Posted on 04/10/2020 11:41:38 PM PDT by Cronos
The arguing over a financial rescue package for hard-hit states shows that even member states don’t trust Europe
The past week has been a disgrace. When ministerial talks collapsed on Thursday over the plan for a “coronabond”, the reaction seemed terminal. Germans and Dutch insulted Italians and Spaniards. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said his country faced an “economic and social emergency”, and the EU appeared not to care. The Danes spoke of “a financial crisis on steroids”. The European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, predicted “the EU as we know it will not survive this”.
Finally a last-minute package was agreed, for €500bn of emergency loan finance. This was little more than an extension of the existing European stability mechanism, designed to help individual countries in short-term emergencies. Even then, it was a mere third of what the European Central Bank had said was needed, €1.5tn euros. What was specifically not agreed was any sharing of the economic burden of the pandemic across European treasuries in general. It was mostly more loans.
The reason was glaringly obvious, and as old as the EU itself. The northern European nations within the eurozone still do not trust the hard-pressed southern ones to spend money wisely and pay back their debts.
..Daily reports indicate that citizens across Europe are showing a collective concern and care for each other. The pandemic has revived a faith in local community, and in a shared sense of nationhood. Yet the reaction of key European governments to this financial emergency has been like that of the British people in 2016. They don’t trust the EU with their money. What you don’t trust with your money is not a union.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The fear from me is that this will push more people to CREATE a powerful center - looking at say a French style with everything dictated by Paris.
There will be a massive pushback against further centralization. Yellow Vests style protests will expand to most member states.
there are two moves - centralization and de-centralization. Both are making noise now. centralization may win as they are looking at the USA and CHina and how a strong central government could have reduced the deaths
Nazi Germany was less centralized than the French Republic
And today’s Germany is heavily de-centralized, with individual Landen having more independence in some areas than American states. That’s similar to how the HRE was consituted
China reduced deaths ? Pretty sure they lied about how many Chinese died and let’s not forget they spread it around the world.
Profits be damned. If the populace takes a financial hit, we all take a hit, stakeholders and shareholders included. This ain’t tug-a-war, it is toe-the-line.
“Both are making noise now. centralization may win as they are looking at the USA and CHina and how a strong central government could have reduced the deaths”
The United States is considerably different than China. The US government is controlling the national border and flights into US airspace. It is pumping out money through national level mechanisms. The power to handle individual sections, like states, counties and cities is being handled by their elected officials rather than a central government. Thus you see some governors banning the sale of guns and tomato seeds (seriously) while others ban abortions. The federal government has not said anything about individual states as each governor is expected to manage his own problems.
In China, the central authority has told the individual sections (prefectures?) exactly what to do. The central authority has responded poorly because it has bad data coming in and its primary goal is to protect itself with a bodyguard of lies.
The European Union was never a Union in the truest sense.It was just a bunch of little countries trying to join together so they could surpass the economic and military might of the United States.
It didn’t work that well.
If (a) the EU was by design and operation just a “free trade union”, and (b) had stayed out of member’s domestic policies, with no wealth transfer or subsidy mechanisms, (c) no EU currency, (d) no unified “immigration” policy, (e) provided visa-free cross-EU travel to citizens of EU states with passports, but visas required for anyone else, (f) had no EU high court except as a trade policy arbiter, I think the economies of the EU states would be economically stronger today, and maybe more willing to help the weakest members at this time.
If merely trade had be free and open, but states kept their own currency and did not have an ECB or mechanisms for always be propped up by a central EU “government”, what are the weaker states now would have had all the natural incentives to make positive changes for the benefit of a better national economy. Whether they would have or not would be unmistakably clear that that failure was their own and not that the other EU states did not help.
But with all the EU interference (immigration is just one) in matters that affect their economies, EU member states have some right to expect more EU support.
So, it is clear that the EU is in reality less a true “union” than a poorly run, interfered-with-from-the-top-down mismanaged club, run by elites with utopian ambitions and Leftist/fascistic tendencies.
The GCC has done pretty much what you suggested and apparently has thrived as a result.
Do you mean the Gulf Cooperation Council?
If so, comparing it to the EU states is an apples vs oranges comparison.
A. The GCC states have a simple economic natural leg up that none of the EU states have - plenty of the cheapest to get to oil on the planet. Where to get government or private revenue from is not a giant question there.
B. Dictatorships not democracies. Dictators do not give their sovereignty to others for “cooperative” reasons. “Democratic” leaders naively think other “democratic” leaders can be trusted when they jointly give up their sovereignty for a “common goal”. Unlike dictators “democratic” leaders do not operate with the same personal sense of attachment to their state’s sovereignty. The dictator sees themselves,personally, and the state as one. “Democratic” leaders do not. They cannot because they are the “kings” over their people. They ignore, that naturally within any enforced-rules group there will be contests of competing interests between them and results will likely be more of some interests being put ahead of yours or “the group’s”. That is why trade groups often employ dispute mechanisms that employ arbitrators, instead of the group “voting” on a resolution.
Its funny you say that about China because its central government dramatically increased deaths not only in China but worldwide by trying to suppress the evidence and silence whistleblowers when they reported this, by ordering evidence destroyed in December, but having the W.H.O. spread their propaganda they knew to be false that it could not be transmitted from human to human, by urging countries not to close their borders, etc.
Had China been more decentralized, Hubei province may have been able to take action much sooner. Other provinces could have closed themselves off from Hubei. Instead China is a totalitarian dictatorship whose primary concern is “saving face”...what we in the West call “playing CYA”.
the article is advocating a super-state based on the USA - so a united states of europe.
That is not good
it is just a bunch of little countries trying to stay independent. And it works as a loose confederation. It fails as a union
that is correct — a looser confederation would be better
And yet, they have developed a unity that eluded the Euros and the Mercosur’s.
They took what they have and in spite of centuries old animosities created a working arrangement that works. They have succeeded where others have failed miserably
It is natural for many here to be critical of Arab success because they simply won’t accept it.
The founding fathers in America set up a system of government in the Constitution based on a biblical understanding of the nature of men as a fallen creatures who must somehow find a way of governing themselves. So they proceeded not by deceiving themselves about human nature but by accounting for it.
Therefore, they set up a system in which the fallen nature of man would check the fallen nature of other men.
The European Union, in contrast, is set up based on the assumption of the perfectibility of man and the perfection of the elitists who run the European Union in Brussels. There is very little by way of the American system of limited government, divided government, checks and balances etc. Much reliance is placed on the wisdom of the elitists who run the outfit.
Yet the irresistible force of human nature is exerting itself against Brussels and at an accelerating pace now thanks to the coronavirus. But we have seen the strains before most notably with brexit and increasingly with the growing disaffiliation of the Eastern European states.
“They took what they have and in spite of centuries old animosities created a working arrangement that works. They have succeeded where others have failed miserably.”
Silly. What animosities ever have existed among the members of the GCC is minuscule compared to the centuries of wars among the Europeans. The Europeans are diverse in many ways that the GCC members are not. The GCC members share Suni Islam as a state religion and share an age old antipathy to the huge Persian nation on the north side of the Gulf, a Shia Islam nation with a revolutionary theocracy bent on making a Shia Islam caliphate all across the Middle East. Of that there is singular purpose among the GCC and that is defense against Shia theocratic Iran. The GCC members are nearly all “family dynasty” run kingdoms/shiekdoms - dictatorships in reality. There is some things that unity cannot whitewash and that demonstrate unity for unity’s sake is not an ideal goal, it is sometimes just a condition to be suffered.
Again, minus the oil, the Arabs of the GCC have still failed miserably, they produce little else that anyone wants.
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