“Just when you thought the EU could not go any further down the road towards authoritarian excess, it gets worse.” – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Things are spinning out of control in Europe, economically, fiscally and socially. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that “Europe is in a ‘very, very serious’ situation and that success is not yet guaranteed.” And no amount of money thrown at the situation can fix the structural cracks that are now emerging in the very fabric of the continent.
And what do these things have to do with the US? We face a very similar situation in the near future when compared in parallel to Europe with states versus the federal government. The only difference is the federal government is well established. Certainly there are differences that cannot be overlooked. Yet the situation sounds all too familiar with the federal government over-stepping its reach on several different fronts since Obama took office.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard from the Telegraph hits on the historical nature of what is happening (history repeating and history being made) as well as the tyrannical nature of what the EU is proposing to alleviate problems. As one commenter said in response to the article, “I’m getting a very bad feeling about how matters economic and social are going to pan out over the next 3 – 5 years. There’s trouble blowing in the wind.”
Below are some of the summary quotes from the article above.
“Fonctionnaires and EU finance ministers will pass judgement on the British (or Dutch, or Danish, or French) budgets before the elected bodies of these ancient and sovereign nations have seen the proposals. Did we not we not fight the English Civil War and kill a king over such a prerogative?”
“Yet again we are discovering the trick played on our democracies by Europe’s insiders when they charged ahead with EMU [European Monetary Union], brushing aside warnings by their own staff economists that monetary union was unworkable without fiscal union. Jacques Delors knew perfectly well that this would lead inevitably to a crisis, but it would be the ‘beneficial crisis’ that would force sovereign parliaments to submit to demands that they would never otherwise accept.”
“We are now near – or beyond – the point of no return. Eurozone states must go along with this cynical entrapment, or risk economic catastrophe. The conspirators have succeeded. The €750bn shock and awe package agreed over the weekend clearly alters the character of the European Project, crossing the line towards an EU debt union and an EU Treasury. How long will it be now before the EU acquires direct tax-raising powers?”
“There is no recognition that the EMU system itself is fundamentally dysfunctional because the euro was painted on a cultural canopy that cannot possibly be deemed an ‘optimal currency area’, nor that these countries have been grossly violated by the entirely predictable – and predicted – perversions of EMU.”
“All responses are tilted in one direction: deflation, fiscal austerity. This is the Gold Bloc fallacy of Continental Europe from 1931 to 1936, the policy that led to Bruning’s destruction of Weimar, Laval’s near destruction of the Third Republic in France with his deflation decrees. It was a precursor to Laval’s fateful role as the Nazi enforcer of Vichy. He was later executed by firing squad, vomitting from a botched suicide with cynanide.”
“The reactionary character of the EU system is astonishing to behold. Mr Barroso – a Maoist student protester on the revolutionary barricades, turned Thatcherite, turned … what exactly – a Salazar, a son insu? – is becoming a serious danger to civil society and the survival of European democracy. Señor Barroso, a decent man, needs to step back and ask himself what on earth is going to be achieved by imposing a deflation death spiral on a large swathe of Europe.”
“The idea that central banks should not be accountable to democracy is monstrous and untenable. Besides, they had their chance. They showed themselves unfit for independence. Their doctrines were found to be pseudo-science.“
“The truth is that no British government can ever put Europe on the back-burner and hope it goes away. It hits you in the face, again, and again, and again. This is why so many British ministers end up feeling a visceral hatred for the [EU] project.”
“The enterprise has become illegitimate – it is starting to exhibit the reflexes of tyranny.”
“The most eurosceptic people I have ever met are those who have actually worked for the European Commission, though it takes a while – and liberation from Brussels – for these views to ferment.”
“The outcome … will put Britain and the eurozone on such separate courses that it will amount to separation in all but name. The sooner we get the nastiness of divorce behind us, the better.”
Leave a Reply