Thursday, 27 October 2011
Too Boring and Complicated
Today the Eurozone leaders seem to have fooled the markets into thinking they've cracked it this time, so let's hope things quieten down on the crisis front for a while now. In all the vast sea of media coverage and comment that has spread like an oilslick around this slow-motion catastrophe, one piece - which I came across yesterday - stands out in its refreshing candour. He's right, but I don't suppose it will stop the commentariat continuing to mystify and stupefy us on a grand scale until the whole ghastly business finally unravels.
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I like how the solution to the current crisis - fiscal union - will set up the conditions for an even bigger, and politically nastier, crisis around the corner. No-one seems to mention this though.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's the beauty of it, isn't it? I'd rather not contemplate where that one will lead, but a resurgence of continental fascism seems all too probable. Anyone fancy New Zealand?
ReplyDeleteStrangely this is one economic crisis that is quite easily understood, though the 'solutions' are as baffling as ever.
ReplyDeleteThe economic discussion is masking the political problem of different European populations starting to resent then hate each other.
Mark Steyn has become a bit of a paranoid bore, but a few years ago he wrote a good piece on how Europe's tragedy is how it repeatedly succumbs to the lure of the "one big idea". Napoleon, marxism, the EU, even Hitler--all attracted no small measure of dreamy support among the chattering classes for their promise of continental unity. The EU had a long and not unimpressive run, but what started as rational, functional cooperation became in the seventies a mystical race to a eutopia that would trump a thousand years of history and whose reversal or even slower pace was unthinkable. Having walked headlong into a completely irrational and reckless world of one monetary policy and seventeen fiscal policies, they still cannot contemplate going back or retrenching--the show must go on at all cost. Have you noticed how the obvious solution of breaking up or even the dividing the eurozone still cannot be mentioned in polite company? Every economist will admit a return by Greece to the drachma would give at least some relief to the woefully hard-pressed Greeks, who are paying much more harshly for the follies than they need to. Up to very recently the EU was every progressive's idea of an unstoppable train to a secular dreamworld, but there is more than one kind of unstoppable train.
ReplyDeleteHere in Canada, and I believe in Britain, progressives are forever frustrated by their inability to convince the public they should fear and hate the Americans more than they do. In Europe, despite thirty years of trying 24/7, they can't seem to convince their publics to like one another as much as they think they should.
Well quite - 'Europe' works towards 'ever close union' by means of a rachet effect, and any political/economic system that works that way is doomed to catastrophic failure. Nobody except a political elite has ever wanted any of this (or in recent years had a chance to say anything about it) - and now the political elite find themselves with a catastrophe on their hands and disaffected, effectively disenfranchised populations. I hope this is not as dangerous a situation as it seems.
ReplyDeleteAnd now the euros go crawling to the Chinese commies to keep their failed idea alive. They will do anything except the right thing.
ReplyDeleteHe writes very well for a 12-year-old (I suppose it's a sign of fading youth that the journos are all starting to look like children to me!) As to the problem, I'm increasingly pleased to have taken up residence in a country that isn't tied to this situation...
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