Sentences of the day from Paul Krugman:
So Europe in 2013 is doing barely better than Europe in 1935 — and all indications are that by next year recovery will be lagging behind what was achieved in the Great Depression.
The sky is falling...may be not...
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It is an absurd exaggeration to say that French industrial workers spend only three hours a day doing anything productive. Yet it is also the case that the 35-hour working week, combined with an entrenched role for unions within companies and intrusive labour rules, gives little flexibility for bosses. (...) Yet the damage to France’s image may be harder to shake off. At a time when the country has lost competitiveness to Germany, the economy is sliding into recession, taxes are at a record high, and the government has conceded that it will miss its deficit-reduction target for 2013, genuine concerns about the prospects of turning things around are wide-spread. Clara Gaymard, the French head of GE, an American conglomerate which successfully manufactures high-tech industrial stuff in France, put it well in her response to Mr Taylor’s letter. Yes, she said, “France’s image abroad is poor”. But “we are both a wonderful country and a very irritating one.
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Sugary excerpt of the day from Slavoj Žižek:
What is new today is that, with the financial crisis that began in 2008, this same distrust of democracy – once constrained to the third world or post-communist developing countries – is gaining ground in the developed west itself: what was a decade or two ago patronising advice to others now concerns ourselves.
The least one can say is that this crisis offers proof that it is not the people but experts themselves who do not know what they are doing. In western Europe we are effectively witnessing a growing inability of the ruling elite – they know less and less how to rule.
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From Danilo Breschi:
In America, the matrix of individual freedom is "republican," and it is older than equality. It creates, within American democracy, devices of self-government decentralizing the exercise of sovereignty: freedom of speech and of the press, "jury," the idea of law as a duty to partake in public affairs.
In Europe, equality is imposed before individuals develop awareness of their own freedom and independently of any practice of the latter. The matrix of the continental idea of equality is absolutist and is ensured by the royal gaze. In The Old Regime and the Revolution, he wrote that "this kind of love for independence grows out of certain particular temporary mischiefs wrought by despotism, and is never durable; it passes away with the accident which gave it birth. What seemed to be love for liberty turns out to be mere hatred of a despot." For Tocqueville a "habit of despotism" was ingrained in the French people, becoming a sort of widespread popular culture.
Another reason to read Tocqueville.
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From the great Pankaj Mishra:
The European idea of the nation-state, realized after much horrific bloodshed in Europe itself, was always a poor fit for Asia’s diverse mosaic.
Joseph Roth, who grew up in the multinational Hapsburg empire, was appalled by the imperatives of modern nationalism, according to which “every person must belong to a definite nationality or race” in order to be treated as an individual citizen. Roth, a Jew, suspected that members of minority groups, like himself, would be relegated to third-class citizenship, and vicious prejudice against them would be made respectable in the new nation-states built on the ruins of multinational empires.
The ethnic cleansers of 20th century Europe proved him right. It required a monstrous crime and a repentant political imagination to institute peace between warring European nations and soften attitudes toward minorities.
The battle against bigotry is far from over; Europe’s long and violent past today looms over its inevitably multicultural future.
Ah I have always found fascinating the idea that some things are inevitable especially when it is based on the assumption that ethnicity is destiny and identity!
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From Samuel Gregg:
Yes, the president’s reelection is reflective of enormous and disturbing cultural and economic trends in America. Millions of Americans do, for instance, seem committed to the expansion of government, either because they have intellectually rejected the free-enterprise system or, to be frank, because they personally benefit from interventionist arrangements. Why, for example, bother going through the hard work of turning around a company (which might involve telling unions that we’re not living in 1974 anymore) in order to compete in the global market, when you can get piles of taxpayer money to produce cars that no one apparently wants to buy? Incentives matter, including the perverse ones.
Nor can we deny the clear parallels between particular developments in America and Europe. Whether it is the welfare state’s growth via Obamacare, the ongoing acceleration of public-sector debt, the demonizing of the economically successful, our declining competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world, the spread of crony capitalism, the obsessive living for me-myself-and-now, or our intellectually corrupt universities (which will surely be the next financial bubble to explode, and good riddance) — all the data suggest that, in important ways, we are on the path to becoming Europe.
Assuming that Gregg is absolutely right, which is hard to do, what is so awful about becoming Europe beside that ignorant and ideological notion that Europe is just not exceptional enough or rather to normal to be a model for America?
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Sentence du jour from Jacob Funk Kierkegaard :
American youth have fewer education and training opportunities than in Europe — especially following the dramatic cuts to U.S. state and local government education budgets during the crisis.
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Words I munched on last weekend from Norman Davies via the Financial Times:
There is a peculiar absence of dynamic politicians in Europe today. Ten or 15 years ago, I said that Europe would need a really serious crisis for things to be put on the right track. I don’t know how bad it’s got to get before people are driven into changing things. (...) If nothing is done, then disintegration could follow. But I suspect that things will deteriorate, and then some sort of solution will be thought of, and then the European momentum will begin to grow again – after a crisis of several years
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From Daniel Drezner on the Nobel Peace Prize of the European Union:
[...]Since the start of the 21st century, the following organizations have won a Nobel Peace Prize besides the EU: The United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Grameen Bank, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So... maybe not winning a Nobel Peace Prize is better. Still, I would like to thank the Nobel committee for a very humorous start to this Friday.
I share Drezner's reaction. I have to admit that I still haven't found a way to stop laughing! Please, someone help, I'm about to die of laughter.
Just a question: isn't there a little girl in Pakistan or people in Syria or around that area that are more deserving of that pompous recognition?
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One of the dumbest things I have heard this fall from Fergus Downie:
Europe does not have enough of the inherited religious value fat required to sustain an ideological front against Islamism in the way that America occasionally looks like it might – and a scrupulous Weberian legalism is probably the best option available for a continent allergic to the cultivation of strong passions and the fanaticism of principle.
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Sugary excerpt of the late night from Jean-Claude Trichet on the relationship between The European Union and the UK:
(...)I really think that the UK profoundly belongs to Europe and Europe needs the UK. And there is presently a paradox because General de Gaulle was saying, ‘I don’t want the UK.’ Now all of Europe says, ‘We want the UK.’ And it’s the UK that says, ‘We don’t know.’ In any case, its future in the EU depends only on the UK itself, and that is remarkable.”
Falsely provocative thought: it may be possible that Europe needs Turkey now more than it needs the UK!
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Alain Badiou on France, its present and its future or rather lack of one:
Identities here are more frozen. It’s a country in latent crisis, a former planetary great power, with a particular universality, which does not know what to do with its lost greatness. From this point of view, France is at least as much a world being unmade as a world being made. My proposition is that we have to put an end to France. (...)I’ve thought for a long time that France should merge with Germany. I’m very happy, moreover, that other people, such as Michel Serres, now share my opinion. There is no future for France alone. The European combination is teetering, as we’ve seen with Greece, and everyone understands that France and Germany form the hard core of Europe. A merger would make it possible to stand up to the other economic great powers, which neither France nor Germany, nor Europe, is capable of doing today. The French and German economies are already intertwined, so let’s have this hard core realized politically! That could be in the form of a federal state, as is already the case with Germany.
It's good to see that some things never change and that Badiou is still a bold idealist at his best and an unadapted and stubborn ideologue at his worst.
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Brendan O'Neill's interesting take on Euro 2012 and the popular meme that both Poland and Ukraine are essentially racist countries:
What the great Ukraine racism panic reveals is the extent to which official anti-racism has replaced racism as the means through which the elite asserts its authority over allegedly backward peoples. Where once the ideology of racism was used to depict Slavs as inferior, now the ideology of ‘anti-racism’ is used to do something frighteningly similar. The only difference is that where earlier generations of Western elitists argued that Slavs were racially inferior, today’s elitists claim they are culturally inferior, that there is an endemic cultural problem rather than a hereditary problem. Yet all that this reveals is that, in an era when racial thinking has been well and truly discredited, talk of problematic ‘cultural traits’ has replaced talk of backward ‘racial traits’ as the preferred method of asserting one’s moral authority over strange, uneducated tribes Over There. Today, weirdly, a people like the Ukrainians is branded inferior not because of its racial traits but because of its alleged racialist thinking.(...)One possible end result of this relentless cultural assault on Eastern Europeans, the depiction of them as racist lowlifes and savages, is that they will respond in kind, kicking against their Western haters by causing some trouble for Euro 2012.
I don't disagree with O'Neill for too often or rater usually it assumed that racism and other forms of bigotry have to do solely with ignorance and stupidity when it doesn't and when experience sows that it is possible to be cultured and bigoted and to be an anti-racist/non racist and stupid or ignorant. It is too easy to blame culture or rather inculture and stupidity for racism because it simplifies the issue by making it being one of morality, of good vs. evil when the reality is more complex which explains why prejudices and stereotypes can survive erudition.
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Mark Steyn shows that ignorance isn't bliss and can be as vile as it is dangerous when it is used to comfort one in his delusion that he is both a visionary and a truth-teller (h/t: David Thompson):
Most times in today’s Europe, the guys beating, burning and killing Jews will be Muslims. Once in a while, it will be somebody else killing the schoolkids. But is it so hard to acknowledge that rapid, transformative, mass Muslim immigration might not be the most obvious aid to social tranquility? That it might possibly pose challenges that would otherwise not have existed — for uncovered women in Oslo, for gays in Amsterdam, for Jews everywhere? Is it so difficult to wonder if, for these and other groups living in a long-shot social experiment devised by their rulers, the price of putting an Islamic crescent in the diversity quilt might be too high? What’s left of Jewish life in Europe is being extinguished remorselessly, one vandalized cemetery, one subway attack at a time. How many Jewish children will be at that school in Toulouse a decade hence? A society that becomes more Muslim eventually becomes less everything else. What is happening on the Continent is tragic, in part because it was entirely unnecessary.
To quote André Breton, l'homme fait un état risible de ce qu'il croit savoir.
Steyn seems not to know(he probably doesn't for reality is meaningless to him) that France has had a president, Sarkozy, for the last five years, who would agree with him and has been ruled by the right since 2002. Of course, as with all fear-mongers and fanatics, the goal is to keep the fear alive because it enables them to remain irrational and hateful.
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No comment necessary after this bit from Charlemagne:
On Wednesday 26th, when the euro zone holds the second session of its two-part summit, the EU’s 27 leaders will make a point of gathering beforehand. The meeting will last just an hour, and will sign off on the plan to recapitalise Europe’s banks. But because the financial sector is part of the single market, which is an issue for all EU states, and Mr Cameron wanted to make sure that the 27 were seen to take the decision, not the 17.
For now, Mr Cameron does not appear to have a very strong hand. Most of the other euro-outs are committed, legally and politically, eventually to joining the single currency. Mr Sarkozy’s harsh words to Mr Cameron were strikingly spiteful: “We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say that you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.”
British officials shrug off Mr Sarkozy’s legendary rudeness as a personality flaw. “He never pursues it. He is not interested in texts,” says one diplomat.
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Just because the Red Sox broke my heart , I'm using this sugary excerpt from a German's newspaper reaction to Obama's words on Europe and its euro crisis as a bandage for my deep wound:
The fact that Barack Obama, who is a brilliant thinker, knows full well that things are much more complicated in reality does not help. Indeed, it does the opposite. In the desperate battle for his re-election he'd rather construct myths, such as claiming that the Europeans alone are responsible for the American mess. Not only is this fundamentally wrong, but -- coming as it does from a friend -- it's downright pitiful and sad.
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I agree with this:
The Europe and America we live in are powerful and prosperous confederations built out of a series of successive legislative and institutional compromises that don't always make obvious textual sense, but that did what political leaders needed to do at the time. We should have arguments about whether or not expansions of centralised authorities are bad for the polity. But they should be argued on their own terms, not in terms of what was in the hearts of the people who signed the original treaty a long time ago.
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Sentence of the day from Wolfgang Münchau: (hat tip : Buttonwood's notebook):
I have never seen Europe's policymakers as scared as I saw them in Washington last week.
I wonder whether fear mixed condescending elitism can lead policymakers to make right or at the very least decent decisions. I doubt it.
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The sentence of the day is from a must-read oped by Henrik Müller :
If the euro fails, the Germans will be seen in the end as having been the primary culprits. And rightfully so.
For some reason, I can get myself to be riled up about the state of the euro, but that's because I think that it will continue to work in spite of the failings of the EU because there are, in the short term, only catastrophic alternatives and because the weakness of the dollar, makes the euro too important to the world economy.
Thus, the euro isn't going to fail because its survival is about much more than Germany and the EU. It is, too use a cliché, too big/important to fail.
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On point analysis from Charlemagne:
It is not just the fate of Libyans that is in the balance in the war against Muammar Qaddafi, but the commitment of Europeans to maintain - and, when necessary, deploy - serious military forces. Responsibility to protect requires, first and foremost, the means to protect.
The Europeans failed the Libyan test because they didn't give themselves the means to succeed; they were obsessed with the fear that Libya might become their 'Iraq' or 'Afghanistan.' In short, one of the EU's major problems is that it knows that it has a parent, the US, who may have many children and who may sometimes be irritated by it, but who feels closest to it, most of the time(that closeness will change with time).
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Gideon Rachman gets this right as he does more often than not:
It does look as if the Europeans, backed by the Americans, will manage to push Christine Lagarde into the job. But the groundswell of protest against the idea of a Western fix – and the accompanying commentary highlighting the shift in economic and political power from West to East and from North to South – will probably ensure that this will be the last time that a European appointment can simply be bulldozed through.
So President Obama is right when he insists “the time for leadership is now.” But Madame Lagarde might add – “Apres moi, le deluge.”
As a true non-believer in the division of the world between the West and the rest, I have to say that it would be more than a disappointment if the new head of the IMF came from Europe, it would be scandalous. Such an outcome would be indicated of the existence of more than a Western fix, but of a problematic bias within that organization that must be influencing its policies. Furthermore, I baffled by the fact that Christine Lagarde is a credible choice to be head of the IMF not because she isn't competent, but because she just isn't a good choice for so many reasons, the least important of which is that France isn't entitled to get a second chance at the position after it supported Strauss-Kahn knowing full of the risks that something could happen.
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Bernard-Henri Lévy on Germany's stand on the Libyan intervention (it abstained on the UN security council's vote of resolution 1973 establishing a No fly zone):
We lost a great deal of time because of the Germans, which is a disaster, mainly for the Libyans, but also for the Germans, who will pay bitterly for abstaining. What happened here will leave a lasting impression in Europe. And Germany will run into problems in its legitimate effort to secure a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel jettisoned all principles of German foreign policy since the end of World War II: There was the principle that something like National Socialism should never happen again. Never again crimes against humanity. Merkel and (German Foreign Minister Guido) Westerwelle violated this pact. This is a serious incident, not a minor detail. (...) Angela Merkel has the worst foreign minister Germany has had in a long time. Guido Westerwelle is a disaster. Immediately after the German abstention, he told your magazine: "Gadhafi has to go." It's really Westerwelle who ought to go, but he doesn't even seem to be ashamed of his decision, of this valley of shame.
I have stopped taking BHL seriously on those matters (it took me a long time because often I agree with his conclusions, but never with his argumentation) because even when he is right, he can't get out of his own way and resist the temptation of self-righteousness. The fact that he was so involved on Sarkozy's decision to take the lead in Libya worries me not because BHL is an unsavory and unserious character, but because he doesn't understand foreign policy when it becomes about more than postures, grand gestures, and cinematographic heroism.
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Interesting point from Nathalie Rothschild,which I admit makes all warm and fuzzy:
In fact, the EU’s fear of unregulated migration has been a trump card for Gaddafi. Assuaging this EU fear has been a way for the Libyan leader to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the West after years of ostracisation. At the same time, threats to close and open borders have become a way for Gaddafi to hold the West to ransom, as he threatens to block trade deals or relax border controls unless Europe meets his demands. So it is not surprising that Gaddafi gave European nations the ultimatum of distancing themselves from the pro-democracy protesters or facing the supposed opening of the immigration floodgates from Africa. This is a real worry for the EU, which preaches about the virtues of democracy and human rights yet which has no interest in defending freedom of movement.
As we have seen with recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, when people get a taste for freedom there’s no telling what they’ll do to achieve it.
When I was young, I thought at least that Gaddafi (Gadhafi, Khadafi) had presence, now he is just a caricature of the man he once was, even though it was always a bastard, but bastards with presence can be inspiring leaders to the blind.
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I agree with Brendan O'Neill on this:
(...)The great irony of the French government’s restrictions on the burqa in public places, and to a certain extent the Belgian government’s restrictions, is that they have been presented as being in the tradition of the Enlightenment. This is about liberating women from oppression, they say, and therefore it is a good, Enlightened, Voltairish thing to do.
In fact, banning a religious garment is counter to the spirit of the Enlightenment. What these authoritarians forget is that the Enlightenment sprang from a defence of religious liberty. The Enlightenment has its origins, not in any attempt to censor certain minority religious symbols, but in a belief that minority religions, even ones we consider ‘heretical’, should be protected from state intervention, censorship and oppression.
So in calling for the state to restrict a certain form of religious expression, these pseudo-Enlightened censors are doing something that the original men of the Enlightenment would have considered pretty outrageous.
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I agree with Paul Sagar on this:
When Merkel declares that multiculturalism has been a “failure”, she is not only playing to a xenophobic and reactionary gallery, she is also being profoundly short-sighted. Firstly, because she mistakenly focuses only on the day-to-day tensions between different groups that multiculturalism inevitable throws up.
It's incredibly disappointing to realize that Merkel has some Sarkozy within her, which says a lot about the state of the European left for it cannot address issues such as the ones of immigration or law and order without repeating either the errors of Blairism or of Jospinism.
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Via Gideon Rachman, the funniest thing I've read on Ed Milliband's fratricide on his climb to the top of the Labour Party:
I wish Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, would stop emphasising how much he “loves” the brother whose career he has just destroyed. It’s all very schmalzy and unBritish.
On the other hand, if Ed insists on taking this line, he should really go for it in tomorrow’s leader’s speech. Here is a suggested line - “I love David. I adore him. (Dramatic pause). But that is why I had to destroy him. (Thumps lectern, tear trickles down his cheek). I hope you understand.”Meanwhile if Ed really is getting a taste for putting family ties under maximum political strain, the obvious next move is to offer the shadow chancellor job to Yvette Cooper, who is married to the much more obviously-qualified Ed Balls. That should make for some lively breakfasts in the Balls-Cooper household.
In our times, we sentimentalize politics or whatever else to avoid explaining the unexplainable or the unpalatable. Let's hope that all of this brotherly love stuff doesn't hide a lack of substance or isn't a camouflage for Obama-like feel good, but misleading and irrelevant fluff.
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I disagree strongly with Yascha Monk on this:
In America, the rise of neoconservatism, in both its cultural and foreign policy guises, has masked this crisis of the traditional Right. But in Europe, neoconservatism never won much traction. Neoconservatives, whether their branding is Tory or Labour, have been able to land a few punches in British debates about foreign policy. (The Guardian recently described Tony Blair’s appearance at the latest inquiry into the Iraq War as “a seminar on neoconservatism for slow learners.”) But when it comes to other issues that arouse the passions of their American brethren—like religious education, the (un)truth of evolution, homosexuality, and abortion—the tiny set of true British neocons couldn’t be more out of step with their compatriots. The same holds true all over Western Europe. No major right-wing party is inclined to declare the European version of the culture wars. If it did, the Left would surely be overjoyed. On the contrary, Merkel, Cameron, and Sarkozy got elected because under their leadership the Right has fully endorsed left-liberal views on family, lifestyle, and procreation.
It is easier in Europe or in America to get elected in the Right because the Left doesn't know what it is, but solely what it despises. Moreover, when Mounk asserts that Merkel, Cameron, and Sarkozy have endorsed left-liberal views on family, lifestyle and procreation, I wonder if he knows anything about French politics. The culture wars are well and alive in France. This summer has shown that Sarkozy knows full well that in France you get elected by going right on certain issues and by making them a matter of identity and culture. In short, the Right in Europe is well alive politically and no so much disoriented as it is led by figures who have great frailties.The fact that they found themselves in power in spite of those frailties is in fact a proof of the good health of the Right or rather that it is the Left that is disoriented.
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Alexander Osang on the Mannschaft, German football team at the South African World Cup and why its players were the ambassadors of a new Germany:
There was something soothing and liberating about watching this team play, and it was even more soothing and liberating to see the expressions of joy on the players' faces. They embraced each other when Klose, who had been out of form all season at Bayern Munich, finally scored a goal again in the first World Cup match, and the team hugged him as if he had just recovered from a long, serious illness. Klose later said that Podolski wouldn't let him go -- and that it was a nice feeling. They all seemed like boys having a fantastic time on a school outing. Löw thanked the players he substituted, and they thanked him, an act that was not a gesture but an expression of need. Everyone trusted everyone else. The most German of feelings that this team triggered was romanticism.
Having read and listened everything that was written and said about les Bleus, French football team and its South African debacle, I have realized that it is always easy to made footballers representatives/scapegoat of their country's successes or its ills because it is easy and because in both cases, the analogy and the analysis are convenient and so pleasurable for the ones making it weather their intent is to praise or to criticize violently and too often unfairly.
To come back to the Mannschaft, it is undoubtedly that its image is new and young, but I wonder whether that visible change is indicative of lasting and profound social transformations within Germany, in other words, if the Mannschaft different because Germany is different or just because it had to change and to adapt to the realities of football to remain the Mannshaft, that is a consistently good national football team.
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Interesting assertions from Václav Klaus, the Czech president in an Oped in the Wall Street Journal:
It is evident that the euro—the European single currency—and the currently proposed measures to save the euro do not represent any "salvation" for the European economy. In the long run, it can be saved only by a radical restructuring of the European economic and social system. My country had a velvet revolution and made a radical transformation of its political, economic and social structures. Fifteen years ago, I sometimes joked that after entering the EU we should start a velvet revolution there as well. Unfortunately, this ceases to be a joke now.
The Czech Republic has not made a mistake by avoiding the membership in the euro zone.
Klaus's view about the euro not being a salvation is going to become the predominant view for European countries, which are yet to join the euro (and those whose economy will have to go through austerity measures) and will now take into account the Greek example. I'm just wondering how long this trend is going to last. My guess is that it doesn't depend on the EU, but on the health of other currencies, particularly the dollar
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I agree with Václav Klaus, the Czech president on this:
To summarize, the European monetary union is not at risk of being abolished. The price of maintaining it will, however, continue to grow
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The statement of the early morning is Gavin Hewitt's commenting on the measures, which European governments are taking to solve the euro crisis:
What is being forced on Europe is a cultural revolution. It marks an end to an ever-expanding welfare state that some defined as the European way of life.
At the beginning and in the middle of each crisis faced by a European country or by the whole continent, there is always the pronouncement made with gusto and with Fidel Castro like flashy manliness that the welfare state is either going to die or being curtailed drastically. That only lasts until governments realize that Europeans, with the possible exception of the Brits,aren't Americas and actually like their welfare state even if it is cumbersome, expansive, and expensive.
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This bit from Charlemagne about the Germans' increasing frustration with the eurozone isn't surprising:
Germany is fed up of paying more than any other country into the EU budget, and being taken for granted. Germany feels unfairly attacked in this euro crisis. Mrs Merkel's government thinks it is outrageous that it is taxed with euroscepticism for insisting on tough conditions before bailing out members of the euro who caused their own problems. Germany is just trying to defend the law, monetary stability and taxpayers across the union, we keep hearing.
The Germans' relationship with the eurozone's countries resembles the one of a parent with an adult child who is still living at home and not doing enough to help because s/he doesn't have to and believes rightly that the parent will never kick her/him to the curve. The relationship doesn't usually change until the parent gives an ultimatum and follows through if nothing happens. To put things less creatively, the trouble of the Germans is that they are persuaded that they need the euro and therefore that state of mind of believed dependence German impotent or at least limits its choices.
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Quote of the morning from Claire Berlinski:
No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)
Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism.
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I almost agree completely with Henry Ferrell on this:
Germany would like to see an economic government which mostly consisted of other countries adopting harsh fiscal retrenchment combined with extensive oversight.
This isn’t going to happen, much as some German economists might like it to. Germany simply doesn’t have the bargaining power to pull it off. Its threats to expel recalcitrant countries from EMU are now very obviously non-credible. Furthermore, Germany has just demonstrated that it is willing, however reluctantly, to bail others out if the crisis hits. So Germany is left with the unenviable realization that (a) its future economic and political fortunes are linked to EMU, but (b) it doesn’t have the leverage to force others to take measures that it sees as necessary to avoid crisis. This means that it needs carrots as well as sticks to persuade other countries to become less profligate. The only policy tool that I think Germany has is more money – and more specifically, spending money along with other rich member states in countries like Italy and Greece as a quid-pro-quo for reform of taxes, revenue-raising, labour markets and educational systems, which would make these countries more economically prosperous over the longer run, and less likely to pull Germany along with them into further crises.
The one caveat here that there may come a time when it might not be worth it for the Germans to keep on bailing other eurozone's members, which may lead them to start questioning whether the euro is a plus for them if it doesn't provide their country with any economical stability and if its costs outweigh its benefits. To put it more succinctly, Germany has no choices as long as the euro doesn't become an hindrance to the growth of its economy and as long as it considers it the only alternative to its goals to be a power in Europe and elsewhere without its recent history becoming a potent obstacle.
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Another reason to read Charlemagne:
You have to admire French consistency. Whether the right or the left is in charge, they have been pushing for exactly the same thing for years and years: a two speed Europe, and a mechanism that would force other members of the EU to raise their taxes and social costs so they no longer undercut those of France.
Well, the reason for this consistency may be that French national interest doesn't change when it comes to Europe whether the left or the right is governing.
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Pic of the morning is about the political state of Britain (via). I disagree with its message for I think that Nick Clegg had no other alternative since Labour had the arrogance to believe that it was better off in the opposition to give the Brits the opportunity to realize that they are the best. Not choosing Cameron would meant choosing the political wilderness for Nick Clegg in the sake of purity, which is what political fundamentalists do usually when they are not willing to shoulder the responsibilities that come with power .There is no question that Nick Clegg's choice is risky and not the best so is politics and he took a chance to give his party the chance to become something other than the serf of disdainful masters and his country the one to move on from Blairism (it is about time). The culprits here are Labour, the Blairites and Gordon Brown for governing and campaigning without imagination and something other than marketable and flashy humility.
I'm happy that Nick Clegg isn't François Bayrou.
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I disagree with this:
The eurozone is bailing out a member state that has borrowed irresponsibly and seeking to counter speculative attacks on the currency. But it is doing more than altering its policy. It is also changing the nature of the ties among its members states. The creators of the euro, and not only its critics, foresaw that monetary union would ultimately require national governments to cede budgetary powers. A decisive step towards that union has now been taken. The taxpayers of the stronger states, specifically Germany, are liable for the profligacy of the weaker. This is the way that a currency union works.
The problem for the eurozone is precisely that the Greek crisis and the response of the individual states answered none of the essential questions. The focus has been on avoiding the worst and on putting the existential issues on the back burner not to add a political crisis to the economical one. In short, nothing has changed. Eurozone countries are still doing solely what's in their best interest and that reality is a problem for the euro in the long term given the fact that the interests of the members of the eurozone are going to differ a lot more in the future for the intangibles haven't changed and for there is still going to remain a big gap for example between Germany and the rest of the eurozone.
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My take on the end of the British spectacle is that Labour is as gutless as the Democrats (they still are) were in 2000 when because they were tired of Gore and centrism, they let Bush come to power without putting of much of fact. Their calculation was that he would never last and that four year out of the White house with a bad American president would be beneficial to their party. My point isn't that David Cameron is George Bush, but rather that Labour had been in power for so long that it assumes that it will get back on top fast when it has burned all of its witches and Cameron has proved to be as bad a prime minister as he is a campaigner.
For different take on the election, read Massie, Sagar, and Hagley Road to Ladywood. Boy, I hope that David Cameron becomes a decent prime minister in spite of his views and makes Labour regret the day that they dismiss too casually the opportunity, one,which they didn't deserve to change history and Nick Clegg finds a way to last.
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Interesting assertion from Paul Krugman:
Now, the complaint from the right about any effort to do anything about mass unemployment is that it’s turning America into Greece.
My only issue with Krugman's assertion is that he begs the question, which is whether there is anything that America can learn from Greece. I have the strong suspicion that there is.
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I agree with Gideon Rachman's take on the results of the British election:
But, one of the strange aspects of this election, is that - in a way - all three leaders have lost.
After all, how can one conclude that there are any winners when it is the Lib-Dem, who had less than 60 MPs, who get to make to decide who will the next prime minister, a choice that the Brits didn't/couldn't/wouldn't make. What a pitiful circus!
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Marc DeGirolami has a convincing rebuttal of Jean-François Copé's, the majority leader of the France's parliament, op-ed in the New York Times justifying the intent of his party to pass a law banning the burqa. Sugary excerpt:
It would be more honest of Copé simply to admit that France (like much of Europe) feels itself and its Western culture under threat by Muslims and their ways. Copé does not want to ban the veil because he feels a fraternity with that population, or because he is acting with a view to their own "real" happiness, a happiness which they just can't see right now (oh, but they will!). He wants to ban the veil for reasons which satisfy the French and the Belgian majorities because he wants to stigmatize what he deems to be a condemnable way of life -- to punish people whose ways of life he finds inimical to the survival of French culture.
To put all of this in the language of "fraternity," and to claim, as Copé does, that this legislation "is aimed at no particular religion and stigmatizes no particular community," or that it is really aimed at helping his fellow man, is the worst sort of self-deluding lie. It is doubly false. First, Copé does not feel fraternity toward the Muslims whose practices he aims to criminalize. He feels enmity toward them. And second, if he really wanted to make them happy, he would let them do as they wish -- rather than imagine that he actually knows more about what their religion demands of them than they do.
What strikes me most about the arguments used to ban the burqa is they are both illiberal and ahistorical. They glossed over the fact that throughout history liberal societies have faced greater and more legitimate threats and have never been able to resolve existential or identity issues by using laws. The most dangerous thing that the drive toward burqa's bans is highlighting is that the descendants of Voltaire and other great philosophers no longer know how to win ideological and political arguments and are therefore forced to act as if laws exist to cement identities and to stifle debate thus embracing falling the paternalistic urge to decide for their societies to remain as it is without having to convince and to teach. In short, Jean-François Copé and the others are acting as if there have never been any evolution in French and other societies and if it is solely necessary to say that the burqa is unacceptable to make it .
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Tony Barber on German trade and the eurozone:
(...)since Germany’s reunification in 1990, German trade has become increasingly less dependent on the rest of the eurozone. In 1991, what is now the euro area absorbed 51.3 per cent of total German exports. This fell to 45.1 per cent in 1998, just before the euro’s launch. It went down again to 43.7 per cent in 2007.
German trade is less and less integrated with the rest of the eurozone in terms of imports, too. Contrary to popular myth, the volume of imports of goods and services has expanded far more in Germany (48.1 per cent) than in France (39.5 per cent) since the euro’s debut in 1999. But Germany is increasingly buying its imports from countries outside the euro area.
The obvious conclusion is that German businesses see ever more promising opportunities in trading with China, other Asian countries and the US than with many of their counterparts in Europe. Why should this be so? It comes down to the cost of rebuilding eastern Germany after reunification and the loss of competitiveness that this astronomical financial burden inflicted on German companies. They regained international competitiveness partly by grinding down domestic labour costs, but also by turning to cheap non-European suppliers for their inputs.
This reality shows that the economies of the eurozone are very different and that those reasons, countries have therefore not only different interests, but also different objectives when it comes to the euro. The fact that Germany is less integrated in the Eurozone matters not only because it is its most populous country and its strongest economy, but also because it means that the Germans more than others cannot afford the euro to become weak even if it may help the group. In short, if the Greece crisis isn't solved and if there is any type of contagion, there is going to be more tensions between Germany and the others and more importantly a discussion about the reduction of the size of the eurozone to protect the euro.
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Quote of the day from Gilles Saint-Paul :
(...)it is somewhat disturbing that we are now asked to pour money into Greece to "save the euro" (while the British, who have no stake in the euro, are spared that burden). Besides the fact that apart from Germany, the other large Eurozone economies (France, Italy, and Spain) are barely in a better shape than Greece, and besides the moral hazard effects of the intervention, it makes little sense to prolong a monetary regime which is actually one of the reasons why those countries are in trouble.
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I disagree with Paul Sagar on this:
What gives the successful political leader his or her appeal, and thereby power, is precisely what Weber identified: the ability to inspire unquestioning belief. That neither Cameron, Clegg nor Brown presently possesses an outright lead is a testament to how little belief they inspire, and hence what poor political leaders they really are – even if Brown showed yesterday that he could have been something more.
Our times are ones where the electorate and the political and social context aren't the same as it was when Max Weber wrote and that makes all the difference. Elections have become about glitz, television, and the ability to look and to sound good. The point isn't that Cameron, Clegg, and Brown are the best candidates to ever run for the British prime ministership; it is rather that the British electorate, as any electorate in a liberal and modern society, given the context and the times it evolves in, is looking for style that can masquerade as substance and make them feel good about who they are without requiring them to sacrifice and to make life-altering changes to their way of life.
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I feel probably the same as this young Brit about Gordon Brown except that it has nothing with him, but everything to do with the fact that he reminds me, and I suppose too many Brits, of the worst of Tony Blair without been able to bring something new to the table or even to remind people of why they trusted Blair for so long. Politics is unfair (via, h/t)
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On point comment from Charlemagne on the bad press that Germany and Angela Merkel for their toughness during the Greek crisis:
To me, it is grossly unfair to say that mainstream German political debate is nationalist. It is true that German tabloids have said harsh things about Greeks in recent weeks, and leading German politicians have made intemperate remarks about throwing Greece out of the euro zone against their will. But I think this is about clashing political cultures, not a clash between one volk and another.
But for those who believe this euro crisis can only be fixed by the deep, EU-level integration of economic and budgetary policies, it is a neat intellectual trick to say that those who disagree are are acting out of nationalism, selfishness and—oh, go on—heartlessness.
It is easy to point the fingers on Germany because of recent history and the prejudices that it has created. The trouble is of course that such finger pointing is making it difficult to ask essential questions one of which is whether the EU and the IMF are actually providing permanent solutions or solely putting a bandage on a serious and existential issue to delay unavoidable and deeper adjustments and contain any possible contagion.
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This argument from Paulinlancs arguing that people should vote for 'Labour' just to keep the Tories out shws that Labour has already lost the election:
Labour may have done bad things, but a next Labour government will not be ANYWHERE NEAR AS REMOTELY DAMAGING to us all, and especially to the working class, as a Tory government.
You don’t have to support Labour’s track record to support Labour at this election. It’s enough to want to keep the Tories out, and the way to do that is generally to vote Labour (I accept there is a tactical voting issue in some places). Voting for TUSC, or RESPECT, or the Greens, will not keep the Tories out. It’s not rocket science.
The argument isn't wrong, but it is paternalistic, disrespectful to voters, and not very convincing. It argues that Gordon Brown , his record and the one of his party in power don't matter because the Tories will always be worst. It is a little bit like a student been close to failing an important exam who stops to argue to the judges that the test doesn't matter because they know who is the smarter, and exemplary student and that therefore they don't have to pay attention to anything else. The bigger point is that Gordon Brown let this election become one about change and cannot argue that change doesn't matter because it is worst than the present when he has failed to convince the Brits that he is change. Voters don't like to hear that they don't have any choice and that they are stuck between choosing the plague and the cholera, that is between an illness that hurts them, but gives them a chance to survive and one which will kill them.
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Quote of the midday from Charlemagne:
(...) it is striking how press reporting in bits of Europe starts from the position that markets are up to no good.
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Walter Mead on the Greek crisis and the fact that it affects not only on the European Union, but also America:
It is tempting and superficially agreeable for Americans to gloat about Europe’s troubles. After all, every time something goes wrong in American domestic or economic policy, European elites and journalists are quick to gloat and find fault. After listening to two years of stern and self righteous lectures about the ‘failure’ of the American capitalist model, many Americans who deal with the Europeans are quietly enjoying the spectacle of the smug Europeans writhing in helpless indecision and pain over the continent’s self-inflicted wounds.
But bad news for the EU is bad news for us too. Irritating as a strong EU can be, a weak and divided Europe is much worse. A peaceful, prosperous and geopolitically boring continent that exports tedious platitudes about global governance is a far better place than any other Europe we have seen in modern times and American national interests are in no way enhanced by economic and political instability in the Mediterranean — to say nothing of Ukraine and Turkey.
Europe’s problems end up in the American in-box.
I'm wondering whether the Greek crisis isn't a welcome one for America as long as it doesn't get out of control and doesn't last too long, but dents simply the threat that the euro has become to the dollar by making it again seem as the only safe global currency. The point that I'm making is that although the US is married to Europe, their relationship remains one where power is everything because it determines its directions, its parameters and most importantly the obligations that each party has to one another and how open the relationship can be. The weaker Europe is without being in a state of complete disarray and while remaining state, the more Obama is able to set his own agenda by focusing on Latin America and Asia without any tangible consequences.
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