What it means is German control over other countries budgets. What that means is semi-permanent austerity. What that means is semi-permanent depression.
I somehow doubt that this will be accomplished, if it is accomplished, through referenda. I doubt any major party will stand against it. So, to add to the blindingly obvious, it is blindingly obviously undemocratic.
It is true that the Euro requires fiscal union. It always did, shared currencies don’t work without union. However, if fiscal union is to occur, then it should occur with each member state’s population voting for it, especially as this fiscal union’s purpose is to impose corporate friendly austerity measure’s on the populations of countries that would almost certainly vote against them.
I will note that this is not going to redound to Germany’s favor in the not-very long run. Permanent European depression is not to Germany’s advantage. Who, exactly, they think is going to buy their high-end goods is beyond me. They shouldn’t expect India and China to play along, those countries are creating their own auto industries and do not intend to be dumping grounds for Western goods.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words are applicable:
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
The states in Europe are controlled by private interests. We have seen this, clearly, in Greece and Italy in the past weeks. If this fiscal union passes, the Rubicon will have been crossed for all states remaining in the Euro. Ironically, Europeans will have given up real democracy in exchange for depression. Lose/lose.
For them.
Ian, you need an editor...
“redound”
Oh, sorry, I confused you with Sterling - who actually does need an editor
But it’s still “redound”
Albatross
I’m still at a loss to comprehend this desire for “austerity” among the ruling elite. Do they somehow profit from a worldwide depression? Are they enslaved to a simplistic economic ideology from which even profit motive can’t free them, much less the rare coin of common sense? Do they think that their billions have value absent a vibrant economy in which to operate? Or are they obsessed of some kind of feudal fantasy with them as the kings on shining thrones? Do they fail to realize that those are fantasies, and that the kings they dream of never existed, and were instead simply the biggest thugs with the biggest supporting gangs of their times?
I realize the super-wealthy are completely divorced from any reality outside the luxuries of their lifestyle, but don’t they even have the sense to realize that they’re failing to water the tree that they’re sitting in?
Curmudgeon
There’s a less charitable but equally accurate way to describe German-dominated European fiscal union: “the fourth Reich.”
Many European elites will be happy to sign up regardless because it will give them political cover to dismantle social spending wholesale a la Thatcher and Reagan. The European public will, as usual, blame immigrants and Muslims rather than their own governments.
It’s very hard not to think that the lights of western enlightenment civilization are going out everywhere.
Ian Welsh
Fixed, merci. If someone wants to be an editor for no pay, they can let me know. Otherwise you’ll have to put up with some messiness.
hipparchia
“kings on shining thrones” probably comes closest to it. for many, the most important thing is to put as much distance, wealthwise, between the rich and the rest of us.
Tom Hickey
The world’s four largest economies by GDP are the US, China, Japan and Germany. China, Japan, and Germany are creditor nations consistently running surplus through their mercantilist policies reminiscent of the British Empire. How is that going to work over the long run?
But it is really international finance capital, which has captured governments and created a transnational plutocratic oligarchy, that is the real problem to reckon with, as Michael Hudson documents. Governments are now just faces (stooges) for the faceless 1%.
Andy lewis
Maybe they intend to kill the bulk of us, enslave the rest, and thus hog our declining resources for themselves. As tinfoil as that seems, no other reason makes sense as an explanation for what the !% are engineeringt
guest
“Do they somehow profit from a worldwide depression? Are they enslaved to a simplistic economic ideology from which even profit motive can’t free them, much less the rare coin of common sense?”
They are preparing for the coming (already arrived?) dystopia of peak oil and/or peak food production, not to mention water issues, the death of the oceans, and other environmental issues. Seven billion people is not sustainable. Six or five or four billion are probably not sustainable either. It’s going to get ugly before it gets even uglier. Do you think the .1% are going to sit there and let those decisions about who lives and dies get decided democratically?
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
Why is opposition seemingly coming only from the euroskeptics of the right?
Fiscal union is a hammer blow at national sovereignty to enable further, and further enable, the neoliberal agenda for a United States of Europe by shoving this crucial power further away from voters and more openly into the unobstructed power of the euro-plotocrats.
So where is the euro-rejectionism of the left?
alyosha
@Andy Lewis – I don’t think that’s tinfoil at all. The next comment by @guest explains why. The 1% are grabbing everything they can because they see a variety of major threats (peak debt, peak oil, global warming, rising competitor nations) that are going to make the current way of life extremely difficult and miserable, if not deadly, for many millions on this planet.
Just saw today, Rural Suicides Follow Medicaid Cuts. These are people who are mentally ill,who’ve given up. That’s just the start, the first wave, the most vulnerable people in the USA.
Petro
I fear that @Andy lewis & @guest have nailed it.
Petro
@alyosha beats me to it.
Celsius 233
Remember; Earth First! We’ll log the other planets later…?
The Kepler telescope has identified Exoplanet Kepler 22b as “the best hope yet for a new earth”.
I wonder if those selfish, greedy bastards are counting on emigrating and leaving us with the waste?
I love the thought of inter-stellar travel/visiting; it just never occurred to me it would be under these circumstances…
Too many earthlings are mentally defective and irrational; and having stolen vast amounts of wealth; they become deadly to the other…
Bill H.
What it means is that Germany accomplishes economically what it failed to accomplish by means of war 60+ years ago.
tom allen
“Who, exactly, they think is going to buy their high-end goods is beyond me. They shouldn’t expect India and China to play along, those countries are creating their own auto industries and do not intend to be dumping grounds for Western goods.”
I can see that in the long run. But in the short-to-medium term, why not? India and China have large, young, growing populations with increasing demand and we have supply with decreasing demand. I’m a doofus, but seems that we’ll sell to Asia for the next 20-30 years, we just have to not be such dicks about it. Maybe do some good and make a buck while we’re at it? At least the first part. 😛
Formerly T-Bear
What is blindingly obvious for some time is threefold: first is an actual education in the workings and dynamics of economics, both the narrow and the broad forms; second is to control, modify and restrain the domain of markets, returning the market to serving economic function rather than commanding economic subservience of the state and the population; third is the institution of a bill of economic, legal and social rights, inalienable, functional, effective. And for good measure a fourth should be obvious as well, the restitution of progressively increasing taxes as existing prior to the Reagan mal-administration and the economic deceptions issuing from so-called neoliberal economic ideology. Making sure all tax relief is based upon spending current income (e.g. yacht – a hole in the water which one pours money; therefore a deduction), excessive savings have fueled the current economic crisis, exacerbated by attempts to preserve those savings over the requirements of a functioning economy and protecting public assets (as well as the public’s assets); restoring policies that evaporated multigenerational accumulations of wealth through estate and inheritance limiting policies particularly aimed at vast estates that can not be otherwise consumed.
A short word about the second item above. The markets have shown pathological disregard of both public and private interests. To allow this to continue invites repeated cycles of theft. It is necessary to put some manners on the market forthwith. The EMU (European Monetary Union) would be well advised to restructure their monetary union to enable each member to exercise sovereign economic control through their central banks in conjunction with the EMU’s central bank which would be the sole issuer of sovereign bonds under the imprimatur of the central bank only (no country being identified as originator) and thereby restoring sovereign control over the needs of the member state as opposed to the current market tyranny (bonds issued contractually with rate payable and maturity time – a take it or leave it offer, the central bank having the option of buying unsold bonds itself). Likewise the stock markets be taxed, rated upon the elapsed time of transactions, payable upon moment of transaction, no tax received, no sovereign support of whatever transaction if untaxed.
This works as well for the New York – Washington Axis of Evil.
jawbone
Michael Hudson, at length, on how the financial crises are being sued to install a “technocratic oligarchy” of banksters.
Banksters rule.