The EU Follows Us into the Vortex

Monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression ----Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a piece in today's Telegraph that lays out what we, in our zeal to prematurely cannonize "The One", choose to ignore.

Events are moving fast in Europe. The worst riots since the fall of Communism have swept the Baltics and the south Balkans. An incipient crisis is taking shape in the Club Med bond markets. S&P has cut Greek debt to near junk. Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish bonds are on negative watch.

Dublin has nationalised Anglo Irish Bank with its half-built folly on North Wall Quay and €73bn (£65bn) of liabilities, moving a step nearer the line where markets probe the solvency of the Irish state.

A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be. Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill. Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped.

What is core here is that street riots of the most violent kind are being staged by the client population who are in a major snit because their benefits will have to be cut back or curtailed or??? We are about to find out because underneath all this world wide leftward drift is the demand by clients of the state for more and more of less and less, made so because all their goodies have been a result of borrowed money that now cannot be paid back. Stay tuned 'cause it's getting hairy. Liberals around the world have no intention of paying back anything that they have "borrowed," choosing to believe that they were entitled to the deficit monies as a birthright.

The shit doth hitteth the fan.
(Large tip of the glove to Infectious Greed)