In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

23rd May, 2010

A quick survey of British media opinion on the eurozone crisis reveals much about the British psyche. Firstly, thinking in Britain is a collective rather than an individual process. Secondly, there is no corrective mechanism: once we start talking shit there is nothing than can stop it.

Our gripe against Europe is based on the claim that it is a political rather than a economic project. It is both, but the political aspect has come to the fore dramatically over the last week. The reason for this is that the destruction of the Eurozone is a political rather than an economic project. How else can one explain an economic crisis in a zone which runs a trade surplus, has a real industrial and agricultural base, has a low level of private debt, has excellent infrastructure, excellent education levels and high levels of social cohesion, provoked by speculators and rating agencies operating out of a zone, the anglosphere, which has none of these? The fall of the euro relative to the dollar/pound has no basis in economics. The fall in the Euro is an expression of the terminal state of the economy on the dollar/pound zone. It is the result of  a final desperate attempt by the latter to maintain their only and decisive advantage: the credibility of their currencies as reserve currencies, the exchangeability of their fiat currencies on global markets.

We are at war with our friends in Europe and the pundits who are pontificating so ignorantly on Eurozone affairs are part of that war. England expects every hack, media bimbo, Colonel Blimp little-Englander and right-on leftist to do their duty and so they are all piling in lamenting the end of Europe and by extension the triumph of the British way. And they are simply incorrigible with headlines such as

“The European Idea lies dead, killed by the credit crunch”

Apparently,

“The EU will continue to muddle through, but the credit crunch has buried the European Idea. The moral authority contained in the vast achievement of binding Europe’s bellicose tribes into peaceful collaboration is spent. There will be no 21st-century European superpower, just a bunch of middle-sized ex-powers arguing over a dwindling pot of devalued money. Reform or decline? Europe will do both.”

This sounds like hubris coming from the British basket case, bankrupt beyond human imagination, mired in disastrous war and led by a bunch of overgrown schoolboys. But why expect any objectivity? This is simply crude psychological warfare: the fog of war.

Who is winning the war?

Well after Angela Merkel’s intervention on Tuesday, banning naked short trades against the euro, my money’s on the Eurozone. Europe has shocked the markets by showing it is able to react appropriately to a full-scale assault on its own existence. France has put up only token resistance to the advance of Merkel’s panzer divisions, seemingly happy to see Britain’s contemptible little army of speculative traders abandon Dunkirk’s beaches in a flotilla of yachts and dingies.

As William Engdahl has pointed out, the stakes are high: nothing less than the survival of the hegemonic aspirations of the Anglosphere. And so, the City and Wall Street won’t take interference with their illegal trading lying down. Last week may have been the turning point, their Al Alamein. But, for the empire, it isn’t just the beginning of the end: it’s the end.