the 113 years of yankeedom in PR; if they could become independent, why not PR?
Because they were independent in the past. Puerto Rico doesn't want the responsibility of governing themselves. They want all the trappings of independence, but they want it codependently.
I always felt that the only thing the majority of Germans regret was not winning World War II. Now they have to exist within the parameters of all those rules that are at odds with their national character, which is to dominate Europe with only German rules in play. People seem to forget that this is the same mob who caused the death of millions of Europeans from 1939 to 1945. The fact that these people temporarily have an overweight German Hausfrau for a Chancellor changes nothing. Under the surface we have that same old Germany who has done nothing but stir up trouble in Europe since the earliest days of the Roman Empire.
Ouch, that was an unfair comment--I assume you made it tongue-in-cheek.
Interestingly, though, you phrased it much like many in Europe (and at American universities, to be sure), who impugn the United States as a "mob" that "caused the death" of millions at home and abroad thanks to their penchant to "dominate" the world through an ill-begotten imperialism.
Oh, and as far as overweight Hausfrauen, you can just imagine what they say of the country that exported Madconald, junk food and sodas packing 100 calories a mouthful.
In any case, I admire Germans and German culture (as is probably clear by now), and I would be careful to make such generalizations.
So go and live with the Germans and become German.
Are you threatening me when you say "be careful to make such generalizations"? Maybe not. Anyway, what is a "generalization"? What is you you admire about German culture - beer, the food, surgical instruments?
Is exporting junk food the same as the German Army and the SS exterminating millions of people by muder, starvation and other means? If it is perhaps you would like to explain it too me.
I'm always open to new interpretations of History.
If German culture is equivalent to my BMW, I'm all for it. I'm pretty certain today's Germans regret the crimes of their predecessors, as evidenced by their almost complete demilitarization and their tolerance of our troops in their country for over 6 decades. If any country in the world is militaristic and nationalist, it's us.
Normally, I reserve such blatantly silly language and over simplified characterizations solely for the French. In fact, as an intellectual exercise, I can, tongue in cheek, find a way to blame the French for everything that ever went wrong in the world, up to and including the extinction of the dinosaurs. But I am just kidding. You seem to be suffering from what I believe is clinically known as morbid stupidity. I fear there is no cure. All the King's horses and all the King's men really could do little more for you but prepare one heck of an omelet.
It might occur to you, after giving this some thought, that the Germans alive today are hardly the Germans alive at the time of the so called "Third Reich". I rather not also point to it being a very crude idea of justice to blame an entire people for these crimes, but rather to the demographic realities. The Germans born at a time that would make them able to be active Nazis are today rather old, at least 84 to be precise.
You might further notice that the German people have paid dearly for the crimes of their forefathers, with Millions of Germans forcibly displaced from their homes, huge parts of the nation's area lost and its sovereignty permanently given away to the European Union and the Allies.
You might also notice that Germany has not shown any indication to be warlike in the years after 1945. Its army, the Bundeswehr, is tiny and ineffective for a nation of its size. Its military means are permanently restricted by the 2+4 Treaty.
Its constitution and laws restrict the use of the military to defense and international missions, with high penalties allotted to those who plan wars of aggression.
Your Germanophobia is despicable and sad to see. But if you must have anti-German sentiment, at least not rationalize it with accusations of collective guilt and a blind ignorance to the events of the past 66 years.
The Germans didn't look war like after WWI either but they quickly rearmed once Hitler rose to power and the results are history and not exactly history, either. I doubt the Germans have forgotten WWII and will soon use a German led European super state to start the whole process over again. Incidently, England will once stand alone against a German dominated Continent.
What an asinine, despicable slander against an entire people and a civilization of some 2,000 years. So, Germans have done nothing but stir up trouble since the Roman Empire? Why, yes, Germanic tribes -- along with many other non-Germanic tribes, such as the Huns -- may have helped bring down the Roman Empire, but, please, anyone not blatantly ignorant of history knows that the Empire rotted from within, both politically and morally.
"Germany" (read: Prussia) only took upon characteristics that can be termed bellicose in excess of any other European state (oh perish the thought of past centuries of Swedish or Polish or Lithuanian bellicosity; oh, never mind the 150 years of repeated, unprovoked French aggression/conquest against German regions, namely Alsace, starting under Louis XIV through Napoleon) once a large portion of the German ethnic sphere actually, well, became a German state in 1871.
"We know with what éclat Goethe cited Guizot's dictum that Germany gave the idea of personal freedom to the world."
--Thomas Mann, "Goethe and Tolstoy."
Rather powerful statement, especially when one considers this comes from a Frenchman -- a pretty prominent and prestigious Frenchman at that.
You chide "Volaire" above and impugn Germany's cultural contribution? One needn't take the wildly idiotic view that "all roads of German history lead to Aschwitz" to see that the German cultural realm arguably produced more geniuses in the last 200 years than probably any other cultural region of the world. Why don't you read this book you resentful, ignorant dwarf:
All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.
That was some fall, HD.
Where do I begin?
Germany was not complicit in stirring up trouble in "the earliest days of the Roman Empire" because Germany did not exist. You must be thinking of Carthage. Carthage is south of Rome, not north, and it's way across the sea.
In the stirring up trouble department, many polities helped stir the Euro pot. Austria, France, and Spain were notably active.
Spain sent a fleet to invade England, part of their centuries long quarrels.
France . . . well, where to begin? 1066 and the Battle of Hastings, vs. England. The 100-years war, vs. England. The Napoleanic Wars, vs. Everybody. The Franco-Prussian War, vs. Prussia.
Germany? Not even a full state until 1870, it was a ragtag collection of duchies and principalities for centuries, each occupied with the others. Even at its zenith, the Holy Roman Empire was unable to fully overcome this hodge-podge of polities.
WWI? Hardly a German affair. It was sucked into it by criss-crossing alliances, all sparked into action by . . . Serbia.
WWII? Had the Allies in WWI not attempted to vanquish, humiliate and bankrupt Germany, there would have been no WWII, and manifestly no Hitler.
