re: "DSK: "Monetary Union is like a Marriage" "

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("The one and only.") pulled back a little of the wizard of EUz's curtain.

Money quote(s):

"the attempt by a large slice of the British establishment to bamboozle the UK into the euro"

The "project" has its adherents and proponents throughout Europe, in every nation, regardless of whether it will be of ultimate benefit to their particular nation. That's the nature of a transnationalist movement, after all.

(The British, for all their own economic and financial woes, now seem positively brilliant for retaining their own currency.)

"The question now is how much further the EU’s elite will try to go without that agreement."

The real question isn't how much further they'll try, but how far they'll get away with it.

9/24

re: "It's Still The Politics"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("The one and only.") looked at systemic and structural problems with the Euro.

Money quote(s):

"The notion of a “stand-alone” single currency was always an idiocy."

No, really, don't sugar-coat it. We can take it. No need to beat-around-the-bush: tell us what you really think.

"German voters never wanted the euro, and were never given the chance by their political class to say no. Adding injury to injury, the promises that were made to them about their new currency have been shown to be false."

9/23

re: "Prodding a Sleeping Giant"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") had this to say about the European bailout situation.

Money quote(s):

"Greece is falling into the abyss, and we already know that the new rescue package will not be big enough either to bail out Athens or to halt the contagion that is spreading rapidly elsewhere. Meanwhile, Germany’s political class appears to have declared war on its own people."

Calling it "war" would be a stretch but calling it 'ignoring popular sentiment' would be sugar-coating it.

"Germany’s regulators should at least be insisting that its banks are (truly) well capitalized enough to cope with any storm that may come. That might encourage the French to do what they have to do with their banks too…"

This gets into that area known as "moral hazard." Major banks in all the country's mentioned above (and our own) hold a lot of paper assets issued by polities without the economic wherewithal to ever make them real. So they're looking for a bailout package that doesn't make them write them off or down. It's that "too big to fail" syndrome again. We know how well that turns out. Unfortunately for European bankers, when their own "Occupy" movement gets started "Over There," it's not likely to be as (relatively) well-behaved as ours has been.

10/2

re: "Ambassadors for Atlantis"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") relays a story that all diplomats should become familiar with.

What were the "Ambassadors for Atlantis":

"That’s the evocative term used in this post by Edward Lucas on the Economist’s Eastern Approaches blog to describe those exiled Baltic diplomats who flew the flag for their countries’ independendence throughout the long Soviet occupation"

Money quote:

"Sometimes, justice prevails."

From about 1933 until the end of the Cold War, there are some shining exemplars of diplomats and consuls who should be held as role models and heroes for the rest of us latecomers. The surviving diplomatic corps of the Baltic states provided a significant slice of them.