Pros and Cons

Washington once advised our country to “avoid foreign entanglement.”  I’m betting that Germany is wishing it had followed such counsel.

Standard & Poor’s has placed 15 members of the eurozone on review for a possible downgrade due to the European Union debt crisis.  The review, and possible downgrade, would apply not just to Portugal and Italy and other economically devastated countries, but also to the more financial secure (and responsible) countries such as Germany, France, Holland, Finland, Luxembourg, and Austria, all of which currently have triple-A (AAA) ratings.

Apparently you are known by the company you keep.

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are leading the charge for a wholesale re-write of European Union treaties to establish and enshrine fiscal discipline in the euro zone.  In support of such an establishment, they are proposing closer political and economic ties, which would ensure the future of a unified Europe.

It is interesting to observe that a mere seventy years ago, Germany annexed/invaded/otherwise acquired Austria, Sudetenland, Bohemia, Moravia (Czechoslovakia), Memel (part of Lithuania), Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands (Holland), Luxembourg, France, Greece, Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia), Soviet Union (Russia – part only, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), and Egypt

This article on CNN.com is revealing:

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy both said last week that a fiscal pact should be written into the EU treaty so that budget rules can be properly enforced through broader oversight and automatic penalties for nations that fail to comply.

Sarkozy and Merkel were meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss ways to safeguard the euro by increasing economic and political “convergence.”

“Europe needs to be rethought,” Sarkozy said. “It must be redesigned.”

Now before I start getting nasty e-mail, let me state for the record that I don’t think Merkel and Sarkozy are maliciously trying to “conquer” Europe a la (pardon the pun) 1938.  You can put away your tin foil hats.  I do, however, find it interesting that there is a very real discussion of, not just economic, but political convergence and “rethinking” and “redesigning” of many of the very same countries who spilled native blood in their struggle to maintain their autonomy less than a century ago.

You can put your tin foil hats back on now.