Posted on 09/09/2012 12:25:22 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
Perhaps you don’t know it: in northern Europe many people think that the "spread", the difference between the interest rate for the soverign debt of his own "virtuous" country and the rate for those countries in a sorry state to the south, is the fruit of a Catholic sin. In German the word “Schuld”, for debt, also means ‘fault’. This semantic nuance reflects profound cultural differences and helps to better understand the distrust – or prejudice – of some nations of northern Europe towards countries considered members of a blithe "Club Med".
The spread between Spanish and Italian bonds on the one hand and German bonds on the other leads in the end to assumptions of implied ethical superiority, far more discriminatory than the budgets of the states in question, throwing us back – indeed, one almost fears to say it – to values that intertwine culture and religion and injecting ancient poisons into the tired veins of Europe.
In fact, a taboo has been broken, bringing to the front of the stage ghosts of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, of European wars fought in the shadow of God. This aspect of the controversy has hardly been mentioned in recent months. Yet it crops up repeatedly, while the euro has begun to evoke not wealth and stability but unemployment, poverty and decline.
The anti-Italian and anti-Mediterranean rhetoric, and the rhetoric flying back against the Germans, unconsciously nourishes stereotypes that are both cultural and religious – stereotypes of ancient “truths" buried in the memory of the Old Continent that it would be best not to exhume, under penalty of wrecking the difficult compromise between the European nations that has kept the social and political peace for decades. The present uncertainty, however, is bringing those stereotypes to the surface in the minds of those pushing for new isolationisms in the illusory conviction that, alone, one can save oneself more assuredly than in a crowd.
“Fiscal sins”
It is this desire for solitude that is being entertained by certain circles in the part of Germany that declares itself Lutheran, and in countries with Protestant majorities such as the Netherlands, Finland and other Nordic countries – prompting Stephan Richter, director of The Globalist, a site that analyses global trends in the era of globalisation, to put forward the hypothesis that if the sixteenth-century German theologian Martin Luther could have been present at Maastricht in 1992 when the foundations of the monetary union were laid, he would have “nixed” the candidacy of the Mediterranean countries. Richter goes on to imagine that Luther would have declared that “no unreformed Catholic countries” that had not gone through the Protestant Reformation could enter the euro.
Richter is a Catholic commentator, and most importantly, he is German. According to his theory, “an excess of Catholicism has distorted the fiscal health of nations, even today in the twenty-first century." The current bitterness of northern Europe towards the "other Europe" thus lies in the failure to uphold the "law of Luther," the violation of which has brought about our ills. If, in contrast, his imaginary exhortations had been heard correctly, "the euro would be more cohesive, and the European economy in far less trouble."
In brief: to size up the capability of a nation to join the single currency, it is not its finances that have to be vetted, but its religious chromosomes – that would have been easier. The premise is very simple: the so-called Pigs, an acronym formed from the first letters of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, which with the double ‘i’ in ‘Piigs’ also takes in Italy, are – apart from Greece, which is Greek Orthodox – all countries with a Roman Catholic majority.
The novelty is that this label has lately been taking on a significance that is not only economic, linked to a crisis of financial capitalism exported from the United States, but that is also tied to a judgement, to a definitive condemnation of a culture, a way of governing, and – again – of a religion. At the origin of the "fault" of indebted nations there would seem to lie those nations’ inability to emancipate themselves from Catholicism: a lifestyle that is more than a faith, that helped move on from the purchase of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins to an excessive tolerance when it comes to “fiscal sins".
Currently the controversy is driving some economists, mainly Spaniards, to trace the origins of capitalism in order to refute its Protestant backgrounds and advance, in contrast, the dynamism of capitalism in Catholic Spain precisely at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
The geo-religion of “bond spread”
The backwards-looking tussle over the noble birth of capitalism in one or the other churches, however, merely confirms the ambiguity of an operation that could well herald a rupture, and not a reconciliation, in Europe. For the average German, rolling out the European Financial Stability Fund for erring states would be an unacceptable concession to the “culture of sin" and of the omnipresent debt in a Catholic Europe considered incorrigible.
Without taking this background into account, it is difficult to grasp the apparent failure to communicate among the European ruling classes, and the attempt of some political and economic circles to make use of it for their own purposes.
It seems that, caught up in the train of the crisis on the financial markets, there is an attempt afoot to stir up a conflict between Catholics and Lutherans using the controversy over aid as a casus belli. For some, the conflict can be explained by a shift of the European Union axis towards the north and the east – and so, following the enlargement of the Union, by the growing influence of the Protestant nations. It is no coincidence that today we say that Finland is at the heart of the European Union, while Italy is at the periphery. This is one of many consequences of the end of the Cold War.
Following a European community that forged its unity along a central-southern axis of Germany, France and Italy, there is now a community that the German nation has established hegemony over and that at times seems to be cultivating the revenge of the Protestant traditions and of the East against the German Catholics and their enthusiasm for Europe. Chancellor Angela Merkel comes from East Germany and is the daughter of a Protestant pastor, while the new President of Germany, Joachim Gauck, is himself a former Lutheran pastor.
In its Lutheran version, though, the geo-religion of "bond spread" has been forced up against some political and geographical realities. If debt is also a sin to be atoned for, a sin whose absolution can rightly no longer be bought, excommunications and the so-called geo-economic and geo-religious supremacy threaten to re-awake demons that may well set Europe back – not a few years, but decades: to the darkest decades of the past century.
....It is this desire for solitude...prompting Stephan Richter, director of The Globalist, a site that analyses global trends in the era of globalisation, to put forward the hypothesis that if the sixteenth-century German theologian Martin Luther could have been present at Maastricht in 1992 when the foundations of the monetary union were laid, he would have “nixed” the candidacy of the Mediterranean countries. Richter goes on to imagine that Luther would have declared that “no unreformed Catholic countries” that had not gone through the Protestant Reformation could enter the euro.
Richter is a Catholic commentator, and most importantly, he is German. According to his theory, “an excess of Catholicism has distorted the fiscal health of nations, even today in the twenty-first century." The current bitterness of northern Europe towards the "other Europe" thus lies in the failure to uphold the "law of Luther," the violation of which has brought about our ills. If, in contrast, his imaginary exhortations had been heard correctly, "the euro would be more cohesive, and the European economy in far less trouble."
In brief: to size up the capability of a nation to join the single currency, it is not its finances that have to be vetted, but its religious chromosomes – that would have been easier. The premise is very simple: the so-called Pigs, an acronym formed from the first letters of Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, which with the double ‘i’ in ‘Piigs’ also takes in Italy, are – apart from Greece, which is Greek Orthodox – all countries with a Roman Catholic majority....
....Currently the controversy is driving some economists, mainly Spaniards, to trace the origins of capitalism in order to refute its Protestant backgrounds and advance, in contrast, the dynamism of capitalism in Catholic Spain precisely at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Got it. Forever and a day.
And I stick to what my granddad told me.
The EU. They forced themselves into an uncomfortable bed.
Now, at least, but becoming forthright, they will blame the muzzies.
They ain’t gonna take much more.
Like us. The United States. Given the choice to obey.
Or be free.
Not much of a choice.
The old protestant work ethic thing, pulled out of the dumpster, brushed off and repainted. Never gets old.
I’m not quite as versed in history as the author so I’ll have to give my condensed version.
It appears the ants are being asked to save the grasshoppers and the ants aren’t happy about it.
Austria is predominantly Catholic, as is Poland. These countries are plenty industrious. Greece is not predominantly Catholic. Iceland is not Catholic, but her debt problem was quite serious (admittedly, they are taking serious steps).
I think these prognosticators ought to take more factors into consideration before assigning a spread.
Blew it and failed right there. The German word for debt is "Schulden" not "Schuld" other than in some compound nouns. No native speaker would equate the two terms in the sense the author implies.
"It appears the ants are being asked to save the grasshoppers and the ants aren’t happy about it."
Those poor little ants worked awfully hard to make those evil grasshoppers part of their kingdom in order to ensure that they wouldn't become the low cost producers on the Continent and threaten the socialist paradises in Northern Europe. They lived quite well on the low cost labor in Southern Europe for decades while passing out ever more "free" goodies to their fellow ants.
Once they taught the grasshoppers to be just like them they brought in immigrants to replace those Southern Europeans they had depended on. And now someone thinks it's all the fault of the grasshoppers rather than the socialist garbage that's ruled Northern Europe for seventy-five years?
Most Northern Europeans are anything but the industrious little ants they might once have been, that's for sure.
Oh, and never mind that whiny opening sentence, where this Italian author is channeling Jesse Jackson if you replace “Catholic” with “black”. Face it Massimo, YOUR country sucks. Now do something to fix it instead of blaming others for YOUR faults! Your religion/race card has no value.
I would ask what you think accounts for the financial problems Greece is having now? War? Over taxation? Lack of taxation? Too much sun? What?
Easy credit and membership in the EU coupled with the chronic Greed disease of equating past glory with entitlement.
Then it’s little wonder tha countries like Germany might not want to loan more money.
I don't think the German people ever wanted to lend money in the first place.Their leaders were dedicated to keeping the status quo in place once the EU was established and knew what that entailed even though they didn't make that clear to the public. Once Greece and a few other countries figured out just which part of the German anatomy they had their hands on they saw no reason to not to take every penny the EU moron farm would let them have for whatever lame brained reason they could come up with.
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Maybe Germany can run the country for a while like emergency managers for cities in the U.S.
Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss and it is all organized by Italians.
Germany running the entire EU for a while wouldn't be such a bad idea other than the fact that the Germans running the EU is exactly what most of the other members fear.
Spain was outside the Marshal plan when it came to redevelopment and spent years in isolation, then got a big influence of EC money -- to their credit they didn't get as tax-fraud like as the Greeks did, but then the Greeks had a communist problem until the 70s and then got a lot of free money.
Free money with no strings is the root cause of Greece and Spain's problem.
Italy's problems are more complex -- the north is productive, the south is not.
Ireland's problem was that it took on bank debt, not letting them fail like the Icelanders did (well the Irish couldn't do that, the British and others wouldn't let them)
Portugal's problem is different -- they haven't industrialized to any great sense.
good catch. Who is this author then?
well, the Greeks have done that in the past (read Tom Holland's Perso-Greek wars. The Persians couldn't understand them. But as a side-note the Greeks did conquer the greatest empire (40% of the world's population) just 200 years later.... and captive Greece captured the Roman empire)
NOTE: in many countries EU money was used wisely -- in Spain the infrastructure is superb, helping it dig itself out when it does. The Spain industry is not bad, but people are still shaking themselves off socialism.
But free money leads itself to a bad disease of getting used to it and thinking one is entitled to it.
That's not only the problem in these countries but also to welfare dependents in NZ, Aus, the UK, US etc.
The Germans running Greece, cyc? That's crazy talk. While i agree with you that it would be good, can you imagine the shouts of Nazis etc.? The Germans are p*sd off that when they wanted to help the Greeks they got accusations of not having paid back stolen Greek gold
The problem is that Greece should never have been added to the Eurozone (it was fine in the EU), ditto for Portugal. Ireland and Spain qualified easily and Italy with difficulty. Italy HAD to be in the eurozone as the third largest economy in mainland europe.
The Greeks quite frankly lied, with the help of GOldman Sachs if I'm not mistaken.
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