March 6, 2009

Hang Onto Your Wallets, Here Comes the EU!

 

If you want proof that any given group, if not explicitly defined as right-leaning, will ultimately end up in leftist shambles, one only has to look as far the European Union’s recent meeting in Brussels. The purpose? To deal with the world financial crisis. Up until now, its main focus has been tackling the fairy tale of “global warming”. But now the EU has a real world problem to deal with. People likely aren't giving much thought to global warming when their investment portfolios are on fire.

 

What ended up happening at this meeting was exactly what you might expect: Hungary and the Baltic states want to be bailed out by countries like France and Germany, which are having enough financial troubles of their own. 

 

Le Figaro newspaper reports that France’s debt is heading for 80 percent of its GDP (or $27,625 U.S. per person) by the end of next year. France pumped $450 billion U.S. into its banks last year, and another $7.8 billion to prop up French car manufacturers – because the world would be lost without Renaults and Citroens. Germany bailed out its banks last October to the tune of $675 billion U.S. And now the crippled are being asked to carry the wounded with a massive transfer of wealth.

 

All these so-called “independent” states, which presumably want to be treated like adults at the big kids’ table in each of the various layers of European Union government, are now begging for a form of economic colonization, not realizing – or perhaps not caring – that there is always a price to being bought off. Or at least there ought to be. When you live in mom and dad’s basement because you can’t get your own affairs in order, you shouldn’t be allowed to call the shots – or even have any role in setting the agenda.

 

So far, the consensus is to deal with such bailouts of entire countries on a case-by-case basis. Hopefully, that means never. Argentina has been digging itself out of bankruptcy for the past few years, and will perhaps one day figure out that socialism doesn’t work. In the meantime, other countries can use the lesson: You can’t keep pouring money into a socialist society when there’s no production occurring to create the wealth you’re spending preemptively. China has a lot of money because everyone is producing, but no one has freedom. That's the other extreme.

 

The European Union started out as a good idea, with the intent to reduce red tape within Europe to facilitate the flow of money, people and goods. The problem is that with any group, you’re at the mercy of the lowest common denominator. So if France, with its formerly ultra-liberal immigration policy, is letting in Muslims from the old African colonies who “slaughter sheep in the bathtub”, as French President Sarkozy put it during his election campaign, then that’s going to be the common denominator with Europe-wide free movement, and the only limiting factor will be employers' individual selection and recruitment processes in various countries. And the rest will, evidently, just riot.

 

The EU really needs a single governing council, made up of one member from each state, with the purpose of cutting through red tape. Instead, it has become a multi-layered bureaucracy that serves as a graveyard for failed European politicians and various Euro-diplotards who have been educated in the "finest" European academic institutions far beyond their level of intelligence – mainly because that's how you exert control over people in a society – by telling them there is only one way of doing things and one path to success.

 

Want a solution to the European economic crisis? Empty all the “elite” schools and flatten the bureaucracy. Tell all these fine minds to go out and actually produce or create something of value rather than warming a desk in some government office. If all the energy spent on chair-heating and then partying in all-night clubs across Europe was channeled into productivity, there wouldn’t be an economic crisis in Europe.

 

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I care, as an American?” Well, because President Obama is intent on spreading the misery of this crisis, and it’s unclear at this point how far across borders that misery will reach, or whether we’re looking at some kind of a new economic Marshall Plan to help out Europe. He’s already being prodded in that regard by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who, like Obama, is tossing money at make-work government projects and, unlike Obama, is facing a toss right out of office as a result.

 

It would represent yet another failure of Obama-style socialism. Only now is Brown toying with possible tax cuts. Yet Brown said in a Washington meeting with Obama this week: “There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe. So once again I say we should seize the moment – because never before have I seen a world so willing to come together. Never before has that been more needed. And never before have the benefits of cooperation been so far-reaching.”

 

Perhaps I can put this in terms that some Brits can understand: Never before has the detriment of giving a socialist more money to piss up a wall been so glaringly evident.