The Hour of the Central Planners - Europe attempts to address the failure of central planning with more central planning.

American Thinker ^ | 12 Feb, 2026 | Thomas Kolbe

[MtnClimber]

Immediately ahead of tomorrow’s EU summit, French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the introduction of Eurobonds. Collective debt financing would be the final salvo in the march of Brussels’ central planners.

As the 27 EU heads of government convene today with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the stakes are high from a fiscal perspective. A decisive item on the agenda at Belgium’s Alden Biesen Castle is the so-called Draghi Plan.

The question hovering above it all is as simple as it is explosive: How can the obvious productivity and growth weakness of the Eurozone economy be overcome? For years, economic dynamism has lagged behind other major economies, with structural barriers stifling investment and innovation. Over-indebtedness and bureaucratic weight press down like lead on EU economies.

For former ECB president and former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, the answer is clear. He calls for a massive, debt-financed stimulus program to give Europe’s economy a new jolt. The scale and financing of this initiative mark a profound turning point in European financial policy.

It is the hour of the central planners and Euro-bureaucrats. In Alden Biesen, the European Union’s course will be determined -- and how it responds to its economic weakness.

Two years ago, Draghi laid out his strategy to strengthen the EU’s competitiveness. In short, Eurozone countries would raise €800 billion annually in joint debt and invest these funds strategically in renewable energy, digitalization, and coordinated European industrial policy. This, he argues, would close the massive competitiveness gap with the U.S. and China. Simply put -- EU intellectual processes usually operate on modest ambition.

The Draghi Plan represents a profound paradigm shift. It implies the completion of the Capital Markets Union and the creation of an EU-wide debt pool -- precisely the instrument that former chancellor Helmut

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: europe; euroweenies; leftism; tyranny

[MtnClimber]

If the central planners want to find the problem with their economy then they should seek out a mirror.

[FLT-bird]

Yurp thinking: "What we are doing (Gaia Worship, Socialism, Open Borders) is not working. Therefore we should borrow until we're in debt up to our eyeballs, and throw a crap ton of money at it. That will make it all suddenly start working."

[RoosterRedux]

This is from the same people who believe they can turn the EU into an AI powerhouse by regulating the hell out of it.

[Libloather]

Central planning will determine central planning. That is what democracy looks like.

[PGalt]

Central planners = UNaccountable bureaucrats

[Brian Griffin]

“raise €800 billion annually in joint debt and invest these funds strategically”

Both the amount and the purpose are dubious.

[blackdog]

"Tuttle, or Buttle, sign here".

(Brazil, 1986) A great dystopian story, pretty much reality today.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

It amazes me that Europe listens to Brussels.

[nathanbedford]

The economic plight of Europe today to some degree resembles United States ante bellum. Responding to the demands of world war, the United States imposed an income tax upon itself and in a stroke transformed the nation into a collective unit that funneled money like a fire hose into Washington DC.

Combining a flow of money with a nearly inexhaustible power to borrow because we are the world's reserve currency, unprecedented power flowed with huge tax revenues directly to a central government. States become beggars and supplicants who must conform to the dictates of Washington DC in virtually every activity.

In the process America exploited the power of collective organization, that resembles European "central planning." Central planning in our case exploited the flow of money into Washington to control states rights and, more importantly, managed to run up a monumental federal debt.

If one thinks of the European nations as states, their debt is mostly at the nation state level, not because Europeans are more virtuous than us but because they lack the architecture we have put in the hands of our politicians. The EU debt is relatively small compared to the accumulated debt of its member nations, as seen as a percentage of their gross national products.

Today in this recent meeting, European leader after European leader has risen to exhort his neighbors to reduce powers of individual nations, rationalize burdensome regulations, and redirect assets into energy etc. In short, the call is to collectivize but without the essential architecture, except to add individual nation responsibility for collective debt.

Resistance to collectivization, when it is a phrase that describes moving power from nation states to Brussels, reminds Americans of our tariff struggles before the Civil War and our depression era revolutionary consolidation during the New Deal.

In America, we have driven up the central or federal debt but, many of our states have revealed themselves to be just as profligate as our federal tax Masters, as they have amassed their own staggering debt loads.

Europe is not to be the object of our pity, we are not smarter than they are, we simply had a different history pivoting in a civil war in large part over slavery that fundamentally altered states rights and enabled us to funnel control where we put the power to tax.

[9YearLurker]

More windmills! Surely that’s the ticket!

[Surrounded_too]

Direct heir of the Soviet Union or Soviet Union Lite?

[FLT-bird]

You were right up until the end when you said the civil war was mostly about slavery. No it wasn't. It was about the very thing you spent the rest of your post describing.....the centralization of money/power in Washington DC and the use of that power to direct the money toward states that had more representation in Congress (ie the North especially the Northeast) and away from less populous states that had more money (ie the Southern States). Slavery was something the North was quite happy to compromise over. That's why they offered the Corwin Amendment. Of course slavery was something only less than 6% of the White Southern population participated in so its preservation by ironclad constitutional amendment was not appealing to them. What they were after was....money. They wanted to control their own commercial destiny (ie adopt low tariffs) and stop being treated as a cash cow by the Northern states. THAT's what the two sides actually fought over.

[9YearLurker]

The Soviet Union was their creation, as was Maoist China. Now they are largely using their Zionist front to prepare their takedown of the US and takeover of more strategic lands.

[FLT-bird]

Yep. Central planning is inefficient because governments spend money for political reasons while the private sector spends money for economic reasons. On its own, the private sector in Europe would never pour trillions into Gaia Worship. The market would recognize it as a dead end.

The same goes for maintaining lavish welfare states and simultaneously having open borders. What does anybody think is going to happen? Every poor person on earth is going to flock in.

[9YearLurker]

I think you underestimate how much big government and big business work together. Regulations help the big guys, kill small biz.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "You were right up until the end when you said the civil war was mostly about slavery. No it wasn't."

Yup. April 1861 to January 1863, and it emancipation proclamation, was most definitely NOT about slavery. As with wars in general, it was about power and money.

Really quite the parallel to this thread's title, about "Central Planners - Europe attempts to address the failure of central planning with more central planning."

"More Europe" has been the mantra of the growing "power" -- by this I mean ineptitude -- of the EU and especially its European Commission which appoints its own small cadre of "soviets," given the use of a word which means "council." While the word has come to mean someone from the USSR, the word's meaning is clear. Ruling groups, in a structure quite like the old Soviets, just this generation's European "soviets."

Europe -- a civilization of many cultures and languages -- will still be Europe long after the European UNION goes through its "civil war," which will look so different than our of centuries ago. But the EU, with one of its founding fathers an Italian Communist, cannot long succeed on the current path of its cosseted and insular "commission."

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[catnipman]

one of the all-time greatest movies!

i’ve watched it several times, and haven’t gotten tired of watching it yet ...

[gibsonguy]

Europe is doomed.