Saturday 27 April 2013

Germany Has Outgrown the Project as Italy Scrambles to Get the European Central Bank Up and Running with OMT

It is crucial for the European Project to get an Italian administration in place, an interlocutor for the European Central Bank, before the Bundesbank puts the boot into Mario Draghi.  The ins and outs of democratic impropriety being explored by the Italian nomenklatura are of interest  only to the nerds of political imposition and its means, idiosyncratic to each state system, and no longer matter anyway

As the Italian administration members are announced 2.3 trillion euros of Italian sovereign debt  remains, as it always has  been,  the reef for the euro, and for the European Union that has tried to fix its own particular form for ever, via a common currency.   All the other eurozone states in sovereign debt crisis  are a nuisance but not a systemic threat to the single currency and thus to the European Project - the 'tying-down-Germany-into-the-Europe-that-suits-us-the-victors'  Europe.  Of course, Italy has always been a problem for Germany: it has a long, long tail of criminal, pre-modern governance attached to the continental north by nationalist concerns and, perhaps as importantly, it has a deep-rooted refusal to confront its 20th century history and confess, as Germany has done.   So it's quite a cheek for Italy to be still attempting a holier than thou attitude to Germany (it was an outrage during the last century) and try to use the Project to shove its debt onto German (and other member-states') taxpayers.  This administration is probably too late to activate OMT.

On balance Italy does not bring enough to a German-dominated European Union which is bound together by a common currency that is acceptable to modern Germany.  Indeed Italy and the aging Project is a constant threat to Germany's complex relations to the East and the Balkans and a threat, via its debt, to the central pillar and the political consensus  of the German state.  

Germany has sloughed-off the Project and is now building another Europe. Hence the closing-down of German acceptance of the European Central Bank and its variously-clothed attempts to saddle Germany with the debt, and all the corruption that debt represents, of others;  particularly Italian others (most of whom have no claim to ethical or political superiority over the Germany of either the last century or this.  It's no good Italy going about singing Bella Ciao at the tops of their voices, they were all at it, and many of them still are - 88 indeed).

So  while Italy's current (and in some cases erstwhile) elites are in part trying to justify their  present behaviour by a long out-dated need to cage a long-ago Germany, modern Germany is going to cut them and their Central Bank Italian off at the knees.  Frankly, Germany has bigger fish to fry and other roles to play.  Italy has allowed its  elites from the past, and its myths and self justifications of the past  to dominate its present and its people.  It's looking as if we're going to be left to stew in our own debt.  And the euro, its zone, and it's outdated Project are only for peripheral people.

Giorgio Napolitano hasn't noticed, but he's out of time, imposed administration or no.

5 comments:

Nick Drew said...

that's quite a post, HG

Sackerson said...

Yes, reads like a Times editorial.

dearieme said...

No, it's far too intelligent and thought-provoking to be a Times editorial.

dearieme said...

It would be understandable if Germany has tired of the proposition that it must subsidise Greek tobacco farmers to ensure that it never again attacks France.

There's an interesting speculation in the second comment at this link:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/bundesbank-looks-to-undermine-italy.html

Jeff Wood said...

Dearieme, thank you for that link. Interesting article, and what seem to be very intelligent comments.