Why is this a surprise?
The Eurosceptics among us predicted this as soon as the Euro was proposed. We even pointed the finger at Greece and Italy as the likely culprits. We said that the two of them would spend money like water and go cap in hand to Germany.
Now Germany is flinching, pointing out that this was not what they signed up for. Sorry, but it was.
Not often the Germans are outwitted. Does Howzat? mix with Ouzo?
ReplyDeleteAnd now there's this weird idea that the only way to secure European peace is to save the Euro (even though it will mean stoking up mutual resentment among the peoples of Europe, by giving them a decade of depression and preventing them from having a democratic say). As Generals prepare for the last war, so our present politicians, across Europe, seem only able to prepare for the last peace.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Hannan over at the DT (where else?):
ReplyDeleteWhat’s terrifying is that these ‘technocrats’ [euro appointed "National" Governments] caused the disaster in the first place. They decided that the survival of the euro mattered more than the prosperity of its constituent members; they presided over the rise in spending and debt; they deliberately overlooked the debt criteria when the euro was launched so as to admit Italy and Greece. Indeed the new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was running his country’s central bank at the time.
In appointing these two Euro-apparatchiks, our masters are signalling in the clearest possible way that nothing will change. Closer integration matters more to them than freedom, more than prosperity, more than the rule of law, more than representative government itself.