re: "More EUro Alarmism"

Emperor Misha I at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") welcomed some remarks by Angela Merkel.

Money quote(s):

"German chancellor Angela Merkel very reasonably warned that if the EUropeon FAIL continues much longer, Europe may find itself in serious shit."

&

"(A)dd one source claiming that Germany has already issued orders to start printing Deutschmarks again instead of the laughably moronic “Euros” in “preparation for a possible withdrawal from the EU” and you have the beginnings of a full court press panic."

CAA still has a few DM (bills and change) rattling around the CAA-cave, come to think of it.

"Merkel is only stating the obvious, after all. If the whole Marxist Utopian nonsense collapses, which is will as inevitably as night follows day, Europe is going to be a clusterfuck and it will be every man to himself" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

EM1 is talking about more than just the unraveling of the "common currency," but then it's not irrational to believe that an Euro devolution would be just that and no more.

What's that rule about "you can't just do one thing"?

(Something to do with "unintended consequences.")

"What’s Germany, or any other European country, supposed to do if that happens?

....go down with the Marxist Titanic or try to fulfill their obligations to their own citizens and do what they have to do to survive?

Just exactly when did Greek public employees become entitled to the fruits of German, or any other workers’ labors?" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

That's the question that Germans (and others) are asking themselves. The answer seems to be (mumble, mumble, mumble) "solidarity"!

"If Europe collapses and the socialist hordes descend like the vermin they are to rape the few remaining European nations who still retain a sense of responsibility and our nation sides with the socialist locusts, I’ll burn my passport and take the next flight out to join the 21st century equivalent of the Escadrille Lafayette.

The only good socialist is a dead one."

10/27

re: "DIPLOMAT Articles on All and Sundry"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") provides a nice block of excerpts from his recent article at DIPLOMAT, "Diplomatic Drafting and Wikileaks."

Money quote(s):

"(T)the Wikileaks document dump exists in a category of its own.

The material is so powerful precisely because it blows away Assange’s banal anti-Americanism. Yes, it’s horribly embarrassing for Washington that all these cables have leaked. Confidences have been ruined. Sources endangered. In terms of writing style the cables often err on the dense and overlong side.

However, far from exposing the dark side of American/Western policies they show as never before the strengths and values of the Western Anglosphere diplomatic method. The documents uncover mile after mile of sensible, balanced, practical, timely and reasonable analysis and comment by American diplomats, often with amusing extra insights and personal touches..." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Which is nice of him to have said. One tries, after all.

"The UK has of its own free will (at least as expressed through Parliament when ratifying the Lisbon Treaty) accepted EU voting rules which allow this to happen, just as the Treaty also provides a procedure to enable a Member State to leave the Union and get back all its sovereignty once again.

Nonetheless, as the eurozone crisis gathers momentum, the existential question of sovereignty is coming back to the fore even in placid, postmodern Europe. What claims, if any, do (say) Greeks have on (say) German resources and hard work by virtue of EU ‘solidarity’? What claims do eurozone members have on (say) the UK, smugly watching the disarray from across the Channel? Tricky."

These are not exactly idle questions nowadays.

11/3

re: "Children"

Francis W. Porretto at Eternity Road ("where my shorter emissions will appear") is keeping tabs on broader trends.

Money quote(s):

"The Palestinian irredentists, as you're almost certainly aware, are demanding to be recognized as a nation-state by the United Nations. Their claim is hardly compatible with Westphalian criteria for statehood:

o Clear borders and the ability to maintain them militarily;

o The ability to maintain order within those borders, including the ability to suppress insurrections and avert civil war;

o Independence from external agents as regards domestic matters.

The absence of all three conditions from the autonomous zones along the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip hasn't slowed the Palestinian demand for recognition of state-sovereignty one little bit. They want it. They demand it. And for the other nations of the world to deny it to them is just not fair!

Mind you, the supposed president of this would-be nation-state won't grant Israel's sovereignty. Indeed, he's said he'll never do so. I have little doubt that anyone in his position would say so. Palestinians are quick to murder anyone who dares concede the legitimacy of Israel. Certainly no one who maintains it openly could rise to the top of their society. Yet Israel is a sovereign state by Westphalian criteria, and one of the most advanced nations in the world, at that. " (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

CAA bows to none in his appreciation, even reverence, for the extraordinary civilizational artifact that is the Westphalian nation-state system. Yet, from its beginning, it has incorporated exceptions, some of which persist to this day.

"(T)he Greeks, whose country will collapse entirely without an infusion of cash from other European Union states, are unhappy about the terms of the deal the Eurozone central bank has concocted for them. It involves "going on austerity," a deadly phrase in European politics. The exact dimensions of that "austerity" are unknown to me, but they're probably pretty savage: you know, forty-hour work weeks and no retirement until age 62."

The horror. The horror.

CAA has a few Amcit relatives residing within the greater Athenian metropolitan area, including one whose recent retirement was greatly in advance of her sixtieth birthday.

It should be noted, to be fair, that although she retired more than two years ago, she has yet to begin receiving her promised retirement pay.

Where do you even start to fix a country like that?

11/2

re: "Greece's Dangerous Gamble"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") looked at the Greek financial crisis.

Money quote(s):

"As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out profligate Greece, the Greeks resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more."

Likewise for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Iceland. To name a few.

"European integration has been achieved through stealth and technocratic maneuvering on the part of elites, quite frequently bypassing the clear preferences of the ostensibly democratic populations in various countries. The passing of so much authority to the European Central Bank and to appointed officials in Brussels has been inexorable, with little input from the European publics and often against the expressed wishes demonstrated via referenda."

This is not a bug in the European experiment: it's a feature.

11/1

re: "Cometh the Hour, Punteth the Man"

Mark Steyn at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") critiques a speech by the president.

Money quote(s):

"America is not Greece. There is no Germany to bail us out. Only we can do it."

re: "The party's over"

Aaron at Eternity Road didn't exactly cheer me up.

Not that cheering me up is in his job description.

Money quote(s):

"Part of my message is driven by fear, for I know it is the young men my age that pay when the world begins to unravel. My voluntary attempt at military service a couple of years ago ended before it really took off, but I may be getting another crack at it, this time by draft, in a few short years. I don’t mean to scaremonger, but the nice, globalized world of the late 20th century will be giving way to something else entirely in the 21st.

America, protected by two oceans, always has the benefit of being able to choose its wars. The rest of the world is not so lucky."

"This time it will emanate from Europe, although it will also involve our financial system in a secondary role. The massive doses of fiscal stimulus applied to economies the world over managed to delay the inevitable by a year or two and even produced a nice little ramp job in the stock market, but the hour of reckoning is upon us."

"Even if the Eurozone manages to come to a consensus on the Greek bailout (still not a certain deal), I would set the odds at even that the Greek government will fall regardless and the new masters will repudiate Greece’s debt anyway."

"The EU bailout is also predicated on forcing non-Euro EU members like Great Britain and Sweden to pony up. Do you think they’re salivating at the possibility of shoveling money into the Greek tar pit to save a currency they don’t use?"

It's also predicated on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaning an unspeakable amount of money to the EU, at least a quarter of that money from the U.S. This is known in economic circles as "throwing good money after bad." We learned about this in my accounting classes, the term was "sunken costs."

The unspoken side of that is the calculus of how exactly you can put a price tag on measures to avert, or even delay, this sort of catastrophe. I'm sure some bright post-grad students (assuming either catastrophe is averted or that graduate schools survive it) will be able to attach dollar figures to just that, in the far by and by. But that means the time being bought has to be used for preparations to make national survival more likely should the coming disaster not be avoided.

"All of this means war in Europe, and soon. Maybe it will be contained to civil unrest/war within the worst-off countries like Portugal and Italy. Maybe it will be bigger than that. It is hard to say, but the crack up of the EU won’t be pretty."

&

"The truth is that our economic policy since the crash has been to cover up, lie about, and fraudulently trade based on worthless assets like underwater mortgages, just as we did during the housing bubble. Rather than break up the large banks, reinstate Glass-Steagall, and re-balance the economy by letting those who made bad bets fail, we have been playing make believe on everything from stock prices to consumer spending (read: handouts).

Europe’s troubles may let us get away with it awhile longer, or it may force recognition of enough bad assets on the nation’s collective balance sheet that we will get to replay 2008."

This is another reason to help the EU out of its present difficulties, if we can. After all, the house of cards falling over will be our own as well.

""

FIA - U.S. experts visit Greece in reference to visa waiver program

From my archive of press clippings:

Focus Information Agency

U.S. experts visit Greece in reference to visa waiver program

8 July 2009 11:34 FOCUS News Agency

Athens. U.S. experts have started a mission to Greece in reference to the visa waiver program, the Greek Antenna TV informs.

Read the whole article here.