An Alternative View of the EU Crisis

Today's news reports from Europe reveal that political leadership of all Europe wants to deny their citizens the right to stop the EU's inflationist policies. They are determined to punish Greek leadership for having the temerity of actually asking the approval of its citizens for accepting more debt and more regulation of their country from non-Greeks. Merkel and Sarkozy have called Panpandreou onto the carpet to explain himself. When did he dare to become a democratically elected GREEK official? The Dutch government decided it won't even ask the approval of its own parliament; it will sign the newest bailout deal right now before the people or the people's representatives catch the Greek disease and decide that they might have a say in whether to further burden themselves with unpayable debt.

All financial crises start somewhere. For the last few months it appeared that perhaps the Finns or the Slovaks would precipitate the crisis. And why is there a crisis? If the Euro elite, as exemplified by Merkel and Sarkozy, think that they have the answers, why are they so concerned? The answer, of course, is that the people finally have awakened to the fact that they do NOT have the answers...or rather that they have the same OLD answer that they have always had--namely, more debt and more debasement of the Euro.

It is time for the politicians to step aside and let markets sort things out. Perhaps the contest to win Lord Wolfson's Prize (for the best recommendation for curing Europe's financial crisis) will bring forth new ideas...ideas that actually are very old; i.e., sound money and banking that is provided by private entities who are subject to standard commercial law.