SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Operation "Self Deceit": New Documents Shine Light on Euro Birth Defects

Secret documents from the Kohl era have been declassified and reveal that Kohl's administration was absolutely aware of the mess it was creating, but pushed ahead of it in a bet to demonstrate some braindead poltical symbolism.

I always wondered why Kohl is so admired and called the father of German unification- he wasn'T. It were the people demonmstrating courageously in Eastgerman streets thatw ere the fathers and mothers of that peaceful revolution - Kohl had nothing to do with it. At best one can say that Kohl's government administered the years of transformation - in good, but also, and this is never said, in bad details, and plenty of hopelessly unrealistic illusions.

That Kohl accepted the French pressure to give up the DM and the Bundesbank in favour of French demands for a prematurely introduced Euro currency and a ECB - both in explicit intention to weaken the GHerman currency and economy - is unforgivable. As a cost for German unification, the price was way too high. And the French couldn't have prevcented reunificaiton eternally anyway. Sooner or later they would have needed to tolerate it.

I belong to those who just mocked Kohl by calling him "Birne". The term (meaning "pear, bulb") is no compliment, and I stand by mocking him until today.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-831842.html

Quote:

Documents from the Kohl administration, kept confidential until now, indicate that the euro's founding fathers were well aware of its deficits. And that they pushed ahead with the project regardless.
In response to a request by SPIEGEL, the German government has, for the first time, released hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of the euro and the inclusion of Italy in the euro zone. They include reports from the German embassy in Rome, internal government memos and letters, and hand-written minutes of the chancellor's meetings.
The documents prove what was only assumed until now: Italy should never have been accepted into the common currency zone. The decision to invite Rome to join was based almost exclusively on political considerations at the expense of economic criteria. It also created a precedent for a much bigger mistake two years later, namely Greece's acceptance into the euro zone.
Instead of waiting until the economic requirements for a common currency were met, Kohl wanted to demonstrate that Germany, even after its reunification, remained profoundly European in its orientation. He even referred to the new currency as a "bit of a peace guarantee."
Of course, financial data doesn't play much of a role when it comes to war and peace. Italy became a perfect example of the steadfast belief of politicians that economic development would eventually conform to the visions of national leaders.

If it all blows into our faces, finacially, and rips the EU and the Euro apart, then at least something good would have come from it. Seen that way I welcome the crisis in Greece, spain, and the dawning of crisis in France now, and Italy anyway. The louder the final Bang!, the more people in Europe can no longer comfortably pretend to not having heared it. And with the EU, today's format, being destroyed, we could rebuild it as what it always should have stayed to be: an economic cooperation union of individual, sovereign and culturally differing fatherlands that until 1989 lived side by side peacefully. Another effect of the Euro crisis is often overlooked: that the hostility both in political rehtorics and in mood of porivate people, is growing.

Seems the Euro is not the guarantee for "peace" in Europe, as we are being fed all day long. Seems exactly the opposite is true.

Quel malheur!