The American Spectator

Peter Oborne commented that a principal goal of the euro was to “domesticate Germany,” which had earlier caused such trouble. But, Oborne added,

far from holding back Germany, the single currency has empowered the country’s industrial base in a way that was never expected. Peripheral eurozone countries such as Greece and Ireland have been reduced to a source of cheap labor and agricultural goods.… Unable to trade with Germany as equals, they have been reduced to colonies.

The European project “has failed on all counts,” Oborne concluded.

INFLATION IS THE TRIED-AND-TRUE WAY to erode government debt and punish savers, and it may be the europhiles’ final card. “Growth” may turn into “monetary growth,” as the European Central Bank floods the zone with newly printed euros. But inflation works to the advantage of governments only if markets don’t anticipate it. Today, the “bond vigilantes” are wide awake, and at the first sign of renewed inflation, interest rates will rise to compensate lenders for the loss of real returns. Most things that politicians can do today, markets can protect themselves against.

Some of the European problems also exist in America, where government has been equally irresponsible with a debt that now reaches 100 percent of GDP. The big difference is that the U.S. is a real country. People in search of jobs can much more easily move from Michigan to Texas than they can from Portugal to Poland. The belief that ancient, entrenched national differences could be overcome by bureaucratic fiat was the cardinal error of the euro-elites.

Christopher Booker recently wrote that national interest “is reasserting its sway” in Europe, although the goal was to suppress it. In the coming days and months, he added, “the eurozone will disintegrate. The European dream has entered a nightmare stage from which there is no rational escape.”