"To recap, before 2008
the United States operated like a huge vacuum cleaner sucking into its
territory a disproportionate volume of the net exports as well as the profits
of the Rest of the World. This surplus recycling mechanism was essential to the
maintenance of the Eurozone’s faulty edifice. Once it vanished from the scene,
the European common currency area would either be re-designed or it would enter
a long, painful period of disintegration. An unwillingness by the surplus
countries to accept that, in the post-2008 world, some other form of surplus
recycling is necessary (and that some of their own surpluses must also be
subject to such recycling) is the reason why Europe is looking like a case of
alchemy-in-reverse: for whereas the alchemist strove to turn lead into gold,
Europe’s reverse alchemists began with gold (an integration project that was
the pride of its elites), but will soon end up with the institutional
equivalent of lead. Unless, of course, a modicum of rationality sips into the
collective mind of Europe’s hapless leaders before the tectonic plates shift
irreversibly against a common currency that is now dividing proud European
nations."
