Reporting back from Brussels...
In a recent tour of Brussels, I was forced into the ever-so uncannily decrypt in-roads of the various European think tanks that have been taking over the Union since Maastricht in 1993. The majority of which are German; full of, yes, gluttonous Germans. Large chunky men with big suits, well-shaven and crisp, sharp blue eyes, grey hair, PhDs from Heidelberg, or some other small town that had once harboured support for Fascism in the 40sโ.
Now, theyโre in Brussels, allaying visitors of any fear that they want to take over the European Union โ far from it they are here to help, their stretched hand full of their own native landsโ best, new export: tax payer money.
Oh the sweet joy of hearing their raunchy, thick, voices permeating the air as the garrulous German thinkers (tinkerers) and shakers explain in an element of oral sangfroid sagacity, their high-knowledge over the technical, financial, historical, political, whathever that ends โicalโ (according to the Oxford English Dictionary as it contains over 188 words with its ending).
Indeed, they snub their nose whenever tea breaks occur. When in cahoots with those frog, French pettifoggers, or lamentable Eurocratic Belgian interlopers, their noses are snubbed so high that they can only smell what might if there was no Great German Bailout of 10',11',12 for anyone, everyone, since the markets are angry and we should not try to play around. Decisive action is always required.
But there are rules to come. Not Bill Maher's 'New Rules'. No, they're German ones -- out of Berlin โ and Berlin decides things nowadays more as a concomitant, not a compliment, to Brussels.
To stop this fiasco, this national โBlamageโ โ meaning total humiliation in the German language of Deutsche โ Merkel and her Christian Social Democrat cohort will seek more bailouts for Cyprus, Spain, and whoever else, as long as they sign up to the said โFiscal Compactโ.
This compact is in the docket as we speak. British PM David Cameron sees the budget battle as the next step up before another one of those Eurozone members will have to do it themselves, and allow the Council of Ministers to figure out if their budgets pass muster. If not, theyโll be denied, blocked, what have you, but not send back mind you. Their leaders will come to Brussels so that they can be interrogated by a Council containing 27 members, with only one real head calling the shots. The Head will ask why theyโre not balancing their books by 2017, a surplus in 2020, like the Germans. I mean, no one has any input into what the fiscal compact will look like. So, the embarrassed country will apologize and try to reconfigure their books to make it look less parsimonious, and more German.
But then of course post-Compact, as we already have the ECB 'post-mutalization' (due to TARGET 2), we're awaiting the next, next step of course... EURO BONDS 2.0. Or as one German minister said to me... EURO BONDS 2.0, his arms raised, flailing a Danish in-hand a and cake in the other, flinging his fists just later.
Yes laddiesโ (or monkeys in this case) an anti-Euro, anti-Bond is coming -- apparently the German populace hate both words and there's a small committee trying to figure a new for the experiment. I personally donโt believe it, but if you go to Brussels thatโs all youโll hear about. The whimpering are along the lines of . "take these โstepsโ and youโll receive support, "do not you will fall", and so we can be certain German pressure has not had an untoward effect on these Southern countries.
Well. Well done Germany for permeating an atmosphere of fear when all of southern Europe is lit up by austerity โ which according one Bavarian Think Tanker was a "mistake".
He said, and we can imagine, โwe should have made them believe not all is hopeless and lost โ of course it is โ but we should have promised them that education and health โ I take that back just education โ would be frozen out of the cutsโ, and then he smirked. Grand, this tempers me with the confidence in both God and Germania, ah I mean just Germania, as a 20-something I discount the future so-much so that God can now do nothing to me. I know it lays in Merkelโs hands, and is not his to command, because as one Hamburg banker said to me, 'German knows it can push anything through now, not before, but now despite the opposition'. Ah how I enjoy optimism.
Try some Tugenden. Gern geschehen.
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