The EU has never been about abolishing national interests but always about managing them in a manner that is about convenience for Europe's political classes, with a heavy emphasis on consensus arrived at through secret and unwieldy bureaucratic procedures.
That's actually a reasonably accurate description. The thing is - is it a bad thing? If you replace "unwieldy bureaucratic" by "complex technocratic", you get the description of the mostly competent work done by the EU.
But as the current financial crisis has rushed headlong towards economic recession it is abundantly clear that institutions created for the benefit of diplomats and mandarins are not up to the job of stabilising febrile market institutions or getting cash (where it should be) into productive investments not dodgy bets on dodgier loans.
I'm not certain "is about convenience for Europe's political classes" is a proper characterisation. Even cattle trading at the EU Council and struggling with the Commission (and the EP) aren't necessarily convenient for our political classes... but it is certainly more convenient for the rest of us that they don't go for "the ultimate national interest" and end conflicts with wars instead. Like they did for the prior five millenia. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Both the EU and the financial market institutions are all too often founded on the principle, or fetish, that people can, should not, be in control (globalisation).
My point about stabilising markets is an observation not a prescription.
I really do not think, even if it were possible, that financial institutions run on behalf of mandarins and diplomats (you yourself note the overlap with the wider oligarchy) could benefit the common good.
My point is that both state and markets are unable to represent the general interest at a time when that question comes to the fore.
The "nationalisation" of banks under the current conditions will not alter this situation or clarify the question of what (and who) the economy is for.
In fact, pretty much all the actors involved would go the distance to avoid this question being asked at all.
Both the EU and the parasitic financial sector organise ("independent" central bankers and all) around evading or denying this question.
Seriously, how much planning, or to what extent, do you mean?
In that picture, is the EU really important?
Can I interpret this in the sense that it's not clear if it is to benefit shareolders, or creditors, or depositors, or the economy as companies, or the economy as jobs; or some wider sense?
For me, the above implies that the EU all about the economy -- or at least that its economically relevant aspects are independent of others. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Maybe it's worth commenting here on the origins of the EU bureaucracy, which was modelled on the top layers of the French State bureaucracy, ie a quasi-aristocracy, with a lot of power and not much accountability to the general public, but two redeeming features: (i) joining it is merit-based, using pretty objective criteria, and (ii) a sense of public service was part of the ethos.
The old French 'grand bargain' was that the top bureaucrats got power for life, in exchange for running things competently and including the interests of the general population as part of their mandate. Thus a focus on infrastructure and public services, provided in a highly centralised way.
The good thing is that thanks to that bargain, the State was able to hire the best minds of the country, because it provided the most rewarding jobs - except in monetary terms.
But the bargain was, to a large extent, undermined by the clash with the increasingly dominant anglo-saxon way, with a focus on accountability to shareholders (monetary returns rather than engineering completeness), a quicker turnover of people based on results, and rewards for the best people in the form of lots of money - and accountability in the form of votes that can kick people out. The French system (and the EU bureaucracy) gets perverted when the elites that are entrenched in positions of power for life can also get away with earning lots of money, by squeezing the plebes from the previously granted socially shared advantages. In that case, you get the worst of both worlds - entrenched elites able to ignore the plebes. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
... on this occasion, I must applaud the way that so many mainstream economists have latched onto and pushed the basic fact that a solvency crisis cannot be solved after it has broken simply by paying fair market value for assets that are on the books.
With so many "serious" people pushing for an equity stake as a preferable alternative to overpaying for troubled assets, it becomes hard for even a former Lehman Bros. CEO to ignore. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
