“The EU is our biggest trading partner. We cannot afford to let it fail. We send much of our goods and services to Europe. We share their values. We want to crush Iran with our European pals. They bomb and regulate the world with us. If the Eurozone goes down in flames; if we let them—we’ll be next.” So said President Barack Obama on November 28. Well, sort of. (Okay, I’ve ad-libbed a LOT, but I think I know my president by now.)
Obama was entertaining leaders of the European Union. He promised them that America would stand ready to do its part to help them withstand the Eurozone crisis.
The stakes are too high, you say? For whom, Mr. President? Cui Bono? Who Benefits, Barack?
Ask yourself that question each time you hear a reporter/pundit/analyst/politician insist that the EU and the Euro zone cannot be allowed to fail.
In reply to the question as to what will happen if this colossus collapses, the stakeholders above parrot a bunch of non sequiturs or circular arguments. In the tradition of “a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it,” these reasons don’t necessarily obtain:
We can’t allow the thing to fail because the stakes are too high. Again: For whom?
David Böcking of Spiegel Online (a most intelligent newspaper; the Germans are impressive) advances the arguments against the break-up of the Eurozone. These are mostly legalistic, and are not rooted in real economic realities. The treaties, observes Böcking, don’t allow for easy disengagement. Legal disputes could arise over debt owed if the seceding country had borrowed money. And, mostly, sinecured EU official would lose sway on the world stage.
Brace for impact, if you believed these bastards, but here are the economic realities:
We flesh-and-blood Americans trade not with Barack or with Brussels, the seat of the European central government, but rather with the people of Belgium, the Netherland, Germany, France. If the financial institutions into which Europeans and Americans have been herded by bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic collapse, well then, individual producers and traders will find a way to make a living without these artificial, inorganic structures.
This is a failure of government, not of all the people, although some of the governed, maybe even the majority, have failed. The people who’ve failed are those who have eaten the state’s forbidden fruit.