Posted on 06/26/2012 3:09:37 PM PDT by Olog-hai
… Everyone knows what is at stake. "If the euro fails, Europe will fail," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a May 2010 speech in the western German city of Aachen. Since then, the Europeans have held summit after summit and pledged bigger and bigger sums of money in a bid to get the situation under control. But it's only become worse. …
Like a dangerous fungus, the crisis within the common currency threatens to eat away at Europe's foundations. By now, there is nothing less at stake than an entire lifestyle, one that millions of Europeans have come to take for granted in the last few decades. …
The EU countries, taken together, still constitute the world's largest economy. They can still compete with the US and rising Asian powers like China and India. And they still have access to valuable resources, to which they owe their prosperity.
But globalization is relentless, and demographics are not in the Europeans' favor. Europeans now make up 7.2 percent of the global population, but by the year 2060 that number will have declined to only 5.3 percent.
This is why the Europeans "collectivized" important tasks like trade policy long ago. It's the only way they could muster enough collective weight on the global political scale to keep up with other giants. Without the help of its European neighbors, even a large country like Germany would have trouble competing internationally.
This is now at risk as leaders debate Europe's future. The stakes are high. A collapse of the euro would threaten the world that Europeans have come to know and love in the last few decades. European leaders know this, but until now they have been incapable of agreeing on a counterstrategy. …
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
US President Barack Obama set the tone when he said that the world is no longer worried about Wall Street, but about Europe instead. "Every country at this table senses what is happening in Europe," Obama said. He praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her leadership in the crisis, but also insisted that it was time to "move boldly forward." …So here we see that Obama does not see the US as central to anything in the world in any way, setting up the EU as the chief superpower—he’s surrendered our sovereignty to them in a great way (and giving immunity to Interpol is just a small piece of it). Meanwhile, Germany is letting the beneficial crisis play out, while swatting France down every time they get loudmouthed. This is the kind of leadership that the “world” faces now? If so, there is worse to follow.
At a meeting attended by Merkel, Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy last Friday, there was also no agreement at all on the core issues. Hollande wants to collectivize debts in the euro zone as much as possible. Merkel is against the idea, because it would require Germany to make the largest contribution. She would only be willing to make concessions on the issue, she said, if the individual countries agreed to relinquish a substantial share of their sovereignty on budgetary issues to Brussels. Hollande wants precisely the opposite approach, as he emphasized in Rome. For each piece of surrendered sovereignty, Germany would have to move a step closer toward solidarity, the Socialist president demanded.
The conflict between the two leaders extends well beyond questions of policy. Hollande waged an election campaign against German dominance in Europe. As a result, he became the voice of, in particular, the Southern European countries, which are sharply opposed to German austerity policies. It's a role Hollande seems to enjoy.
"Our impression that Hollande would find his way back to being more willing to compromise after the elections was wrong," says a senior government official in Berlin. "Now he apparently wants to demonstrate that France is the leading power in Europe."
Merkel resents the Frenchman for gathering allies against her in the EU and even in Germany, and for taking the partisan fight into Europe's governing bodies. It seems as if the Germans and the French are about to embark on a battle for dominance in Europe—and in the middle of a serious crisis, of all times. …
Hardly. The only way Europe will ever get back on its feet requires passing through the uncomfortable - but survivable - experience of a currency collapse.
That’s not their goal, though. They want power. They will probably come out with a EU treasury once they twist all the member states’ arms (except for one member state) into giving up their sovereignty to the central government. The people who came up with the currency wanted this to happen. They aren’t free marketers; they’re social market economy types.
I think that Germany will do just fine.
A collapse of the euro would threaten the world that Europeans have come to know and love in the last few decades. European leaders know this, but until now they have been incapable of agreeing on a counterstrategy.
What other ending is possible for Socialism? - Of course that which they thought would last forever would crash on the rocky shores of reality.
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money” - Margaret Thatcher
Two circumstances will shred Europe:
1. Socialism under false currency
2. Islamicism
Omullah is trying to subvert the USA in the same way.
“I think that Germany will do just fine.”
Well, in the long run, you are probably right... that is, after the US and UK have to bomb them 40 years in the past again after they start another world war... which they are well on their way of doing right now.
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