STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 23 April 2013

[xchrom]

33. We eurozoners must create a United State of Europe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/23/united-state-of-europe-anglo-american-union

They were a loose confederation of states in danger of falling out among themselves, and unsure if they would survive in an increasingly competitive international environment. Their debts were piling up; their currency was weak; their economies were diverse and incompatible. The idealism that had brought them together was rapidly evaporating. Something drastic would have to be done.

Sound familiar? The polity in question, however, is not the eurozone but the United States of America in the late 1780s, a few years after the 13 colonies had won independence from Great Britain. The great powers hovered menacingly. US merchant shipping was exposed to vicious attacks by Muslim pirates operating out of north Africa. Economically, the country was divided between a commercially oriented north-eastern seaboard, and an agrarian south and west. There was no real executive to speak of, Congress had no power to raise taxes to pay for national projects, and all international treaties had to be ratified by every one of the states before they came into force.

The debts of the revolutionary war were largely held by the individual states, with little prospect of being honoured, thus destroying all public creditworthiness. (The United States lacked a proper military, because the states could not agree on how it should be paid for, and many Americans were fearful that it might be used to undermine their liberties). So loose were the bonds that held the confederation together, many Americans feared the United States might fragment into its component parts, or succumb to civil strife.

As they debated how to reform their young republic, the patriots looked to the old continent for instruction. The example of the squabbling Italian city states and principalities of Machiavelli's time, which had laid the peninsula open to outside domination, was a terrible warning. They didn't think much of divided Poland either, in the process of being partitioned out of existence.



***a united euro zone was supposed to be a socialist/worker oriented answer to the hegemony of the US and china -- then the austrian german austerians fucked it all up for every one -- including the socialists -- who took their own bite from the poison apple.