Guardian
June 7, 2012
The coming of the Black Death to 14th-century Europe meant the church needed someone to blame. Since God was exonerated ex officio, the obvious culprit was human sin, though some theologians favoured Mongol hordes, the waning power of Rome, not enough austerity and the alarming junction of Mars and Saturn in Aquarius. No one thought it was just a plague.
The same is true of today's Black Death: the euro crisis. Pundits attribute its woes to wicked debt, insufficient austerity and the need for more power to Brussels. Were Geoffrey de Meaux alive today he would also blame Venus's transit of the sun. As in the 14th century, these wiseacres assure us that redemption will come from giving more control to superior authority and from a more drastic austerity than any yet attempted. National self-flagellation is also much recommended.
As for the euro, like the black rat it gets off scot-free. It survives every debacle as that apogee of dogma, a "good idea in principle". A generation of European politicians have worshipped at its shrine and they are now too old to recant. To be "for" the euro was to be progressive, international, indulgent of the rich and munificent to the poor. It was a symbol of futurist sophistication, waved like a holy rood in the face of crabby, narrow-minded Eurosceptics.
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