STOCK MARKET WATCH - Friday, 17 February 2012

[Ghost Dog]

65. Well,

I'll say this: There is amazing wealth and modern infrastructure applying tasteful architecture in mainland Western Europe, and it gets more and more densely concentrated the further North you get.

[center] [/center]

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-62-is-available-Global-Systemic-Crisis-Euroland-2012-2016-Perpetuation-of-a-new-global-power-on-condition-of_a9183.html

... By mid-2012, as we have already indicated in preceding GEAB issues, Euroland will be endowed with a whole set of new national leaders (Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Slovenia, Belgium,…) and the following months there will be elections in Germany. Euroland will thus be led by men and women who, for the most part, came to power after the start of the crisis.

Until the end of 2011 it wasn’t the case; quite the contrary, most Eurozone leaders were electoral products of the world before the crisis. The fact that these leaders, mediocre politicians in the main, and completely unprepared for the collapse of the values/beliefs which they held until 2008, were nevertheless able to face relatively well the global crisis, then the Greek crisis and its effects, against the background of a violent attack on the European single currency by City of London and Wall Street, was proof of the dynamics of European integration at work within Euroland. In fact, our team considers that they were the generation of politicians the least prepared to “save European integration” since they were generally not very interested in Europe and often under the control of the banks and Washington. To pick up from an analysis of Franck Biancheri’s going back to 1989, “the babyboomer politicians are likely to break the European project of which they understand nothing, prior to the “Erasmus” generations entering the fray”...

... This analysis is reinforced by another determining factor of the European decision-making process: in the absence of the system’s democratization, the technocrats are the real masters of the game on the EU circuit including Frankfurt, Brussels,… and national capitals (7). They, since the creation of ECSC in 1951, wove the fabric of European integration. They, who offered our disorientated leaders the solutions of these last two years. They, who are already preparing the initiatives for the next few years. But to be able to take the leap of European integration, they need the politicians. And the politicians are only ready to take risks in two cases: when they are afraid and when they are visionaries (8). Fear was the incentive in 2010/2011. The vision of the future will be that in 2012/2016...

... Moreover, from the second half of 2012, Euroland will see the French’s constructive return to the European project. It’s a reality forgotten by many since it’s been 17 years since it disappeared from the European decision-making process. Whether it be Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy, none of the French presidents since 1995 had a European streak (unlike their predecessors - De Gaulle, Giscard and Mitterrand). Jacques Chirac at least had the Gaullist backbone of the refusal to be subservient, which enabled him to resist the general recruitment for the invasion of Iraq, in partnership with the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Nicolas Sarkozy himself hasn’t had any backbone, national or European. He will have done nothing, only cross the political landscape (14) driven by interests foreign to the common good of the French and Europeans.

These declining or anecdotal trends have, of course, been reinforced by the Anglo-Saxon domination of the European agenda, pushing expansion and the European Market to the detriment of integration and European power. In the end, that’s 17 years that France has ceased making its intellectual contribution to the advance of European integration (15). This “French absence” at European level was only the reflection of a growing disconnect between Parisian power and the true country (16); a situation which, according to LEAP/E2020, is approaching its denouement with the overwhelming rejection of the current president by the French.

Without too much of a wait, the next election of François Hollande at France’s helm will allow the bond between the true country (17) and French leaders to be rebuilt, at least for a year or two; sufficient time to revitalize the French contribution at European level. The socialist candidate’s personality also works in favour of this development. He’s a politician for whom Europe is a key component of his commitment, along Mitterrand-Delors lines; and he has the right profile for future Euroland leaders over this 2012-2016 period: they will have to be good team players because managing Euroland will be a team business and not one for individuals. These five years will more resemble an in-house stowing of a space station’s various pieces of equipment than a cavalry charge. Each epoch needs a certain kind of leader: the Euroland of the next few years needs European team members, reliable and inventive, knowing where they want to go and aware that they can’t get there on their own. Beyond any partisan considerations, in his course and the conduct of his campaign, our team thinks that François Hollande has shown that he has these qualities (18).

In this context, he has to urgently reposition his campaign speeches on the renegotiation of the current European treaty into promising to negotiate additions to it. It’s necessary to reassure the German and Dutch partners in particular; and it’s useful for Angela Merkel to avoid making the major strategic error of entering the campaign at Nicolas Sarkozy’s side (19). For, on the one hand, this does nothing to avoid the defeat of the latter (and even the opposite); and, on the other, that will make the first months of Franco-German co-operation after the 6th May 2012 more difficult, even if it’s urgent to open the driving core of Euroland to other countries (Netherlands, Spain, Italy,…).

At the same time these two years will see the acceleration of the difference between Euroland and the EU. It is a phenomenon which will in fact characterize the whole of the decade. Euroland which functions to a large extent in the form of informal networks will gradually have to equip itself with some institutional bases. They will be modest because nobody wants a repeat of the bureaucracy which definitively ossified Brussels; but modelled on the ECB, the MES, a secretariat of Euroland governance will prove to be necessary very quickly, then certain specific institutions as well as a specific Euroland component within the European Parliament (meetings reserved for the European representatives of the Euroland countries to discuss specific Euroland questions, modelled on the Euroland summits).

This development will be all the more strong and rapid that the United Kingdom will try to slow down or block Euroland actions. There was such an example of the counter-productive effect of the British veto last December; it quite simply obliged the others to move on without London.

In general, Eurolanders will seek to use the existing EU institutions but distancing non-Eurolanders from the decision-making processes. Each time it’s impossible or too complicated, a new institutional base will be created. This development will be all the easier as all the EU countries, except for the United Kingdom, have a rationale for adhesion to the Euro in fact (20). Most EU countries know that they will be in Euroland by 2017; which greatly facilitates Euroland progress for the years to come.

Thus, after about fifteen years of mistakes under British and US influence, during which Europeans were misled on enlargement projects without a future (Turkey, Ukraine,…) (21) and illusory economic-financial strategies (Lisbon treaty strategy,…), the next few years will bear the mark of the return to political and economic integration, as was the case at the time of the first EU renaissance in 1984-1992. According To LEAP/E2020, 2012/2013 will thus mark the beginning of the second EU renaissance.

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-62-is-available-Global-Systemic-Crisis-Euroland-2012-2016-Perpetuation-of-a-new-global-power-on-condition-of_a9183.html