Bloomberg
November 10, 2011
One thing nobody can say about the euro-region crackup: We never saw this coming. We saw it coming, all right. Europe’s currency area is falling apart at the very fault lines skeptics described in detail when the plan was still just a plan.
Sovereign-debt crises in peripheral countries? Collapsing governance in Italy? German intransigence on “sound money” and the role of the European Central Bank? Color me amazed.
Europe’s predicament was not just foreseeable but foreseen. Yet Europe’s leaders chose not to plan for it. To do that would have tempted fate and called their commitment to the project into question. They preferred to say, with pride: There is no Plan B. How impressed we all were. Unfortunately, that part was true.
In one way, to be fair, the euro-visionaries who drove this venture have been unlucky. Their system is being tested, perhaps to destruction, 20 or 30 years too soon.
Their hope was that Europe’s new currency would speed the development of a European political identity -- a necessary condition for achieving their larger ambition, a United States of Europe. Once Frenchmen, Germans, Italians and Greeks were citizens of Europe first and of their own countries second, the project would be strong enough to withstand shocks like those of recent months or, better, would avoid them in the first place.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment