Posted on 08/19/2012 12:26:26 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
German eurosceptics quietly hope that Finland will become the first creditor state to storm out of monetary union in disgust, opening the way for others to break free.
Once Finns break the taboo, it would be easier for Germany to extricate itself from an escalating national disaster without inviting opprobrium from across Europe, or so goes the argument.
“We can’t start this off, but the Finns can,” said Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of Germany’s industry federation.
Berlin’s policy elites are constrained by their honourable - if misdirected - feelings of moral duty towards the euro. They cannot bring themselves to plunge the dagger.
Finnish exit - or FIXIT, as they say in Helsinki - is certainly a plausible hypothesis. The Finns have no ensnaring duty to a mystical “Europe“. They did not join the EU until 1995, and only then with widespread dissent.
“Sweden and Denmark both held referendums on the euro, and both said no. We were never allowed to vote,” said Timo Soini, leader of the True Finns party. That was a mistake. The nation is not locked into ritual assent.
Finns obeyed the rules of EU membership with scrupulous care, while others gamed the system. “Our Lutheran morality, if you will,” said foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja.
They alone faced the fiscal implications of EMU for small economies out of cyclical alignment. “In Finland, a handshake is final. We thought we had a deal that every country would look after its own finances, only to find the deal was broken,” said Alexander Stubb, Finland’s Europe minister.
Yet looming over everything else is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a “19th Century power” - to borrow Robert Kagan’s term - that has overturned the post-war borders of Europe once already by attacking Georgia and annexing South Ossetia
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
After a 2 1/2 year stalemate (Winter 1941-Spring 1944), the Soviets went on the offensive and recaptured much of their lost territory (which was actually the Finland had lost to them a few years earlier) before being halted by a pair of decisive Finnish victories that allowed them to sue for peace on somewhat favorable terms.
Hitler refused to accept their withdraw from the war, so the Finns spent the last eight months of the war forcing the German 20th Mountain Army out of extreme northern Finland (Lapland).
I'm not saying that the Finns were completely blameless for their actions in WW2, but they certainly had legitimate grievances with the Soviet Union. Since the Finns did effectively switch sides (and the American and British governments were sympathetic to their grievances with the Soviets), they were given little more than a slap on the wrist by the terms of the Moscow Armistice. They had to formally accept the loss of the territory they'd ceded to the Soviets in 1940, pay $300,000,000 in reparations to the Soviets (later reduced to $226,500,000), legalize the Communist Party of Finland, ban all fascist political parties, and accept set limits on their military.
You dangle the bait of currency Manipulation to those in power wherein the can foll around with rates and such and line their pockets. Like we allow the Banksters here in the USA to do.
In fact the euro itself will survive in one way or another. The EuroZone is another story, eh?
They are all in trouble save Finland. The banks/treasuries are insolvent.
EU fiscal transparancy is virtually non-existant. Economic data are state secrets.
Grease was audited by a troika of EU experts. We have heard no economic or financial results of note.
Three EZ bank solvency tests have produced no comprehensive public data, just, "Everything is fine."
They're all broke and it will get worse.
yitbos
The Dutch have caught the EUrotopian Contagion, also. Dutch government falls in skirmish over austerity measures
"The collapse of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s governing coalition came after the populist Freedom Party, led by euro-opponent Geert Wilders, abandoned negotiations over ways to meet deficit targets."
yitbos
The last time the Russians tried to push the Finns around it didn’t end well for the Russians.
When they say “beneficial crisis” over in Europe, they certainly emphasize the “crisis” part. The people at the top have already figured out how they’re going to benefit. Doesn’t mean they stop the pain when the little people want it to stop, remember.
When the people at the bottom vote in socialists to raid the treasury and borrow to insolvency, they voted, somewhere down the line, to pay for it one way or another.
The guys at the top will always protect their assets.
yitbos
Nope; they were even denied that vote. The decision-makers in the EU at the “supranational” level are all appointed.
They all live in republics. They elect officials to make those decisions.
yitbos
They did that in the USSR too, but those elected officials instead appointed unaccountable politicians to make decisions that the people don’t want. Like the EU does today.
Unlike the Serbs.
Thanks for the air combat accounting, Stonewall. That’s a part of the Finn combat that I wasn’t aware of.
As an interesting bit of trivia, from 1918-1945 the Finnish Air Force's symbol was a blue swastika.
I first heard of the Winter War when I lived on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula back in the 1970s. I’d hang around the American Legion or VFW and some of the guys talked about their grandfathers, fathers or uncles fighting in the Winter War.
The stories they related were incredible.I forgot the name of that Finn sniper, but it’s estimated he had somewhere around 600 kills using an iron sight Mosin-Nagant. Wow!
His name was Simo Hayha, aka The White Death. I put his picture in post #13. He had 515 confirmed kills with his sniper rifle and another 200 with a submachine gun when he shot up a Soviet base.
Wagner was a lieutenant in the East German Army who made it across the border with his little sister and promptly joined the US Army as a private. He went through Special Forces training, became a first lieutenant, served in Germany and Africa before going to Vietnam, where he served with honor until a Viet-Cong grenade left him paralyzed.
If you read a detailed history of Larry Thorne, such as Michael Cleverley's The Times and Life of Larry Thorne, there are a great many similarities between Thorne and Wagner.
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