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There are 450.000.000 EU citizens in the 25 Member States. That means that if the European Central Bank  supplied the EU Commission with 450 bn euros at 3% interests it would put every single person just 1000 euros in debt. That's peanuts, if you look at the individual savings rate, which stands for the German citizenry alone at 5.500 bn euros. Now lets assume that overall programme costs are divided by a ratio of 60% for planning, administration, intellectual property, labour cost and 40% for hardware, machines, material, transport you would create 9.000.000 jobs which earn 30.000 euros p.a.. Actually it would be more than that because the state governments would save easily tens of bn euros on (then obsolete) welfare payments and have tens of bn of additional tax revenues. It would also create 3.000.000 additional secondary jobs, which also contribute to state taxes. Sure we would break the self imposed 3% limit of the stability pact. But how much value has a 'stability" pact, which - as we see - creates social explosions in the form of angry kids who throw molotov cocktails into schools and kindergardens?

We need to kick start the internal consumption in the EU Member States. And fast. It doesn't make any sense to export cars and accept US federal bonds in exchange for it. These bonds are useless, because they are used to finance projects which are in opposition to our interest (see US military spending, Congress appropriations for the war in Iraq, etc.pp.).

Why should we finance the debt of the US, when we could use the same amount of money to finance our consumption and debt at home? It would be more beneficial if we used it to create jobs in Europe.

Now, a stronger EU economy would clearly attract even more foreign investments (more jobs), we could raise our imports from third world countries (more jobs), which would again further strengthen our currency, and even more foreign central banks would keep even more euro denominated reserves (cheaper money for us, lower interest rates, and huge windfall profits for the ECB).

It is easy, really. We just have to do it and forget about bickering about trivia like the CAP. We need a European Development Programme which is worth the name of it. And - obviously - politicians with 'palle quadrate'.

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819

by Ritter on Sun Nov 6th, 2005 at 07:08:31 PM EST
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