print“When it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service.” The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM:
“The EU Commission president, a chap called Jose Manuel Barroso, told PBS’s Jeffrey Brown, on November 28, that the European suprastate is not quite up to American statist standards.
Barroso lamented that the EU lacks America’s level of ‘convergence’: ‘We have a common currency, but not, for instance, a common treasury,’ said this slick operator. Fiscal discipline (one wonders what our commissar means by that) can only come about with more ‘pooling of sovereignty.’
The Commission’s president certainly sees the US as a model ‘fiscal union,’ with a high degree of ‘fiscal policy’ ‘integration’ throughout; and is almost envious of the fact that the US federal government possesses ‘the instruments’ that have allowed it to accumulate enormous liabilities: Evidently, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.
In a nutshell: Barroso longs for Brussels to be able to do the necessary tinkering to keep the PIIGS of the Eurozone —Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—living at the expense of their more industrious, austere neighbors to the north. (Presiding European bureaucrats like himself live-it-up no matter where they reside.) The EU, complained its Capo di tutti capi, needs to create those “instruments.”
When it comes to Newspeak, Barroso still beats Obama.
In any event, when it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service. So successfully has the Unites States government submerged the sovereignty of its states that a top European technocrat longs to be like us. We must be in worse shape than we imagined. …”
The complete column, The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM. Read it.
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With our “betters” busily brewing up the next economic potion in order to save the day – for whom? – I’m strangely feeling . . . doomed. At the same time, and though it may be good theater, I can’t help thinking our collective hopes being set on one candidate or another in next year’s election is equally futile.
Look, I’m a confirmed “Paulian”, but I’m afraid we’re well past the point of No Return economically. What his presidency would do is surrender usurped powers by the federal government back to the sovereign states, thus aiding in the reinvigoration of more local control, wherein lies our best hope.
The LINKS will add information for completing the picture of where all of us are headed unless more ethical, non-Keynesian, non-Central Bank Politicians are elected this time around.
http://mises.org/daily/5742/The-Origins-of-the-Fed
http://mises.org/daily/5824/Explaining-Central-Banks-Gold-Purchases
I, for one, do not wish to see the European model here in the U.S. nor do I wish to see a UNIVERSAL CURRENCY issued by a GLOBAL GOVERNMENT operated by FASCISTS.
Here is modern fiscal policy as explained by Ethel Merman (from my hometown):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbcbhjq_FxY
It is true, as you have adroitly recorded here, that Europe now yearns for the U.S. model of centralized government power (thanks “Honest Abe”) vs their flawed economic confederation of sovereign nation states. The imposition of tyranny by an enlightened Intelligentsia is so much easier without all of the bickering and infighting that has plagued all previous attempts at European unification. I only wish to point out that it may not be hyper-inflation that unites Europe (and the U.S.) in the end game. Debt is the creator of fiat currency. Failure to pay debt, whether through defaults, foreclosures, or creditor write downs; destroys fiat currency. In other words, there is a hole in the bottom of the currency bucket. If more debt is destroyed than is created, then the supply of fiat currency will deflate. It will be interesting, should (when?) en mass sovereign defaults occur and the $500 trillion derivative markets unravel, if all of the private property in the bankrupt nations will be legally construed to be the legitimate collateral for the defaulted loans.
Barosso creeps the bejeezus out of me. He’s a thuggish, big guy but his voice is much higher.
On to serious things, he’s lying like the thug he is in that video. In the event of a EU breakup and a euro failure, European countries would not lose their continental markets, as most would still be under obligation from EFTA and EEA (both independent from the EU and Eurozone) to avoid imposing customs and quotas on each others’ products. Further integration will not help, because even with a common fiscal policy, the EU will still be bringing together 27 different cultures, which means 27 different work ethic models.
Us Eurotrash can aspire to create some sort of USA-like federal entity, but there’s a catch. Behind the entire melting pot business, the US remains a very anglo-saxon, unitary culture. Europe cannot achieve this in any case.
Barroso reminds me of Cleavon Little’s portrayal of the black sheriff in Mel Brooks’ classic “Blazzing Saddles”. When threatened, the black sheriff points a gun at his OWN head and says, “the next man makes a move, the ‘nigger’ get’s it.” It’s a little over two minutes into the scene at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvZdVK913I.
The real threat, if Germany refuses to put their credit at risk, the bankers will be poorer and less powerful when the PIIGs default or devalue their loans. Just like the sheriff, the bankers are using the threat of their own demise to scare Europe. And I imagine, just like the sheriff, the bankers when out of site are amused at how “dumb” the public is.