Outside the Beltway

Outside the Beltway

Would the End of the Euro End the EU?

Dave Schuler
6

Oscar Wilde once wrote “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language”. I’ve got to admit that I just love the way our British cousins use our allegedly common tongue. Take this snippet of polemic from Scottish columnist Gerald Warner in the Daily Telegraph (AKA Torygraph):

Do you see that smoking slag-heap of smouldering, toxic debt? The polite name for it is the European Central Bank (ECB). It is a landfill site being used by bond investors to dump Greek waste paper and other unwanted garbage. It resembles the back yards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the sub-prime time-bomb exploded. Steptoe and Son would turn up their noses at such a tip.

In the column from which that snippet was taken Mr. Warner goes on to make the case that the euro should collapse, is collapsing, and will take the European Union with it. Although I think the euro was a poor idea from the start, I certainly hope he’s wrong about the European Union. I think it along with NATO have provided much-needed stability for the Continent.

Are we witnessing the end of the EU experiment?

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6 responses to “Would the End of the Euro End the EU?”

  1. Al Avatar
    Al

    There’s no possible way that many of the nations in Europe could survive a collapse of the Euro let alone the EU.

  2. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    I think it’s 50-50 that the Euro collapses, maybe 1 in 100 that the EU collapses, and nil that Europe collapses. I think they overreached stupidly with the currency and have been overambitious with EU expansion but Europe — by which I mean both its core states and its ideals — remains strong.

    And it’s amusing to be reminded that the Redd Foxx vehicle “Sanford and Son” was a copy of a British predecessor.

  3. charles austin Avatar
    charles austin

    It’s the end of the Euro as we know it, and I feel fine.

  4. steve Avatar
    steve

    Since the beginning of this crisis, I have noted in my own writings that I believed Europe was in worse condition than we are. Up until they committed a trillion dollars, I thought they were going to split up. I think that they will still probably lose a member/members, but it looks as though, as James notes, there is a committed core. I am less sanguine about NATO, but then I worry too much.

    Steve

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