One Nation (under Germany)
John Mauldin
May 21, 2012
Este artículo no está disponible en español. Para su comodidad, aquí está la versión en idioma Inglés.
For this week's Outside the Box I want to share with you a
singularly interesting conversation between Niall Ferguson and Ben Laurance, in the Sunday Times of London. What really grabbed me about it was the way
Niall goes right out on a limb and yet makes such a convincing case that, when
push really comes to shove, Germany will bite the federalist bullet, because
it's overwhelmingly in their interest to maintain a united eurozone.
"I am not a federalist," says Ferguson. "But the costs of
the single currency disintegrating are really so high and would impact so many
people, that the only responsible thing for me to do is to argue urgently for
the next step to a federal Europe. I see no alternative at the moment that
isn't a great deal worse."
And the other option? "On the other hand — and this
is the message to Angela Merkel — to use George Bush's phrase: this
sucker's going down. We've reached that point."
Niall has never shied away from addressing the big
questions. His latest tour de force, Civilization:
The West and the Rest (just released in paperback in the UK, as Civilization:
The Six Killer Apps of Western Power), demonstrates how Europe went from being a
fractious, disease-ridden fourteenth-century backwater to global dominance,
through the development of
six "killer applications": competition, science, democracy, medicine,
consumerism and the work ethic — and is now experiencing a precipitious
decline (along with the rest of the West).
Are the stakes
really that high? You bet. Everywhere I go, people are talking about and
working hard on solutions to the issues that will make or break us in the
coming decade.
I was part of a great conversation like that just
a couple weeks ago, at the Casey Research conference I mentioned, down in
Florida. When I'm at one of these things, I keep thinking, "I just wish a
couple million of my best friends could be here, too." Well, the Casey
people just told me that the CDs of the conference are shipping out this week,
and so if you want the next best thing to being there, you can pick up a copy here.
There was a real
whirlwind of press and media interviews last week while I was in New York. You
can go to www.johnmauldin.com and look on the left side for the
interviews I did with the Wall Street
Journal, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance. I am off to Atlanta tomorrow for two
nights and a few speeches and meetings, plus a lot of time to read and think (I
hope!) about some of the speeches I have heard the past few weeks. It really
has been a lot to try and absorb.
Your looking for answers to the big questions
analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box
JohnMauldin@2000wave.com
One nation (under Germany)
Historian Niall Ferguson tells Ben Laurance the single
currency will survive and the crisis will leave Berlin heading a federal Europe
Ben
Laurance
Published: 20 May 2012
Where does it all end? What will be the outcome of the
financial storm battering Europe and its single currency? Can the euro be
saved? And if so, what will be the longterm consequences?
The financial historian Niall Ferguson, visiting London
from his selfimposed exile in America to...
Comments
Jeffrey Beth
Yesterday, 6:56 p.m.
Gotta love Niall Ferguson! There’s no mamby-pamby in THIS guy. What he does not address however is the reality that regardless of what the political elite come round to seeing as what is the best-worst option for their long-term viability and success, the man and woman on the street of the member states are sure as shootin not going to vote to give up their country’s sovereignty to some centralized power structure in Brussels, aka Germany. Even without the long-lived, never-ending historical fear/memory of Germany trying to take over the continent once before, it would be pretty impossible. Adding that to the mix, I don’t see any member state being able to pass such a referendum. I guess the Euro’s mandate could be changed by the power elite to not require a referendum in each nation in order to cram through a Federal Fiscal Union against popular desire, but then you’d have social upheaval beyond belief.
I’d love to hear’s Mr. Ferguson’s, and your own thoughts about this most crucial aspect of the conundrum. We all know the propensity of the general population to vote against their own true self-interest as fear is always, and unfortunately, the great driver of the masses.