Doug Casey on the Collapse of the Euro and the EU
Interviewed by Louis James
LewRockwell.com
L: So Doug, a lot of readers are concerned about what’s going on in Europe. Is this the beginning of the proverbial “it?” Or can the Eurozone be saved?
Doug: In brief, the answers are “yes,” then “no” – and a “good riddance” to both the Eurozone and the euro. But most people think the old order should be maintained at almost any cost. That would include George Soros, who recently penned an article called Does the Euro Have a Future?
Now, I don’t normally look to Soros for economic commentary, despite the fact that he’s one of the shrewdest and most successful speculators in the world. He does, however, represent the way the Davos people, Eurocrats, and the ruling classes in general think. But just because he’s made a lot of money doesn’t make him an expert in economics, any more than financial success is proof that Ted Turner, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett know anything about economics. They’re all idiot savants, a bit like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man. But that’s another subject.
Soros writes: “The political will to create a common European treasury was absent in the first place, and since the time the euro was created the political cohesion of the European Union has greatly deteriorated.” He’s absolutely right about that and goes on to say that to create a common European treasury, the EU would have to have the power to tax. So, he’s saying that the euro should be preserved, and that to do that, it should be backed by wealth extracted by force from the average person in Europe.
But that’s the problem with every currency in the world today; they’re not backed by a commodity, but only by the ability of government to steal from the people. And the euro doesn’t even have that going for it.
L: And the power to tax is an essential, defining characteristic of the nation-state. It’s the thing that empowers it to exist and separates it from voluntary organizations. To create that power in Europe would really be to turn the place into one single country. It wouldn’t be long before they had a European army.
Doug: Exactly. Right now the Eurocrats in Brussels really only have the power to regulate, which is bad enough. But if the European Union had the power to tax, it would become an actual empire. Especially if they then created a European army – there’s no telling what kind of mischief they’d get into.
On the bright side, they can’t really afford an army. That’s the bright side of all these governments being bankrupt: They spend way too much on welfare and debt service to afford much warfare… I guess that makes welfare and debt good things, in a perverse way.
The Rest…HERE
