Former Deutschland Chancellor wants to united Europe, cites Britain as obstacle

this sounds familiar...i can't quite put a finger on it though.

ehhh..i give up. i'm going to kill nazi zombies with my kids on a video game now.

 

Europeans are the luckiest people on the planet: on average, all the prosperity of the United States but with each country the full, rich cultural history of, well, every other region on the planet. That's why I don't think something like this wil ever happen.

 

I don't think the German people want that. They do not want have to support countries like Greece and Italy.

 

I think Europe has two choices - one centralized government or give up the Euro. The latter is obviously the far more realistic solution - but the current setup of a unified currency managed by 17 different countries is just stupid. It was just a matter of time before the concept blew up because none of the countries can float their own currencies to deal with their individual economic circumstances.

 

If those are the two choices, they will give up the Euro. There ain't no way Europe has a centralized government any time soon. Perhaps in the far distant future.

 

Those are two extremes but there is a theoretical middle ground. They "attempted" to create a semi-unified fiscal policy with the stability and growth pact but there were never any enforcement mechanisms to force countries to keep their debt in line with it. If the EU can force countries to manage its debt with some actual teeth, then it can theoretically maintain national sovereignty within that context.

That said, its easy to argue (and probably correct) that the only way to force countries to meet debt targets is a united european government.

 

Problem is that once you're in the Union, you're set for life.

Can't just kick Greece out because of debt issues.

 

I think that's part of it and would help with the debt crisis. But it doesn't change the economic problems that different countries run into. Ignoring debt problems, when the German economy is healthy and Italy is not, Germany's currency should appreciate while Italy's should depreciate. This makes Italy more competitive and helps their economy recover. As long as the Euro exists, that can't happen - meaning somewhere down the line, there will be another breakdown in the system as a country goes down the tubes and can't adjust its currency to fix it.

 

Certainly that's true but that won't shatter Europe. The vast majority of trade between European countries is within the Eurozone. The benefits of a common market are intended to offset this concern. This was (unlike the issue debt) a commonly discussed issue during the creation of the Euro.

The larger problem was giving countries access to cheap debt with this new currency and the fact that countries exported their debt across Europe via European banks that lended to countries like Greece. Enforced debt levels would ideally solve this concern.

Certainly the Euro isn't perfect but the argument was that the common european market would ensure that countries wouldn't get to the point where their currency was so out of whack with their economy that they would be stuck in some horrible economic trap. The economic efficiency produced by a common market with a common currency was intended to offset that concern. Furthermore the idea was a common market would lead to a

Also the Euro has been a basketcase currency in terms of its flucations. By and large Europe as a whole has had terrible growth since the Euro's inception. Yet the Euro has continued to grow in strength. Hell even Germany is getting punished by this since it is an export based economy that runs a trade surplus.

The Euro in my opinion needs two things to survive. First it needs to have some european fiscal policy management to ensure debt doesn't get out of control like it did in Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc.. The stability and growth pact needs some actual enforcement. I think banks now realize that you can't treat the Eurozone as a single entity and finally they're adjusting borrowing costs based on each country.

Second, the European Central Bank needs to stop with the idiotic inflation targeting nonsense that it keeps pushing. Inflation is a good thing for everyone in Europe. The Euro is completely overvalued by every major estimate. I want to say the last time I checked the economist "big mac" index, it was around 18-20% overvalued. Even Germany needs a cheaper currency seeing as how they're an export based economy with a trade surplus.

This won't make the euro perfect but its enough to make it viable. On the whole it would still be a bad idea even with those reforms but it wouldn't be a colossal failure like it is now. The Euro is failing because of a lack of fiscal policy constraints period. The problem of depreciation is a minor one in the grand scheme of things imo. That won't break the Eurozone like debt will.

 

It's gonna be so boring if Europe becomes one country.

 

by and large the people of europe do not want a unified centralized government. it is only the politicians and their paymasters who desire this for the obvious economic boons. indeed schroeder himself has taken jobs at rothschild bank and gazprom since losing the chancellorship....working directly for the paymasters above the table now lol

 

Great Britain was hammered when she decided not to join the Euro experiment. They're looking pretty smart now, in my opinion. Not their government, which is bungling things left and right these days, but that initial decision. I think it was a good one. The EU expanded way too quickly, and gave far too lenient terms for many of the newer nations who joined after the end of the Cold War. They should have taken a much slower path to a form of unity, with the stress on ecomomic integration, with firm requirements for fiscal policies that made sense for all the nations of the Union. Certainly before they allowed the Euro to become the currency of all the EU members. Instead, too many have made their own way to economic disaster, with the result laid out before us.

They are going to have hell getting out of this mess, and a couple might not make it out. Not as "equal" members of the EU. We could see a two tier EU evolve that won't make the bottom tier happy, with the bottom tier having strict restrictions for membership, restrictions that should have been in place at the beginning. The euphoria of the fall of the Soviet Union blinded many to the pitfalls of bringing in so many former East Block countries at once, and drawing attention away from the looming crisis in countries like Greece, which were pretty obvious a long time ago to those bothering to wear a pair of glasses... some not rose tinted.

If the United States hadn't created its own crisis, largely due to the reckless foreign and fiscal policies of the two terms of George Bush, for which a price is now being paid, we would be in the cat bird seat relative to the EU. Instead, we're both up to our ears in a colossal mess, with a "good end" not in sight, not in the near future.

 

The requirements today are largely stricter than the initial requirements. In fact the Baltic states are experiencing the highest growth among EU states. In fact those countries did exactly what you wanted. They inherited broken economies from the Soviet Union and initiated painful macroeconomic reforms to fix their respective economies in order to join the EU. As a result they dont have the economic baggage in the form of unsustainable welfare systems or non-competitive economies. Estonia's debt to GDP ratio for example is a whopping 6.6 percent. (compared to Greece's 143 percent) In fact all of the former Soviet states have debt to GDP ratios below 50 percent. This has come at the expense of relatively high unemployment numbers (which is a big problem) but again they aren't the ones threatening to destroy the Euro.

The problem in the EU rests with many of the original members who used the Euro and its cheap borrowing rates to finance an expansion of government purely on credit. At the same time this cheap credit allowed governments to avoid needed reforms to restructure the economy. Many of the criteria that were required for former soviet states were applied inconsistently or not at all. (or in the case of Greece, they simply lied about the state of their economy in order to join)

 

That darn UT the obstacle in going with its own personal network, not willing to make the united Pac 16 work.

 

Exactly. And by the looks of the political scene the latter will happen 1st.

 

Would be one HELL of a military if this happened...

 

A military seldom used. Hell, they might as well combine them, they haven't fought amongst each other since WWII.

 

Seldom used, hopefully, but unilaterally feared. (Hypothetically of course)

Imagine another country in the world with the ability, politically and militarily, to enforce their will and presence around the world the way the US does.

Furthermore, what if their will is different than that of the US.

Cold War II / WWIII?

Just my imagination running rampant... But not ridiculous, no?

 

It certainly wouldn't be so problematic if their central bank wasn't pursuing policies that benefit certain European nations at the expense of others. Their central bank should have a hands off policy and allow the individual nations to change their fiscal policy to suit economic conditions within their own jurisdictions.