A Failed EU? Does a One-Legged Goose Swim in a Circle?

An ECB, an EFSF, all the rest are just fine; they keep the elites busy. But they are a sideline compared to the reality of the minute-to-minute culture of an everyday people.

For example, as a family friend reported after a summer trip to the E-Z, “Germans pick up trash; in Athens, Greeks toss it. Germans do not honk. In Spain the pedestrian is a target; in Switzerland he is considered perhaps your father or grandmother. A bathroom in Germany is where someone else uses it after you; in Greece … it is where you pass on the distaste of using the facility to the sucker who follows you.”

I remember when I was there last time. Take traffic courtesy for example, which tells a lot about a culture. If a fender-bender, in northern Europe, addresses and information are exchanged; south of Milan, shouts and empty threats of mayhem follow.

Our friend continued: “When I check out of a German hotel, I know the bill reflects what I bought or used; when I check out of a Greek hotel, I dread all the nonexistent charges to appear, and a '50/50 split the difference' settlement to be offered. Germans like to talk in the abstract and theoretical; with Greeks it is always ‘egô’ in the therapeutic mode. I rent a car in Athens and expect charges for ‘dents’ to appear; in Germany, there are such charges only if there are actual dents.”

It all adds up; any fool knows that these two regions won’t make it locked in a financial marriage. We have a Germany for example that creates vast wealth and we have a Greece for example, whose mode of operation is nothing but a big con job – landing as much of that vast wealth that it did not create, as it can.

Culture is everything.  Thus, there are only two futures for the EU – sudden death, or the death-of-a-thousand  cuts. The problem with the death-of-a-thousand cuts route is that it risks anarchy – Metaxas of Greece comes to mind for example; or the equivalent of a Pattakos, in Spain, and right now. Readers will understand.  This is a very great and very present danger.


Robert Craven