Europhrenia Excerpts:
According to the dictionary, schizophrenia is “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”
In Europe, they’re having the same thing—only writ large: It’s not that the political/financial leadership of Europe is at odds with the people—it’s that they’re two minds locked in a single body, struggling for control.
In the one hemisphere of this divided brain, the political/financial leadership is convinced the European union is something devoutly to be wished—no matter what the costs, no matter what fortune and the people throw up in opposition.
In the other hemisphere of the europhrenic brain, the people of Europe overwhelmingly do not want integration “at all costs”. In some parts (a lot of parts) of Europe, they don’t want integration at all.
..
No country ever voted for monetary union—ever. European monetary integration only ever happened by either government diktat or the legislature overriding the will of the people.
..
The people of Europe never wanted total European integration, not even in the best of times—whereas the European leadership adamantly insisted upon it.
And:
The basic problem of the current crisis is, countries of the European periphery—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy—took on too much cheap debt from banks in the core eurozone countries—France, Germany and Holland—and now are unable to pay for it. It’s not more complicated than that.
(One could argue that the reason the European nations overspent was that the leaders were basically bribing the people with a false sense of affluence, bought and paid for via debt, so that they would acquiesce to the European Union and the eurozone. But that’s for another post.)
And remember: The real crisis has yet to begin! The unrest so far is in response to the first wave of official responses towards keeping the Euro solvent and restarting the economy. The real pain hasn't even started yet. In Greece, they're protesting, and Portugal just threw out their government. How long will it be before alienation and anger at the new government's inability to correct begins to rise?
The immediate question: How quickly (and to what scale) will this crisis bloom?
According to the dictionary, schizophrenia is “a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”
In Europe, they’re having the same thing—only writ large: It’s not that the political/financial leadership of Europe is at odds with the people—it’s that they’re two minds locked in a single body, struggling for control.
In the one hemisphere of this divided brain, the political/financial leadership is convinced the European union is something devoutly to be wished—no matter what the costs, no matter what fortune and the people throw up in opposition.
In the other hemisphere of the europhrenic brain, the people of Europe overwhelmingly do not want integration “at all costs”. In some parts (a lot of parts) of Europe, they don’t want integration at all.
..
No country ever voted for monetary union—ever. European monetary integration only ever happened by either government diktat or the legislature overriding the will of the people.
..
The people of Europe never wanted total European integration, not even in the best of times—whereas the European leadership adamantly insisted upon it.
And:
The basic problem of the current crisis is, countries of the European periphery—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy—took on too much cheap debt from banks in the core eurozone countries—France, Germany and Holland—and now are unable to pay for it. It’s not more complicated than that.
(One could argue that the reason the European nations overspent was that the leaders were basically bribing the people with a false sense of affluence, bought and paid for via debt, so that they would acquiesce to the European Union and the eurozone. But that’s for another post.)
And remember: The real crisis has yet to begin! The unrest so far is in response to the first wave of official responses towards keeping the Euro solvent and restarting the economy. The real pain hasn't even started yet. In Greece, they're protesting, and Portugal just threw out their government. How long will it be before alienation and anger at the new government's inability to correct begins to rise?
The immediate question: How quickly (and to what scale) will this crisis bloom?
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