They were warned, of course, when the Euro was introduced that its inherent incoherence as the purported ‘common’ currency of wildly different economies would eventually bring it down, along with the EU project itself and the economies that so rashly tied themselves to it.
It’s not actually Europe that would fail. The countries sharing the continent of Europe could continue very happily to trade and ally with each other. What might now fail is the hubristic and anti-democratic project for an EU superstate, hoist by its own monetary petard.
Lots of chatter here concerning the gory details, and still more at Maxed Out Mama;
We aren’t going to see any acknowledgment of this in DC, but the UK is cutting at least top-level government salaries, and there is much more to come, Spain is cutting government salaries and is reducing welfare payments, Italy is clearly going to get serious, and Sarkozy either will cut or just freeze hiring […] Spain and Germany are probably going to be cutting a lot of their energy subsidies for that green sustainable stuff which they are finding to be an economic drag. The UK is still debating measures, but it is certain that they will be dismantling portions of their social support measures.
Thus, the irony is that Christie (in NJ) is now following the European model; the liberals in DC who always talk about the benefits of the European approach are sadly out of date. The Tea Bag Party are the Europeanists; DC is just gasping out its last breath in DC Disneyland.
Lord, please forgive me, but I love this..when will people learn that socialism runs everything…don’t they remember USSR. Arrogant, secular, narcissistic Europeans. They the USA because of one thing…jealousy. I have travelled to Europe and heck even in Italy you can’t get a good pizza. Let’s get rid of Obama and turn the USA around and we will have prosperity once again…at least Germany will now know that to tie itself to Europe was a big mistake
For most of my life I’ve heard politicians excuse an unpopular law with,”that’s how they do it in Europe”,as if that imbued said legislation with some kind of legitimacy.
The EU was launched with such fanfare and I remember European acquaintances saying Europe would soon pass the USA as the dominant economy on the planet. They were quite arrogant about the day they’d “make the Americans pay” for their perceived sins.
Didn’t quite work out that way. Many of us wondered how the disparity in wealth and governmental types was going to play out,and unfortunately,it seems the EU went for the lowest common denominator,the socialist Nations.
Now everyone in the EU has lovely cradle to grave benefits, and no money to pay for them.
What Mike L said.
The former Soviet Union is a great example of what can go wrong. It was one thing to ignore the suffering of those in communist countries. It’s quite something else for Europe not to learn from the Soviet Union’s mistakes.
In one of the links, Tyler Durden comments that
everything is coming unglued. Well, the very first
unglueing that I saw, or read about, was right
here, at SDA, with Kate’s first report on ClimateGate.
Just as Milton Freidman predicted in 1990.
Oops, make that Friedman
Unfortunately cuts will not be done on the basis of inefficiency or redundancy but the “bulls-eye” approach. With this method, those responsible for the cuts draw a circle around themselves and ensure that they survive completely intact, the next circle are nearby co-workers, then those on the same floor and so forth. The farther you are away from the center of the circle, the more likely you are to get the pink slip. So, field workers and other front line staff are the first to go. As a bonus, these are the very same jobs that deal with the public so they get to hear the complaints about poor service. The media outrage and pressure to rehire also occurs sooner. Think of our medical system cuts – nurses, med techs and cleaner jobs were eliminated while administrators and health boards built new office space.
What Mike L and Osumashi said.
Many people in the Ukraine and Russia told us that they want no more soviets. It appears that Europeans will have to learn the same lesson.
Now that I’m finding out the financial details of what’s going on in Europe I’m beginning to wonder what drugs the people who created this mess were on. I didn’t know that Italy’s national debt was 115.2% of GDP and rising!
Presumably someone in Italy can add and subtract and realize that they’re into a non-sustainable economic mess. Perhaps they were banking on a sudden surge in Ferrari sales or women in N. America suddenly having the urge to buy 10 pairs of Italian leather shoes.
Funny how the part of the world that is lecturing everyone else about “sustainability” has the least sustainable economic policies of all (well actually they are doing better than Zimbabwe whose national debt is 300% of GDP and also rising).
When people find out the economic truth it’s going to be very ugly in Europe.
Capitalism brings out the best in people, socialism the worst. We all know this, but many refuse to see.
Osumashi Kinyobe: “The former Soviet Union is a great example of what can go wrong.” And it’s instructive to remember that one of the first institutions the Communists persecuted and got rid of was the Christian Church (though they were not able to eradicate religion: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”)
This point is of note, because other than Poland, most EU countries are vehemently secular and this has been a trend that has been encouraged by political leaders and the chattering classes. Check out the EU’s 400+-page Constitution: no mention of over a thousand years of Judeo-Christian heritage and all of the cultural riches the Church brought to not only Europe but the world.
In another thread, “The Technocrats’ New Clothes,” Victor Davis Hanson points out that “Apparently because Europeans did not drawl and go to church, we were supposed to believe that they had reinvented finance, and loans could be floated rather than paid back.”
Canada’s been drifting the same way for a long time and under Trudeaupia our move to secular humanist socialism accelerated (these days, 80% of Canadians don’t attend a church or synagogue on a regular basis, whereas in the early ’60s only 20% didn’t). And look at what’s happening in the US with Obama at the helm (sic). North America should be looking at Europe and their Utopian EU with eyes wide open.
Does that mean the Amero is going to have to wait?
I’ve never really understood why a pretty good costruct – a European common economic zone – needed to become anything more than that.
Hubris indeed.
Er, make that “construct”.