Let us consider how Ireland has suddenly had to change her mind about accepting a bailout, or rather how the current focus switched to Ireland. This did not happen by some unhappy random factor, but began when Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, began to talk about the needs to hair cuts on certain European states debt. Thus the bond market had a bit of a panic and Ireland was the next on the hit list after Greece, but will of course be followed by Portugal and Spain.
Now Merkel was apparently saying all of this because of domestic politics- not surprising because Germany, the rich "uncle" of Euro wonderland is expected to get her cheque book out and start writing out billions in bailout money to southern Europe. Or at least that is what the euro federalists want to see happen. Whatever her own personal view of the EU, Merkel is treading a fine line because there are those in Germany who have finally started to wake up to the nightmare that was created when the single currency came into being. The Germans were told, 'don't worry, the Euro will be as good as the Mark', whereas in reality the Mark was attached to the vast spending and inefficient ways of the peasantry of southern Europe(who are upset at such things as not being able to retire at 60) and in Ireland's case a massive housing boom. So it is not surprising that some Germans are not happy about the current state of affairs.
This makes me wonder, if Merkel could do for us Euro realists, what Blucher did for Wellington at Waterloo and thus saving us all from a tyrant, but in the 21st century instance by intentionally or not save us all from the dream of constant bailouts and support of moral hazard. In fact, Merkel might even be in the vanguard of the final collapse of the Euro- and if we are to believe President Van Roumpy - the end of the EU itself .
One can only hope.....
1 comments:
Funny you should mention Blucher. His was , of course, the decisive intervention at Waterloo. There's rather a splendid tapestry of his meeting with Wellington in the House of Lords. (The death of Nelson is on the wall facing).
Yet in British consciousness he is often seen as somehow arriving in time to join the cheering. My father was a great stickler for punctuality and sometimes used to upbraid me "You're like Blucher - late!"
It is late in the day but Frau Merkel may yet save the nations of Europe from that great thief of Europe, the EU - even if unwillingly and unwittingly.
Yet she was in recent discussions with Vladimir Putin where the principle of an EU/Russian currency union was discussed as a possibility. With her privileged upbringing in communist East Germany, experience as agitprop secretary in her branch of the FDJ( the unisex Hitler Youth of the communist dispensation) and excellent Russian, they must have found much in common.
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