por admin » Jue Nov 17, 2011 6:34 am
De una u otra forma, estamos fregados. Leer esto, es recontra interesante.
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OPINIONNOVEMBER 17, 2011.
La guerra cultural por el dinero de Europa
Los Alemanes son mas ricos y mas tercos. Los Franceses son mas ostentosos.
La crisis Europea repite el mismo patron indefinidamente. Malsa noticias hunden a los mercados, cunde el panico. Los lideres Europes salen con una solucion, dicen que todo esta bien, los mercados celebran con jubilo hasta que leen las letras pequenias y se dan cuenta que no es cierto por que el problema persiste. Las malas noticias comienzan nuevamente y asi sucesivamente. Repetir sin fin.
Esa es la estrategia de Europa para solucionar la mas seria crisis de su historia despues de la guerra.
El verdadero problema permanece: Alemania y Francia estan en su disputa mas amarga desde que los panzers explotaron fuera de los Ardennes Forest en 1940. El dinero es un gran componente de la pelea. Los Franceses dicen que Alemania debe ayudar por que si no la banca Francesa estara muerta. Los reguladores Europeos que no tienen la menor idea de lo que pasa (que por comparacion hacen que el patetico sistema regulador de US luzca Salomonico) estan forzando a los bancos a invertir en la deuda soberana que pronto no valdra mas de cero de los paises como Espana, Italia, y Grecia. Los bancos Franceses en particular estan llenos de esos bonos que ahora ya no flotan.
Y se pone peor, la elite Francesa decidio que este era el mejor momento para apostar a Italia y compraron bancos, comanias, acciones y bonos como no lo hacian desde la desastroza intervencion en la peninsula desde cuando el Rey Francis I perdio la batalla de Pavia en 1545.
Obviamente, dicen los Franceses, Alemania tiene que pagar por esto. Con su inmaculada logica Gala ellos pueden demostrar que Francia no puede con el costo de su equivocacion por que perderia su triple A. Y eso haria que el fondo de rescate estuviera muerto exponiendo a Europa y a Alemania a una aun peor crisis financiera.
La estrategia Francesa es esperar calmadamente hasta que los lentos vecinos Teutonic entiendan el razonamiento Frances. En ese momento los Alemanes tendran que capitular y autorizar el ECB a usar la imprenta, y proceder a salvar los bancos Franceses y su elite naciona sin humillar a Francia, sin mencionar que fueron rescatados.
Si eso fuera todo, talves se podria llegar a una solucion. Pero es acerca del poder: Es acerca de quien manda en Europa, o peor aun: las reglas de que pais reinaran en las proximas decadas.
Francia es basicamente un Club Med con algunos rasgos del norte de Europa (historicamente entre los Huguenots y Judios, de donde vienen los mas exitosos. Los Franceses quieren un sistema politico-economico para Europa, uno que asegure la continua devaluacion del euro para que Italia, Espana, Grecia, Francia y Portugal puedan seguir gozando de las ventajas de lso dias antes del euro. El unico problema es que con ese sistema antiguo que le dio tanta ventajas a los Alemanes, Dutch y otros (en la forma de bajos intereses). Francia quiere imponer la meneda Latina y las reglas Latinas para reinar en las proximas decadas.
Alemania por el otro lado, quiere que los paises Latinos vivan con las reglas del norte: mantener la moneda fuerte, los presupuestos equilibrados. Esto es cero, repito cero consenso en Alemania, no hay un solo Aleman que quiera seguir con la moneda Latina y dejar al euro en las manos de los tramposos Franceses y los politicos Italianos. Los tecnocratas deben obedecer las reglas, los Alemanes pueden aceptar: Por eso es que el tecnocrata Italiano esta siguiendo a uno Frances como jefe del ECB. Por eso los Alemanes estan en contra de las reglas del ECB respecto a los rescates y la compra ilimitada de los bonos soberanos.
No se sabe si hay alguna manera de conciliar las dos posiciones, hasta ahora nadie ha encontrado una solucion. Ninguna de las dos partes esta dispuesta a aceptar la otra posicion. Por eso es que todos los arreglos y acuerdos hasta ahora no han dado ningun resultado.
Diferencias irreconciliables.
Que Europa resurgira? en el pasado, los paises han ido a guerras por los mismos motivos que estamos enfrentado: el balance del poder. Esta vez es acerca de la moneda. La EU esta tratando de acomodar las dos posiciones sin derramamiento de sangre. Todos saben que no hay reconciliacion entre Alemania y Francia.
Francia le dara el poder a Alemania como lo hizo durante el periodo de Napolen en 1918 o Alemania dictara Francia como lo hizo en 1870 y 1940. Los Alemanes son mas ricos y tercos, los Franceses son mas arrogantes, vulgares y vivos.
Veremos que pasa.
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of the American Interest.
The Culture War Over Europe's Money
The Germans are richer and more stubborn.The French are flashier and faster on their feet.
By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
The European crisis repeats the same pattern endlessly. Bad news sinks markets, ultimately accelerating into a panicky wave of liquidation. European leaders convene, deliberate and emerge with what they say is a "fix." Markets leap in joy, until investors gradually read the small print and discover that the fix is a fudge and the core problems remain. Then the bad news starts up again and the markets sink. Repeat. Endlessly.
That seems to be Europe's core strategy for coping with the greatest challenge since World War II. This week we see the cycle at work again. The latest miracle fix—a handover to technocratic governments in Italy and Greece—is looking shopworn and shoddy already. Meanwhile, there's bad news from Spain and Portugal, where despite the most-solemn promises to undertake the most-sweeping reforms, and the blessings of Brussels, the economies are somehow failing to grow. Add disappointing news on Italian bond yields, and Europe has resumed its grim slide.
The underlying problem remains: Germany and France are locked into their most bitter struggle since the panzers exploded out of the Ardennes Forest in 1940. Money is one big component of the fight. The French bottom line is that Germany must help raise the carcass of the French banking system from the dead. Clueless European regulators (who accomplished the not insignificant feat of making America's dysfunctional regulatory system look Solomonic) pushed many banks to invest in soon-to-be-worthless sovereign debt from soft euro countries like Spain, Italy and Greece. So French banks in particular are loaded to the gunwales with bonds that won't float.
Worse, the French corporate elite decided in its sleek official way that this was the right time to go long on Italy, buying banks, companies, stocks and bonds in the most disastrous French intervention on the peninsula since King Francis I lost the battle of Pavia in 1545.
Obviously, argue the French, Germany must pay for this. With immaculate Gallic logic they can demonstrate that if France is stuck with the costs of its folly, it will lose its AAA credit rating. That in turn will make the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) a dead instrument, exposing Europe and Germany to the full unmitigated force of the financial storm.
The French position seems to be to wait patiently for their slow-witted Teutonic neighbors to puzzle their way to an understanding of the clarity of French reason. At that point, the Germans are supposed to capitulate, authorize the European Central Bank (ECB) either directly or indirectly to print masses of money, and the proceeds will go to save the French banking system and national elite—without anything so humiliating as a bailout ever being mentioned.
If that were all, perhaps the matter could be adjusted. But this is about power: It is about who rules Europe, or rather whose rules will rule Europe in the decades ahead.
France is basically a Club Med country with some northern features (historically often found among the Huguenots and Jews, out of which communities many of its most successful business leaders have come). It wants a "political" economic system for Europe, one in which political pressures can ensure the kind of steady devaluation of the euro that Italy, Spain, France, Greece and Portugal used to enjoy with their national currencies in the good old pre-euro days. The only problem with this old system was that it gave too many advantages to the Germans, Dutch and others (in the form of lower interest rates). France wants to stick the Germans with a Latin currency and Latin rules for running it.
Germany, on the other hand, wants the Latin countries to live by northern rules: Keep the currency sound, the budgets balanced and let the chips fall where they may. There is zero, repeat, zero consensus in Germany to go Latin and give the euro into the hands of slick French and Italian politicians. Technocrats bound by rules, the Germans can accept: That is why an Italian technocrat is following a Frenchman at the head of the ECB. But that is also why the Germans are being such sticklers about ECB rules against bailouts and unlimited ECB purchases of sovereign bonds.
If there is a way to bridge the gulf between these two positions, nobody so far has found it. Neither side is willing to surrender, and no compromise can be found. This is why European summits end in one disappointing fudge after another. Neither side wants a meltdown, so both work together to produce some facsimile of an agreement that looks plausible but only papers over the irreconcilable differences between them.
Whose Europe will it be? In the past, nations have gone to war over exactly this kind of balance-of-power dispute. This time the issue happens to be currency. The EU is an attempt to develop a post-historical structure that can accommodate these controversies without bloodshed, but the hidden assumption has always been that there are no truly irreconcilable gaps between the interests of France and Germany.
There weren't, until the euro included both countries in a single currency zone that ultimately would have to be run by one set of rules. The question now is whether France will give the laws to Germany, as it did in the Napoleonic period and 1918, or whether Germany will dictate to France as it did in 1870 and 1940. The Germans are richer and more stubborn; the French are flashier and faster on their feet.
We shall see.
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of the American Interest.