Friday, July 3, 2015

How about this for a headline -- "There was horror in Germany today, as the public there woke up and realized they are in a currency union with other countries they don't control"
This sort of thing was always implicit in a currency union. The Germans are just realising, it's not just a way of creating a de-facto European Deutchesmark which is tuned to Germany's advantage when it comes to exporting to her neighbors.  Germany is not entirely blameless in all this, nor are they the paragons of virtue either. A lot of the failings of the euro are at German insistence (for example, it's pure nonsense that there's no commonly issued euro-debt - the "euro bonds" - and no transfers of wealth between rich and poor parts, both have to exist for a successful currency union). Moreover, German banks were happy to lend money to Greece that was then spent buying German products - including a lot of military hardware. Moreover, Germany runs a huge surplus mainly by low domestic demand and effectively "beggar they neighbour" policies. They've already been warned by the Commission that excessive surpluses are also a breach of euro-rules and just as destabilising as excessive deficits  Of course, the creators of the euro knew all of this, knew there would be a crisis - they simply view it as an ideal opportunity to push more "integration" and don't give a stuff about the massive suffering in the meanwhile...No doubt people will say : "Why should Germany lend it's good name to other countries issuing debt, or transfer money to them?"
The answer is :"because they're in a currency union with them"
If the Germans didn't want to do those things, they shouldn't have signed up to the euro. Which would have killed it stone dead of course.

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