[French Economy Minister Emmanuel ] Macron is very different from [Italian Prime Minister Matteo] Renzi in both style and substance. A banker-turned-politician, he is President François Hollande’s only minister who combines a serious understanding of France’s and Europe’s macroeconomic challenges with a reputation in Germany as a reformer and skillful interlocutor. So when he speaks of an impending religious war in Europe, between the Calvinist German-dominated northeast and the largely Catholic periphery, it is time to take notice.…
Exasperated by Schäuble’s backtracking from his own plan for political union, Macron recently vented his frustration: “The Calvinists want to make others pay until the end of their life,” he complained. “They want reforms with no contributions toward any solidarity.”Here we go again.
Replay of the Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia, which established the principle of national sovereignty as fundamental in international relations? (Russia and China are relying on Westphalia in their counter to unipolarism.)
If Yanis is correct, the euro is toast.
If Yanis is correct, the euro is toast.
Nothing short of macroeconomically significant institutional reforms will stabilize Europe. And only a pan-European democratic alliance of citizens can generate the groundswell needed for such reforms to take root.That's not in the offing given either current or foreseeable conditions.
Project Syndicate
Schäuble’s Gathering Storm
Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.
8 comments:
"...only a pan-European democratic alliance of citizens can generate the groundswell needed for such reforms to take root...."
I want what he's smoking.
Freaking left with their internationalist EU-super-dictatorship dreams... They can't just let it go.
On the other side about the internal European war over ideas, it rhymes with what we have been saying over here in the comments. The calvinist/ordo-liberals are exasperating because their extremism and crackpot ideas on macro-economics.
just if we could have ordo-liberalism micro + no-non-sense macro ... You know like some sort of balances socialism... maybe then we could have an alternative to the barbarian neoliberal model in USA and UK in addition to China, Russia etc. models.
It's a version of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence
Stupidity leading to malicious coverup.
They're not evil.
Ah yes-those Protestants. Yes the Calvinists are the economic bad guys. Their strain of Protestantism is most easily seen in Switzerland, the British Isles, Holland, and most critically, USA and Canada. Lutheranism, the other strain of Protestant is most easily seen in the Nordic countries and in parts of USA such as Minnesota and the Dakotas. The Germans have both Lutherans and Calvinists though Calvinist banking practices have come to dominate. Merkel is a Lutheran preacher's daughter but she knows WAY less what that means than say, Garrison Keillor.
euro is leftist TINA
The EU is the leftist TINA - despite it clearly having been taken over by Right Wing corporatists.
The call I hear now is that "The EU is fine. It's just the Eurozone that is a problem". As if the two are separate.
"The EU is fine. It's just the Eurozone that is a problem". As if the two are separate.
But they're right - they are separate, separable things, and the problem is the Euro. If a country wants to get some minor benefits from being in the EU, and pay a minor price for it in some way, why not? It just isn't worth the enormous, absurd price of enslavement to maniacs = being in today's Euro.
"Their strain of protestentism is most easily seen in the British Isles"
Not actually true. There is a confusion that England is a protestant country but it's actually wrong as The Church of England (Anglican or across the pond Episcopal church) is a reformed Catholic church. England being the dominant country in the UK by a large margin isn't at all Calvinist.
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