Is the Euro well and truly buggered?

Great cartoon, High Seas!

Yeah, Merkel compared it to a marathon and the EU is now on km 35 and she has been told that from here on, it get's very difficult, but she has enough stamina to finish the marathon, even though she hasn't seen any goals in a long time. The opposing party just shook his head, rightfully so.

Old Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (who was very popular) criticized Merkel heavily today. He feels she's isolating Germany, and the mania of Germany to decide and rule over other EU countries worries him. His suggestion would be to implement joint Euro-Bonds. He said: " Either we encumber debts together (EU) or we force the ECB to buy the bonds, which would accelerate inflation, however." He also noted that a unified Europe has to be our primary concern and cannot drift apart. Even high debt countries like Greece should have the right to maintain its sovereignty in all government dealings.

I am not so sure I agree with him completely. I do think that Greece should be allowed to maintain its sovereignty, however I don't think it's possible in conjunction with keeping a unified EU as it stands today.

I agree however, that Merkel should back off. She's the product of the former East Germany and tenacious as a pitbull. With our history not a good thing to demand compliance from other countries.

Maybe you hit the bullseye in the last paragraph. Helmut Schmidt (whom I admire as well) governed in another era, one in which Germany was still divided and still the "owner" of post war guilt and consequently very reluctant to take a leading political role in most Europe wide issues. Merkel, coming from the East wasn't surrounded by any of that stuff, and now, after a remarkably successful reunification, and after Chanceller Schroeder's implicit declaration that "Germany is a normal nation now" , she governs under very different conditions , and appropriately so.

I'm still troubled by the tradeoff we all face between needed actions to decisively end the perhaps irrational aspects of the financial panic through relatively unbounded committments from the ECB or the major economies collectively and that associated with the moral hazard in committments to bailouts that are not tied to or done in synch with constructive (and perhaps painful) actions to reduce government deficits and stimulate real economic growth. In its essence that means getting people to wortk harder and more and with fewer prepaid government services - never an easy political chore. I read some carefully constructed and persuasive articles favoring more decisive action by the ECP (the recent NY Times Editorial was not one of these) . However, I remain concerned by the moral hazard and the continuing political paralysis. (All of these issues have their application in the USA as well.)

I know from my own experience running businesses that only rarely do companies grow into profitability. More often successful ones get profitable and then they grow, Lean, hungry organizations grow and capture new markets: fat, well-staffed and comfortable ones don't.

You are right, Merkel doesn't share our collective guilt, however as chancellor of Germany she should be sensitive to these issues. I was fond of her for a long time, but the course she's chosen now is a destructive one. She may win the battle, but she'll lose the war.

I also agree that in business you need to be successful first before you grow and I also learned that not everyone is cut out to run a business. Unlike in the United States, in Germany any insolvencies are handled by a criminal court and bankruptcy can land you in prison and I think that is where the German mindset lays, they're too naive to comprehend that other countries don't give a hoot; they rather spend tomorrow's Euro today and not think about tomorrow while the typical German thinks already about the day after tomorrow. If you transfer this on a smaller scale to a marriage - if one spends like crazy, the other one cannot earn or save up enough money to offset that. A couple like that will never succeed.

In a bigger scheme that's the EU: the core countries have similar spending habits and social structures, the other countries just benefited from that until the money run out.

A professor at the Copenhagen university will suggest that Merkel will get the Nobel Peace Prize for what she has done for the Euro. This was in a Danish newspapaper
I enjoyed reading the letters to the editor. Several suggested that the German people should get it - for their patience for having to support lazy people in south Europe.

Many have now lost their Euro-phoria

Hah, coming from the Danish, that would be an honor indeed. Yes, she's done a lot for the Euro, but at what price?

The Euro was doomed to failure when they first proposed it; all governments operate differently, and agreements were deemed impossible from the beginning. 17% governments were expected to agree? LOL

I have been convinced abozt that since they started talking about the Euro.
The Nordic countries could only have kronor at the same level for about 30 years, then every country had to have their own value.
Things went slower about 130 - 100 years ago, so if kronor as the same currency lasted f0r 30 years at that time - I thought it would last 10 years or less now.

Loved the cartoon also! Perhaps The Economist was alluding to the fact Chancellor Merkel is the daughter of a pastor - haven't actually heard her mention the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse in any of her speeches. I'm no fan of Helmut Schmidt, (never was) but I read his own speech carefully.
http://www.ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:spd-parteitag-schmidt-warnt-vor-national-egoistischer-haltung/60137970.html?page=2

Maybe that's a Hamburg word - gathered it means a "waste of power".

I disagree with you on any collective guilt and see no reason for anybody to mention any. If you read the link you'll see Schmidt took issue with the politician who said if he's sending any more money to those siesta-masters (words to that effect) down South he expects them to speak German - that must really have scared the little insolvent peripherals, not any loss of sovereignty, per se, but the threat of having to learn the godawful German grammar

There's a plan B. It will have to be sold very carefully not ruffling any feathers.

Walter explained already "Kraftmeierei" which ist really a typical German word that can't be translated easily, just like "Schadenfreude", but it's a way of being boastful, showing off with a touch of Schadenfreude.

I read a different article (Spiegel) of Helmut Schmidt, but yours is even better, and yes, Schmidt doesn't talk about collective guilt, however, he warns of a national-egotistical attitude that Germany displays which creates anxiety over German dominance in the EU. Because of our history, we have to be "über" sensitive and careful not to dominate other countries.

Yes, I agree with him when he criticizes other politicians - who are public figures - for joking about other nations having to learn German. We cannot afford this kind of jokes and I do feel, despite being born after WWII, that
we have a responsibility as Germans to appease instead of dominate our EU partners.

Get over it already....Not standing up for yourselves because you feel guilty about what your countrymen did before you were born is nuts. I feel the same way about American slavery and the Indian Wars.

Good analogy, hawk; I don't feel any guilt for what Japan did in SE Asia, and support what Truman did with the a-bomb against Japan, and the fire-bombing of Tokyo.

I see a strong link here to the trauma that we see with abuse....and in recovery we teach that full recovery is the point when we no longer chose our actions based upon the abuse...either following the conditioning that the abuser instilled or rebelling against it. We are free of the abuser only when the abuser and the abuse no longer have any say or any control over what we do going forwards.

Germany is still a traumatized country, at some point they need to recover from ww2.

Generally speaking, Germany has recovered. It's evident by their economic growth and standard of living compared to all of Europe and the world.

What I find surprising and elated is how the Vietnamese people welcome Americans to their country regardless of what we have done to their country and people in more recent times than WWII.

What I found from my recent visit to Germany is how most Germans remember the Berlin airlift, and their appreciation for what Americans have done to help them survive from the Russian blockade.

In addition to the Hollocaust museums and memorials, Germany has accepted and acknowledged their part in those atrocities, but they are also looking forward to the future of a better Germany. It's no longer a
handicap for the Germans, and "traumatized" doesn't apply today as it did in the past - as is the case in Vietnam.

No one is traumatized, but we still have to be sensitive to our past, and the way Germany interacts with its financially strapped EU members is not right, in my opinion. That's exactly what Helmut Schmidt stressed in his speech, he cautions the German government to not act in a national egotistical manner as the dominance Germany is currently displaying, creates anxiety among other EU members.

the weak are always anxious of the strong...Germany being the only one in Europe with any money was going to be a problem even if WW2 did not happen so far as the rest of Europe is concerned. The problem is German guilt, not the anxiety of the rest of Europe. **** them, they are out of money, now they dance to the tune that the one who pays the jukebox picks. They can not like this arrangement all they want, their chance to do something to avert this situation was back before the spent their way into poverty.

Where the Germans should have guilt is in the foisting of the Euro upon Europe, but the Germany people were always skeptical...it was the Leadership of Germany and France who laid the groundwork for this disaster, and it was the political leadership of the rest of Europe who were at least complicate. The German people have no reason to feel guilty over the harm that the failure of the Euro causes, as had it been left up to them the Euro never would have happened. I understand that votes were taken to adopt the Euro, but the people were lied to, these were not fair votes. It is the German leadership which should feel guilty, as well as the rest of the European leadership, not the people.

You are talking nonsense. Germany cannot isolate itself politically and/or economically - this is aside from the contractual obligation to uphold the EU
treaty they all signed.

Countries can leave treaties at will, if the German stay in the Euro or try to save the Euro it is only because they make the choice to do so today. All that keeps them from walking away is a promise, and promises are broken All. The. Time.

I have seen a number of experts who claim that Germany can cut and run and be mostly OK, though this point is a matter of great debate. You either are not up enough on current events to know of this debate or else you are being dishonest here to press your point, either way your actions diminish your credibility.

The only person who has no credibility here is you. Your way of thinking is so far removed from the actual problem, there is no sense in discussing anything with you.