Posted on 09/23/2025 4:29:02 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The ship “Euro” is steaming full speed toward the iceberg that has long been visible.
Looking at the emaciated EU economy, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls for a push to restore competitiveness. What never crosses her mind is that it is precisely the ecosocialist agenda of her own administration that now threatens the very economic survival of the Union.
Every narrative needs its hero. In the fairy tale of a prosperous and expanding European Union, Mario Draghi -- once president of the European Central Bank and later unelected, technocratic prime minister of Italy -- was mythologized by the media as the savior of the Eurozone, and by extension, the EU.
Draghi the Magician
His famous “whatever-it-takes” line in the midst of the sovereign debt crisis a decade and a half ago still echoes: it turned the ECB into Brussels’ money-printing machine. Out of that supposedly heroic state rescue by credit-pumping grew a power apparatus that today runs an ecologist command economy. Forgotten in the process was that capital comes from savings -- not the push of a button inside the ECB tower.
This peculiar understanding of economics, combined with ostentatious ignorance of reality, has become the trademark of Brussels politics. Real problems exist only until they can be regulated away at the green table with yet another subsidy fund.
And whenever the going gets tough, especially with regard to the public finances of the EU’s key pillars like France, Italy, and increasingly Germany -- Mario Draghi emerges once again from the fog of decline, stylized as the radiant savior. And once more, in the shadow of the Eurozone’s persistent deindustrialization and permanent recession, the Italian has produced one of his notorious reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I think that the EU green fantasy regulations and product regulations are the millstone around the neck of the EU and the time has come to sink or swim. I once saw a video about EU product regulations. Simple items like a bath towel or a toothbrush each had about one hundred EU product regulations (written by unelected bureaucrats) that the manufacturers had to comply with.
Gee, I thought this was going to be an NYS thread...
Roger Waters:
Bartender, what is wrong with me?
Why am I so out of breath?
The captain said, “Excuse me, ma’am’
This species has overregulated itself to death”
And I thought the endless printing of worthless paper would keep us out of trouble.
When I learned that I knew that the EU would not last and this was not even a serious attempt at a "united Europe".
The vacuous, chattering class has replaced statesmen with the likes of this woman, who has almost no idea what it is like to run a business, make a profit large or small, hire and motivate and fire as necessary a staff, innovate an idea into an actual, functioning product that people want, and the like.
The European Union was a dream fueled by European Communists, though they sometimes used other "party" names to obscure the work. Their answer to problems is often the empty political phrase "more Europe."
When the European Commission types speak of "competitiveness," it is within the framework of political competition. THEY want to control, which is the antithesis of liberty, that magical realm where invention and true competition blossom. Liberty has, is and will be opposed at every step by government.
The "more Europe" chattering class of the EU is government. The enemy of liberty, by degree. The smallest government is therefore to be sought by those who would compete and be free, while the largest "more Europe" class works against that, because it is in their nature so to do.
Europe bores me.
When I was in Germany way back in 1988 you were only allowed to wash your car at approved car washes where the water runoff is captured.
“Forgotten in the process was that capital comes from savings — not the push of a button inside the ECB tower.”
Actually no! Most of the “money printing” and lending is done by your local bank through the magic of fractional reserve.
Because of fractional reserve banks end up being able to “create” and lend 10 times what is saved!
Yes the central bank can also contribute to this but it’s much smaller and it does so when there’s a crisis.
There was a recent video of President Trump and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. President Trump stated the truth about the wind and solar energy fiasco. He went into some detail, and the Commissioner just sat there. She could not refute anything he said.
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