Germany the Vampire Squid of Europe
by RobertBrusca
ZeroHedge.com
03/31/2012
Herr VAMPIRE SQUID revisited and affirmed-
Germany is in it for Germany, not for united Europe. When you look at Europe and see that Germay is a success and no one else is, there is a reason for that.
Germany, after ‘trapping’ many countries in the e-Zone ignored their situation while Germany continues to post increasingly lower-than-required rates of inflation as many in EMU ahve run higher rates. As a result of this, there is a huge competitiveness conundrum in the Zone. It seems to have been engineered by Germany-and they are great engineers.
see http://robertbrusca.blogspot.com/ for a previous discussion of this toipic.
How are we to view Germany’s actions?
Now I do not ‘blame’ Germany alone but as you know in our financial system the low inflation Balance-of-payments-surplus countries rule. The others are forced to adjust. Germany has persisted in growing slowly, running a high rate of unemployment while others wanted to grow faster. Germany helped them to do that by lending to them. Germany was not mindful of the consequences of their excesses but there were consequences as they all were/are in the Zone together. the Zone was not a Bento box divided into various walled-off compartments; it was like bowl of soup and poison one place circulates to another place.
As the ‘adult,’ or fiscal conservative, Germany did nothing constructive. It held back and watched until the others were in trouble then it dropped the hammer. Am I supposed to view Germany kindly for this sort of behavior? Did Germany really ‘behave’ any better or did it simply spring its trap?
Why did it neglect the growing imbalances in the Zone? Not just the fiscal ones that might have been hidden, but the inflation differences that were reported month after month after month. I have been haranguing about EMU inflation differences in the zone for years.
Did Germany smirk and know that it was gaining competitiveness? Did it not realize this disparity would benefit its exporters but come back to haunt it politically and financially?
The Rest…HERE
