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Until 'Schland wraps its hard little head around this "Transfer Union" concept, we ain't goin' nowhere. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
This isn't a zero sum game. The reason Germany financed cohesion funds was so it would have markets to sell its goods to. Positive sum game: everyone wins.
Germany financed cohesion funds for decades.
That's not a bug, that's a feature. Germany has a higher per capita GDP than the recipients of those funds.
So Germany has a limited willingness to pay.
As the country with the largest internal current accounts surplus, Germany is the country that has to defend the currency union. If Germany does not want to defend the currency union, then Germany does not want a currency union. If Germany does not like being the country that has to pay to defend the currency union, Germany is free to end its mercantilist attack on its trading partners and allow German wages to rise to the level where the German foreign accounts balance.
Do you really expect a country to risk going broke for the European project assuming unlimited liability?
As the country with the largest internal current accounts surplus in the Eurozone, Germany cannot go broke from any conceivable solution to the Eurocrisis. So that question is totally irrelevant.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
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