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were fully aware that close economic integration and a common currency would only be viable if continual progress were made in integrating government and sovereignty. See Delors and Prodi in this respect. They made the dubious judgement that everyone would see the need for this, and that the political will to do so would gradually emerge.

Two problems then arose :

  • first, a generation of political midgets, with no willingness to sacrifice anything whatever for "Europe", and apparently no understanding that the benefits of the Euro etc. were not free.
  • second : a reaction from the European left which perceived further European integration as a free-marketer plot designed to strip away their hard-won rights and liberties.

The result was the crappy constitutional treaty, and the disaster of its rejection in 2005.

I have no idea whether the approval of the European constitution  would have, in itself, equipped us to better deal with the current crisis. But we would surely have been in another dynamic in these intervening years, and at least psychologically less resistant to doing what needs to be done to save the house from burning down.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II

by eurogreen on Wed Sep 21st, 2011 at 07:01:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
second : a reaction from the European left which perceived further European integration as a free-marketer plot designed to strip away their hard-won rights and liberties.
It doesn't look like they were wrong. The Brussels Consensus has replaced the Washington Consensus and is meting out neoliberal shock-doctrine to EU member states to the point that we have coined the term being ECB'd where in the latter part of the 20th century developing countries were being IMF'd.

Economics is politics by other means
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 21st, 2011 at 07:05:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The EU is doomed because 'by the people, for the people' has been replaced by 'by the banks, for the bankers.'

If media coverage wasn't quite so dedicated to tugging an economic forelock at our new lords and masters, more people might be angrier about this.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Sep 21st, 2011 at 07:12:12 AM EST
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Yanis Varoufakis: The Road to Bankruptocracy: How events since 2009 have led to a new mode of reproduction
If anything, the Darwinian process has been turned on its head: The more unsuccessful a private organisation is, and the more catastrophic its losses, the greater its ensuing power courtesy of taxpayer financing. In short, socialism died during the Global Minotaur`s golden age and capitalism was quietly bumped off the moment the beast ceased to rule over the world economy. In its place, we have a new social system: Bankruptocracy - rule by bankrupted banks (if I were allowed to practise my Greek, I would call it ptocho-trapezocracy)

...

Ptochos is Greek for pauper but also for bankrupt. Trapeza is Greek for bank (originally it means table and is associated with banking because in ancient Greek city states borrowing and lending transactions were carried out in the Agora, with the parties to the transaction being seated around long tables).



Economics is politics by other means
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 21st, 2011 at 07:18:50 AM EST
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