Following is a plea to Germany–The war is over and has been for three-quarters of a century. It’s time to stop prostrating yourself for the supposed “good” of Europe. It’s time to take complete control of your domestic and foreign policy, without interference from haughty, busybody world elites, and do what is best for yourself. You will be pleasantly surprised that what is good for yourself is also good for your neighbors and the world. Here are four failed policies that must be ended.
1. Abandon the green energy project.
2. Abandon the euro currency; i.e., withdraw from the European Monetary Union (EMU) and reinstate the deutschmark.
3. Abandon the European Union.
4. Leave NATO and end economic sanctions against Russia.
None of the above current policies are working. As American humorist and political sage Will Rogers said, If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
1. The green energy project is a good place to start, since your hardworking citizens are likely to freeze this winter. The green energy project, born of the global warming/climate change hysteria, will never power Germany or any other country for that matter. It has failed and cannot succeed. Simply scrap all the publicly funded green energy projects, end all “green energy” subsidies, and wish the private ones well. Sure, maybe there’s a niche here and there for wind and solar, but abandon the project as a national goal to replace fossil fuels. You cannot heat your homes and run an industrial economy on green energy.
2. Abandon the euro and reinstate the deutschmark. If ever there was a competition for the world’s most foolish currency block, the European Monetary Union (EMU) will win all prizes. As explained recently by Claudio Grass, the euro is worse that even a state sponsored fiat currency. It has no one national owner but nineteen, and a majority want to print more euros. It is the tragedy of the commons applied to currency. You have one vote in decision-making regarding the EMU’s policy, the same as Cyprus and Malta, despite the fact that you are the world’s fourth largest economy, the largest in Europe, and probably the industrial country with the best public finances.
There is only one chart that anyone needs in order to understand how Germany’s wealth has been plundered by the EMU’s structure–the member balances in the TARGET 2 settlement system. Germany has a credit balance of around euro one point three trillion. A credit balance is good, right? Wrong. Spain and Italy have debit balances of over euro one-half trillion each. This means that they haven’t paid for what they have imported, mostly from Germany. It’s as if you are holding a check from a deadbeat debtor who will not and cannot ever pay for what he has purchased from you. Forget about ever collecting this debt. You have done all you can to support the debtor countries, but instead of using the money to tide them over until they could fix their own economies, the debtor countries have squandered your largess. Write it off as a lesson learned and move on. The fact is that the longer you stay in the EMU the more capital gets drained from your economy, as shown graphically by your ever-increasing credit balance at the European Central Bank. You simply cannot put half of Europe on welfare.
3. Leave the European Union. Britain did and the sky did not fall, even though Britain has not yet purged itself of all the EU strings. The EU is a closed trading bloc, meaning that it has free trade among members but high tariffs against non-members. This makes no sense. Just adopt unilateral free trade with the world. It worked for Britain in the nineteen century and it will work in the twenty-first century for any nation smart enough and brave enough to try it. This is just the economic argument for leaving the EU; there is a vital non-economic argument also. The EU has morphed from a closed economic trading bloc to pursue what its champions call an “ever closer union”; i.e., the EU wants to destroy the sovereignty of its members and assume the role of a mega state ruled from Brussels by appointed bureaucratic elites. That’s right. Your Bundestag will decide only whether German stores can sell beer on Sunday and other earth shaking problems. It’s a dream that harkens back to the Holy Roman Empire and has been pursued by such freedom-loving statesmen as Napoleon, Stalin, and Hitler. Just get out.
4. Leave NATO. This is crucial in order to regain full sovereignty. As long as Germany remains in NATO it will be ruled by the United States. Germany will not have its own foreign policy based upon its own special needs in its own corner of the world. Of course, leaving NATO and the EU will mean that Germany can abandon the economic sanctions on Russia. These sanctions are failing, even if Germany believes that Russia is at fault in the Ukrainian war. The war will end, hopefully without a great power confrontation, and the decades-long baby steps to integrating Russia into the world economy will continue. Germany has correctly pursued closer ties with Russia since the old Soviet days, starting with Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. Like World War II, the Cold War has been over for decades. Time to get out of the mental time warp and get on with reintegrating Russia into a new Concert of Europe. Germany can and should lead the way.
Conclusion-What’s Good for Germany Is Also Good for the World
In conclusion, not only will Germany save itself from economic and possibly political collapse, the abandonment of these four failed policies will be a benign catalyst for change in the world. It is more than likely that the EMU and the EU itself will collapse and many nations of Europe would become Deutschmark countries instead of reinstating their own currencies. In this case Germany, the most fiscally and monetarily responsible nation in the West, will control the currency itself and prevent the fate of hyperinflation to which the euro is headed now. The dollar itself will be forced to reform in order to trade with a new, better, and more peaceful Europe. You can and must act soon.
© Patrick Barron 2022 Website
