Muddling through seems less and less an objective for the elites in Europe. The cost of borrowing threatens to strangulate the Euro zone and the independence of the ECBs printing press is at risk at the peril of future inflation. However, according to World Weekly at the Financial Times edited by Gideon Rachman, 80% of Germans think the Euro zone will survive.
Former EMU propagator Göran Persson, the former Swedish Prime Minister and a Social Democrat, now says that Sweden should join. So says another former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who is the current Foreign Minister and a Moderate. The Swedish people is not there yet though. There is not a majority for EMU membership at the polls.
Bildt and Persson talks like there is no risk for the Euro but David Cameron would rather see a networked Europe of independent states fearing that a fortified Euro zone would start to dominate the peripheral countries in the EU. According to the latest news, however, he agrees with Angela Merkel concerning the need for Lisbon Treaty change, as long as the cash cow, The City of London, which supplies 30% of British GDP, is not made less globally competitive by enemy legislation or taxation.
In other words, Merkel is beginning to have an effect on northern Europe as the British press is increasingly doubting the viability of the Euro, to the irritation of Berlin who claims media has been against it all along. Detailing how an economic program for saving the Euro is beyond most people but deciding whether or not they are British or German should be more feasible and my earlier request for the official Swedish position on this question seems to have been answered. Not only the Swedish business community, which trades preferably with Germany, but also the two main parties are now for Germany.
My one or the other kind of argument is not shared by David Miliband or the Labor party in Britain who wrote the other day that Britain needed Germany and who argued for a fortified EU. He calls being “outside” the EU a disaster for Britain. Cameron, on the other hand, is pressured by at least 100 MPs in this direction. It is understandable that many Brits would not mind that the Euro zone, as a future potential adversary, would disintegrate. It is a straight forward balance of power argument. A multipolar Europe rather than a divisive block construction.
Gideon Rachman argued for an orderly dismantlement but was told that this might lead to such disorder that extremist parties might get power in Europe again. I’m not convinced this would happen, though, we are not far enough from the war yet. But the problem of how to organize Europe still does not have a clear answer that can be formulated in the press for the people to take in.
Someone wrote today that politics is still at the top despite global finance. It has its own politics and as the Occupy movement has demonstrated, as has reactions in Europe of other kinds, some people don’ t like this politics. The politics of global finance is today nation-building in Asia and nation deconstruction and austerity in the West. No doubt there is a reaction. It is also funny to see how it is assumed that the economy in Asia is more powerful that in the West when it is immature and cannot really be compared with the economy in the West.
Following what has been written about the possibilities for Italy to get out of its predicament is not particularly hopeful. The press is against Italy but evidently seasoned politicians in Sweden and also Britain is for Italy. The math, which is simple enough, is clearly against. Politicians must therefore factor in a change of heart that has taken place in southern Europe for reform.
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