True Economic Governance
The ongoing Euro zone crisis and the potential collapse of the single currency have led to Merkel and Sarkozy calling for ‘true economic governance’ in the EU. Who would have thought it, eh?
Of course, by ‘true economic governance’, our kind European masters really mean a drive towards fiscal union and European taxation. The proponents of ‘ever closer union’ never fail to exploit a crisis for their benefit and further their goals.
However, this attempt was inevitable. You cannot have a currency covering such a wide geographic area, with a single interest rate set by a central bank and just hope that it will work. The collapse of Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy were predictable, given the cheap rates of credit they were able to obtain in contrast to the state of their national economies and levels of demand.
Yet, while the Eurocrats will always argue that a crisis is caused by a lack of integration (rather than ‘ever closer union’ itself being the actual problem), their road to full fiscal consolidation will be long and contentious – and they are very quickly running out of time and money, with events increasingly playing out beyond their control. At the end of the day, they will be swept along by the markets and events, just like the rest of us. That is European equality for you.
