If I Can’t Have You, No One Will

O envy, root of all countless evils, and cankerworm of the virtues! All the vices, Sancho, bring some kind of pleasure with them; but envy brings nothing but irritation, bitterness, and rage.

-        Don Quixote

I have been thinking more about my afterthought to my post on the continued importance of the US dollar to the global financial system.  I think the main story is to be found in the afterthought – and I am wondering how I missed this the first time.

In the end, it is a story of envy.  Unlike jealousy, envy does not merely covet what it does not have; it destroys what it cannot have so no one else can have it.

London 1, Brussels 0

To summarize from the previous post, citing Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

The euro share [of foreign exchange reserves] has tumbled over the last eight years from 28pc to 20.4pc, and is barely above Deutsche Mark share in the early 1990s.

The eurozone is crippled by the lack of a unified EU treasury, joint bond issuance, and a genuine banking union to back up the currency. It would require a change in the German constitution to open the way for fiscal union, an unthinkable prospect in the current political climate.

Despite Brexit, the British Pound is under no similar pressure.  It is starting to dawn on some that Brexit will end up being good for the Pound and bad for the Euro – and not the other way around (as almost every talking head threatened before the vote):

The BIS data showed that London’s share of global foreign exchange turnover has held steady at 37.1pc, down slightly from the last survey but higher than it was a decade ago. The eurozone share has fallen to 8pc.

Whether this will survive Brexit is a hotly-disputed question. Mr Jen, a Chinese-speaker from Taiwan, said Britain would flourish once it has broken free of a region caught in a failed currency experiment.

“London’s position is very secure. The talent is here and so is the scale. There is a very clear and strict rule of law. In five or ten years I think the pound will become a super-charged Swiss franc,” he said.

The Europeans did not come together in the wake of financial crisis, contrary to what was likely expected by the elite.  They formed no “unified EU treasury, joint bond issuance, and a genuine banking union to back up the currency.”  While Britain’s economy performs reasonably well, Europe continues to struggle; from Jeremy Warner:

The British economy sails on as if nothing has happened, but the European one continues to stagnate. It is as if the Brexit shock has been more powerfully felt in Europe than in Britain. Both France and Italy showed no growth at all in the second quarter, and now even the data from Germany is starting to look poor.

That the Eurozone economy is still struggling after everything that has been thrown at it almost beggars belief. In terms of stimulus, it is hard to know how much more of a following wind the euro area could have had. It’s been positively gale force. Austerity has been effectively ended, interest rates have been cut below zero, the economy has been flooded with newly printed money, the euro was devalued and to cap it all, there has been the monumental boost to disposable incomes provided by the low oil price.

What’s clear is that we are fast approaching some kind of tipping point which Brexit is very much a part of; the legitimacy of the entire European project is being questioned as never before, with every possibility that the EU will have changed fundamentally by the time the Article 50 negotiations on Britain’s exit conclude.

It is the Destiny of Mint to be Crushed…

…so says Waverley Lewis Root

“Sir,” said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain’s cabin, “the ship is going down.”

“Very well, Mr. Spoker,” said the Captain; “but that is no reason for going about half-shaved. Exercise your mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and you will see that to the philosophic eye there is nothing new in our position: the ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have been going down since she was launched.” 

-        The Sinking Ship, by Robert Louis Stevenson

One can say the same for the European project: it “may be said to have been going down since she was launched.”

What began as a trade and customs union between and amongst sovereign states slowly evolved into something resembling an autocratic state in its own right.  A common currency was anticipated as early as 1969; by 1992 a treaty was signed to put this into effect; in 2002 the project of the Euro was fully implemented.

Since 2009, this union has been in crisis.  Many saw that sooner or later crisis would come and in fact wished for it to come – the crisis, they were certain, would bring on formal fiscal union; a single budgetary authority, single legislative control.

At the time, the Federal Reserve – the key financial tool for elite control and global domination – extended untold trillions of dollars of liquidity to the favor of European banks.  There was a concerted effort to hold the project together – just barely and just for the purpose of buying time until fiscal and legislative integration could be forced throughout the continent.

Seven years later, this hasn’t happened; it is easier to argue that the crisis has driven the union apart.

The Intelligence of the Intelligent

Isaiah 29:14-15

Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, “Who sees us? Who will know?”

One need not believe this Biblically; feel free to consider as authority Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit.

It didn’t go to plan.  Not only did further integration prove politically impossible; the previously-secured common currency has led to resentment: an almost irreconcilable rift between those who prefer overt currency devaluation (call these the southern countries, Latin and Mediterranean) and those who prefer covert devaluation (the northern, Germanic and Scandinavian).

There will be no union.  There will be no United States of Europe.  Bringing together the tribes has proven much more difficult than expected.  They did not come together in the moment of crisis; the crisis drove them further apart.  People have done what they have always done throughout history: in times of crisis, find family.

The European masses have not gone along with pan-European integration, and the European elite (pushed on by their Anglo masters) have not been able to guide the masses toward this objective.  What was deemed impossible now seems inevitable – the end of the European project as dreamed by the elite.

Consider the possibility that, due to this “failure” by the European elite to pull the continent together in crisis, the Anglo-elite have thrown in the towel on its European integration experiment.  If true, it explains much.

Et Tu, Brute?

A migration crisis.

In Hollywood, they put the knife in your front; in D.C., they put it in your back. I found far fewer duplicitous people in Hollywood.

-        Jack Abramoff

After throwing in the towel, is it possible for the Anglo-elite to leave Europe in peace?  Live and let live?  Let bygones be bygones?

Not on this planet.

Leaving Europe in peace opens the door for someone else to control MacKinder’s global island – control the Eurasian continent and you control the world.  This idea, over 100 years old, explains every war taken on by the United States since 1917.  While the elite might by now conclude that their European project toward this objective has failed, it doesn’t mean they will leave the continent in one piece, available for some other empire-seeker to control.

Europe will not be left in peace.  The migrant crisis appears to be the straw that will break the camel’s back.  Every other week brings a report of a terrorist act or a rape or some such; every other week brings a report of the people pushing back – tearing down tent camps, voting for nationalist parties, etc.

I recall thinking (and somewhere, writing) last year, at the time of the explosion of the migrant / refugee crisis in Europe: “Why now?”  The wars in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq had been ongoing for years and even more than a decade.  Why now, all of a sudden, did people by the hundreds of thousands decide to move?

Surely someone prompted these migrations at this specific time.  Soros or whoever.  But why now (last summer)?  To what end?

Maybe the conclusion was reached that Europe would never become what the elite wanted it to become.  Perhaps this migration crisis was the step taken to ensure that Europe would turn into chaos – troubles so deep, on top of the financial issues that have only worsened since 2009 – ensuring a weakened and distracted continent.  As an added bonus, this chaos in Europe will both keep Russia’s attention for the foreseeable future and disallow some other (non-Anglo) usurper an easy time to take charge.

Envy: If you are not with us, you are against us.  If you are against us, we must destroy you.  If I can’t have you, no one will.

When the next financial crisis comes, will the Fed be so eager to bail out Europe?  Will a president Trump allow this?  Do the elite want this?

Brexit

And now we come to it:

It sounds mercenary and it smacks of rats leaving the sinking ship. But get real, when everyone is bailing out, you don't want to be the last man standing.

-        Robbie Fowler

Britain never joined the common currency.  Due to this, Britain always had a safer position in the club.  Britain played the role of Anglo-mole, watching and reporting on internal activities of the Union.

Perhaps Brexit occurred to save the Anglo-Empire from the European continent by cutting it loose from its sinking brethren.  Consider the stable position of London and the British Pound today relative to Brussels and the Euro.

What happens when other European states see that Britain did not implode as a result of their exit?  Will this realization carry Europe through the next crisis together?

Conclusion

What can I add?  It was certain that Anglo-elite plans for centralizing and control would fail; the only question was…when?  And how?

Perhaps it is now.  Perhaps we are seeing exactly how.