In reply to Chibboleth.

Add to that this amusing comment: “This speech in the European Parliament today by UKIP leader Neil Farage (hat tip Chuck L) echoes some of the themes of Mathew Rose’s post.”

As UKIP leader and MEP, Farage has been repeatedly and bluntly predicting this coming tragedy for nation states under the Euro regime (and for Greece, in particular) for many years, so the correct phrasing would be that any similar “themes” in Rose’s post echo Farage.

In reply to Katniss Everdeen.

I believe there were belt buckles in both world wars inscribed with “Gott mit unst.”

In reply to cnchal.

Not when they’re intent on following a Hayekian line and “de-nationalizing” the creation of money to put it in the hands of unaccountable and irresponsible Fat Cat bankers as Ann Pettifor so ably points out in her book Just Money.”

In reply to steviefinn.

Yes that was weird to watch Farage’s pretty open statement to the effect that “Syriza may be mad ultra lefties but their my kind of mad ultra-lefties”. Of course Farage is in election mode and knows a free catch when he sees one.

In reply to pebird.

The picture of Moe Larry and Curly doing their thing is a beautiful metaphor. (note that the link seems to have changed a little)

In reply to NotTimothyGeithner.

I believe that under basle II, European sovereign debt required no risk capital. Therefore, from a return on equity perspective, the spread is free money. Until it isn’t.

To DBK – I’ll give you extra bonus points for identifying the individual that made this quote:

Give me control of a nation’s currency and I care not who makes the laws

It wasn’t a Boyscout Troop leader was it? Central Banking conquered the globe. Problem is bankers make loans. They are not proficient at fiscal policy.
For the EU to have actually succeeded it should have started with an online debate platform followed by a political union and then monetary union. Neither the EU nor the US are operating as Republics. The possibility of a global Republic may as well reside in another dimension by such still believing it possible. I speak to a minority of readers here.

The EU will restructure the debt of Greece. The beaurocrats of Brussels are doing a Kubaki dance to save
face by dragging the inevitable out. That will happen globally, one way or the other by producers checking out or war. People only do things for two primary reasons. The opportunity to benefit or fear of loss. The in your-face lawmaking to induce fear all the time inevitable destroys confidence.

Thank you for listening to my viewpoints. Time is valuable.

There is a broader perspective that most people seem to miss, which is the fact that not only German banks but all Western banks are bankrupt and headed for collapse. The reason is dwindling resources and the ecocide that has resulted from our rapacious consumption of them (particularly cheap oil). This is highlighted by the impossibility of meeting the demands of the capitalist growth machine on a finite planet. As soon as Quantitative Easing becomes a bandaid on a festering wound, and when the financial sector becomes a dominant source of fake GDP, you know this regime is collapsing. We saw the beginning of the collapse in 2008, and the system is poised for another worse crash that will bring about the worst depression in history — one that is perpetual. There will be widespread hunger and death, masses of people displaced, and environmental catastrophe on an epic scale. Climate scientists already have pointed to the evidence that runaway climate change has been triggered. Adding war into the mix will only accelerate human extinction.

I should think humans are intelligent enough to realize that our only habitat is about to be destroyed if we don’t immediately change direction. Capitalism has failed utterly and completely and so must be discarded. We had better remove the incentives and directives for building weapons and bombs, stop enabling hoarding of wealth and fighting over ownership, and start devoting all our resources to caring for basic human needs and preparing for the onslaught of ecosystem destabilization.

Or maybe our egocentric nature guarantees the ultimate confrontation through nuclear war, so that a nuclear winter will simply end the human experiment to demonstrate to some future alien space probe that our species did not evolve and therefore did not deserve to continue its existence on this rare oasis in the universe.

In reply to alex morfesis.

Actually, JP frequented a well-reputed astrologer, Evangeline Adams, and later subscribed to her mundane astrological forecasts. It was she who warned him off the Titanic and now look…

In reply to Seamus Padraig.

Competition? What ever happened to pride in plain workmanship?