In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

10th March, 2010

One of the key arguments against the Eurozone of its detractors is that it has at its heart a flaw, namely, that it lacks the political unity necessary to make a single currency possible. Now that the sensational news of a European Monetary Fund has broken the cry goes up of “economic governance”. This is rich coming from those who want “economic governance” for the whole world and illustrates the fact that no matter what Europe does it can’t win. Or can it?

Anglo-saxon attempts to characterize the Eurozone as a basket case sound very much like the pot calling the kettle black. The eurozone banking sector as elsewhere has no doubt been badly hit by its purchases of fraudulently rated securities, courtesy of Goldman Sachs et al, but it doesn’t appear to have required the bailouts that US/UK banks did and it is on the overexposure of this sector that the disaster scenario of such, normally, astute critics as Jim Willie are posited. Even if the damage is a lot worse than appears, with no eurozone trade deficit, a substantial industrial core, no extravagant war plans and an excellent infrastructure, remedial action is near to hand. Europe must return to a dirigiste model for economic development, look to the East and break out of itself thralldom to NATO. The recent and continuing attempts by US/UK to destabilize the Eurozone is only the last in a long series of spats with europacifists who threaten peace and it has finally pricked Europe into action with action against Wall Street speculators and of course the bombshell of the EMF. The background to this is disillusionment with Obama as the human face of America so long awaited after the Bush years. That a true liberalism lies somewhere at the heart of the anglo-saxon oligarchies is a myth which holds great force amongst the European bougeoisie: the brutal reality of our imperial left/right monoculture  and the sheer hatred directed at them from all sides of the political spectrum has finally disabused them of this notion.

EMF is not going down well in Britain and with good reason. Treacherous Albion has sought to play a trojan horse role within Europe, going to the heart of it only to destroy it. We tried to impose similarly beneficent bank bailouts on them  in order to weaken European states and foster oligarchy. We tried to use the IMF as a tool of global governance to the same end and as the height of Murdoch press hubris and reckless arrogance piled into a campaign against the Euro in service to the US dollar. We’ve had to listen to absurd tales of Britain, the victim, having to bail out the feckless Greeks. But Britain is the victim only of its own arrogance, laughably lamenting its supposed loss of sovereignty to Europe whilst surrendering the country to an oligarchy which couldn’t care less about Britain or any other nation. Now that Europe is asserting itself the double game will lie exposed. The bluff will be called. Will Britain veto the EMF and ultimately freeze itself out of Europe? On form, that is what one would expect. We have stood alone before, but this time all we have to offer are billions of freshly printed Pound notes. Who will want to accept these?

The irony is that as the abyss beckons, something like the EMF could be just the thing. Europe has no interest in allowing our headlong descent into failed statedom any more than it has in ruining Iceland. Embracing Europe and, logically, the Euro could help provide the capital flows we are still the beneficiaries of as exported pounds are returned to us in exchange for government bonds, but which could rapidly evaporate as the pound falls. An EMF loan, conditional on it being invested in real, productive development in order to restore our balance of trade, would be most welcome.

What is the alternative? Are we to bomb Germany?