Germany looks like it could implode after the next election

That thought is triggered by learning that the Christian Democratic Party made a deal with far-right populist part Alternative für Deutschland to get an (anti-)immigration bill passed.

I didn't know that until I read that long-time former Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked her successor as CDU party leader Friedrich Merz, who last November:

(Explicitly pledged to prevent the AfD from playing a decisive role in Bundestag votes. “This proposal and the stance associated with it were an expression of great state political responsibility, which I fully support in its entirety,” she added.

Well, guess that's no longer a working statement.

With just three weeks until that general election, this can't help the CDU. It's going to expose rifts within the party and probably will not peel any significant votes away from the AfD. Beyond that, Merz did NOT make a deal with the AfD on stopping the flow of arms to Ukraine, part of why AfD, per the story, is now polling second in election polls.

Related? Current Chancellor Olaf Sgt. Scholz ("I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!, Col. Hogan." on either Israeli genocide or Russia-Ukraine issues) has also responded, saying that a return to the "grand coalition" currently governing the country ain't happening. That piece adds that the Free Democrats joined with the CDU/CSU to pass the anti-asylum measure. Hold on to that.

So, what DOES happen on, and after, Feb. 23?

First, look at the current polling:

While noting that the current government coalition, per Wiki, is Scholz's SPD, German Greens (warmongers on Ukraine, and AFAIK Zionist genocidalists on Gaza) and one independent.

The SPD has "held steady" over the past six months, but, earlier than that, per Politico's polls, had declined a bit from one year ago. Greens at 13 percent are where they were a year ago. (Both fell behind AfD about 18 months ago.)

My guess, if the polls were held today? Greens move up from current 117 to, say, 125. SPD drops from current 207 to 180. That total of 305? Would current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sign off on a coalition government that small? No more than 42 percent of the Bundestag? The fact that Scholz brought up a "grand coalition" only to deny it shows that he doesn't think it's likely.

The BSW and die Linke aren't likely to join. Per Scholz's own comments, he would have to rule out the FDP also, would he not?

So, where does that leave things? Polls and my guesses say that the BSW falls from 10 down to, say, 5, and die Linke gets up to 35. We'll bump the 8 "non-attached" to 10 in a fragmenting Bundestag. I'll give the FDP 100. I'll give AfD 100 as well. I'll say that with "overhangs," the next Bundestag is at 735 total seats. All other parties are at 555, leaving the CDU/CSU at 180, off their current 196. And, those calculations also don't take into account what effect Elmo Musk's months-old hard-on for the AfD, now doubled down on again, will have. It's likely to be beneficial, but by no means guaranteed.

If the CDU bites the bullet even more, it, the AfD and the FDP together have an outright majority, if a slim one, at 380. The top story link references what could happen, or sort of does, near the end:

With just weeks until the federal election, the fallout from the vote has further polarized the race. Merz now faces a choice: Double down on his rightward shift or attempt to reassert the CDU’s firewall against the AfD — a decision that could define his political future.

But, that surely shatters the party, as in shatters it officially, with enough desertions to put the remainders in a minority and presumably drawing a no-confidence vote.

Would the two left groups partner with AfD and FDP in some sort of truly weird grouping? That's still just 240, far away from getting a coalition nod. The left parties aren't coalitioning with the current SPD-Green bloc unless those parties change their stance on the two foreign policy issues, also not likely, since Sholz blew up the Bundestag rather than change stances on weapons for Ukraine and the funding thereof.

Authenticity, Germanness, cultural DNA and appropriation, and Trumpism and German-Americans

As usual in a blog post like this, I'll tie all the threads in the header together.

Let's get started on that.

Muenster, Texas, has a Germanfest spring “Germania” heritage festival, and has had it for 45 years now, consecutively, minus a COVID interruption a year ago.

I recently saw a person who currently lives in the Metroplex but was born in Germany. He had several comments about the authenticity, or lack thereof in his mind, of the Germanness on display at Germanfest.

That started with the pronunciation of the city, noting that auf Deutsche, to use English values for vowels, it should sound like MOON-ster and not MUN-ster. And, on that one, he’s right, or more right than wrong. I pronounced it that way myself the first few weeks I was here, and quickly realized I was basically a party of one. (It actually should be between MOON-stir and MIN-stir with the first syllable kind of swallowed.

 I have seen places that still do an even deeper dive into German heritage. Having lived in Michigan, the town of Frankenmuth comes immediately to mind. Fredericksburg here in Texas, of course.  That said, we’re not in Michigan or the Hill Country, Toto, and we’re also not in Nordrhein-Westfalen. 

He is right about the number of things Germans have contributed to the world as a whole and to American culture in particular. A couple are even more Texas-specific. He said four Germans died at the Alamo and that the chicken-fried steak is a riff on German schnitzel. I’ll take his word on the Alamo, and I can buy the schnitzel idea, as Texas Germans may have adapted Wiener schnitzel, but this isn’t guaranteed. 

Some other things he aren’t necessarily so authentic themselves, though, or, to rephrase, they’re authentic to some ethnicity, but not necessarily that of Germans. 

Budweiser beer? The original is from the town of Budweis, as its called in German. Nice German name. But, it’s in today’s Czech Republic and Czechs call it České Budějovice. In fact, American Budweiser, though it’s continued to fight trademark battles in the European Union, does not own the “Budweiser” name over there. The Czech town actually had two breweries originally; the larger, which had today’s European Budweiser, was Czech-owned in an area of mixed linguistics. Linguistic divisions do not necessary reflect “ethnic” or “subethnic” divisions. See Switzerland, the North Tyrol and many other places. 

Some of the food items at Germanfest have become authentic but weren’t at one time, because they didn’t even exist, at least not in Germany. Potatoes? Almost as iconic in German culture, with German potato salad and other things, as in Irish lore. (My dad says that my great-grandpa Schneider used to end his saying grace prayer at the start of dinner with an immediate transition to “Kartoffeln bitte.”) More than 500 years ago? Not authentic, of course, because they only existed in the “New World.” 

Ditto on sauerkraut.

Other things? 

To current German residents, quite authentic, though perhaps not to our correspondent. Currywurst comes immediately to mind. It has a specific invention date of 1949, and was inspired by British occupation soldiers in Germany. Since then, under the influence of Turkish immigration, the sausage for currywurst at many locations its halal-pure, the Muslim equivalent of kosher. 

But, doorknob forbid a German-American admit cultural appropriation. In fact, among European white ethnic and subethnic groups, German-Americans voted for Trump more than any other. Maybe, as with Serbians over Kosovo, there is something such as cultural DNA. It got knocked out of Germans in Germany after 1945, but, if anything, flowered yet more strongly here. On the other hand, per our correspondent, maybe it didn't get knocked out of all Germans, either.

As for promoting heritage tourism? Well, neither the city of Muenster nor our correspondent is allowed to have their cake and eat it on my pages. 

Compared to Frankenmuth or Fredericksburg, Muenster is second-class on such heritage tourism, even as a new move-in to the town wants to build a whole German market and biergarten centering condos and shit around it. (That said, for now at least, said idea seems to have bit the dust.) In other words, to use some German words, said person wants to peddle some ersatz schmaltz with a capitalist bullshit smile painted on it. 

But, since cultural appropriation DOES happen (but not in an SJW tsk-tsk way), said Metroplex correspondent doesn’t get to tut-tut everything in Muenster, either. And, as for tut-tutting “German pizza” (I didn’t try it, or even look for what was on it), our correspondent missed out on something from his heimat: Alsatian flammekueche. And, to finish completing the circle? Some varieties of this product have Munster cheese in addition to fromage blanc or crème fraîche for the sauce. 

Well, the circle isn’t quite yet complete. Munster cheese, and yes, that’s the correct spelling, is named after the town of Munster, in Alsace. (Alsace may be part of France today, but for 1871-1918, and before that was part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1648. It has nothing to do with the German town that was the source of Muenster’s founders.

In short, an authenticity that is frozen in amber is no authenticity. I suspect that for many German-Americans, that's part of being frozen in amber in general.

To move to another culture, is somebody going to call flour tortillas inauthentic? Well, pre-Columbus, they are, just like potatoes for German Sunday lunches.

Back to the complainer one last time.

He referenced other inventions or other Germanic contributions to America and the world.

One was the car. But, Wiki says the first steam-powered "horseless carriage" was invented by one of those damned Frenchmen, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, back in 1769.

The second, albeit not by name, was Wernher von Braun. How he got to the US, and of course, the degree of his ties with the Nazis, use of slave labor, etc., were overlooked by our correspondent.

Essentially, parts of the complaint looked like they could have been written by a Stalinist claiming the USSR, or Mother Russia, had invented the radio, TV, etc., Or else by a BJP/RSS disciple of Narendra Modi today.

Once again, let's slow-walk Syria

In my blogging about the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria, the ones that allegedly crossed President Obama's red line, only for him to do nothing, I at first signed off on the UN report, proclaimed loudly by American mainstream media, that Assad — or at least, Assad's military — were pretty red-handedly guilty.

Well, not so fast.

By spring of 2014, Sy Hersh was pretty much demolishing that claim, as well as exposing the whole geopolitical and military background behind it. (In the current geopolitical climate, it's worth noting that someone from Russian intelligence gave British intelligence the chemical samples that led the Brits to tell Obama — "Assad did NOT do it.")

Also claiming "Assad did NOT do it"? The country's most interesting sub-5-foot politician, Denny the Dwarf, also known as Dennis Kucinich.



Denny has one other good point — there's a difference between Assad having chemical weapons, and Assad using them, whether sarin, or the relatively mild raw chlorine gas. (ISIS, by the way, has been accused of using mustard gas, scourge of WWI battlefields.)

And, even before the end of 2013, the Old Gray Lady had backed off its initial claims based on vector analysis of the rockets' paths, mainly because they had too short of a range to be traced back to Syrian army units. On the other hand, at least one could be traced, on the same vector, to a rebel unit that was within range to have used them. (And, the cheapness of the rocket warhead also is an indirect argument against Syrian military firing.

Robert Parry, a recognized former investigative reporter for the AP, has further analysis of both the NYT and Hersh pieces.

His conclusion? Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan was behind whichever group of rebels — and he believes it was rebels — who launched the 2013 attack.

Also claiming Assad did NOT do it? Erm, the UN itself over an earlier 2013 strike.

As for the current airstrike, it seems ever more clear that this was the Syrian Air Force attacking a rebel ground site that had the sarin. (Ted Postol, a weapons expert in academia is now claiming another option — that this was a false flag by rebels. That, I doubt. First, I'm not an explosives expert, but I think it would be hard to tell, under current Syrian situation, the difference between a deliberately set explosion in the ground, on the one hand, or an impact explosion by a bomblet or a rocket, on the other. Second, I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general. I know Theodore Postol was among those who refuted "Assad did it" in 2013. But, there's a more conventional refutation of "Assad did it" for this attack already out there. And all Postol says is "more likely," in contrasting this to the MSM option of aerial Syrian gas attack; he doesn't even consider the option of Syrian rockets hitting buried sarin. On the other hand, the UN backed up his earlier claims about Eastern Ghouta.)

That said, there's other contra-indications to "Assad did it."

Some people note the alleged difficulty of producing or storing sarin. I counter with Aum Shinrikyo and the Toyko subway attack. And, no, contra the "Assad did it" crowd, sarin, if in a relatively crude state, is not that hard to produce. (This ignores the possibility of government-produced sarin stolen by one group of rebels or another.)

Some talk about the claims of the White Helmets about what they've allegedly seen Assad done, and how they're apolitical. First, most White Helmets claims have not been verified. Second, they're not apolitical.

Next: torture and extra-judicial murder have all been documented by most players in the war. Use of chemical weapons has been alleged of most. Don't let neocons or liberal warhawks claim any of this is unique to Assad. Don't let them claim that pointing this out makes you an Assad defender.

Finally, if they truly believe in regime change, ask them what they think the reasonable price is in "boots on the ground" — not reasonable for US public support first and foremost, but reasonable for getting the job done, not just to replace Assad, but replace him with someone better.

The strawmanning from the mix of neocons and liberal hawks has gotten bad enough that I created a new blog post about it.

Make to the main thread.

If Parry et al are right on 2013, given Erdogan's own lurch toward authoritarianism having increased over the last four years, this makes Syria dangerous indeed. Yes, Erdogan has cuddled up more to Vladimir Putin's Russia in the past four years. At the same time, while not a full-blown Islamic fundamentalist, he has certainly exploited Islamic fundamentalism for his own political ends, and his personal inclinations surely tilt that way to some degree. In other words, Putin is feathering his bed with an asp.

That said, in Erdogan's case, cui bono? I don't have an immediate answer, and any potential angle may be at least as tangled as Syrian ethnic and religious political issues. In general, though, if he can limit the flow of refugees to his country, he can shake down the EU for more financial support, keep Syria destabilized enough to be weak, shake down the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf for money to do that, and cozy up with Putin enough by offering him help against more extremist Islamicist movements inside Russia.

And, that is 11-dimensional chess indeed.

(That said, this all sets aside who was behind the production of the chemicals that Assad's air force bombed in the recent issue. It also sets aside whether or not Assad, or Russia, or other players knew these rebels, whomever their backers are, knew that they had sarin, etc. That, in turn, makes Syria even more dangerous.)

For more on this issue, not only on how Erdogan stands to benefit, but on how Bashar al-Assad and Syria 2017 are similar to Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 2013, pre-Bush invasion, read below the fold.

Biggest loser: Greece, Euro, France, Germany?

Now that Greece and its Eurozone creditors have apparently come to some sort of deal, albeit one that is perhaps even harsher than what was on tap just a month or two ago, the finger-pointing has started.

So, here's my 2 cents worth of fingers.

First, Greece is somewhat a loser. It's a loser not just because of the bad new deal, but because, as just-resigned Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis claims, Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras was and is exactly what Eurozone leaders have long claimed about him: vacillating and spineless.

So, it's a loser because, unless Syriza replaces him, the Greeks don't have a real option to stand up to the EU. And, Syriza as a party winds up looking like a toothless tiger.

The euro as a currency is somewhat dented, but it's  not too bad a loser.

France? Somewhat a loser. It was the biggest pusher for the creation of the euro as a joint currency after the collapse of the Soviet Union, precisely to restrain German financial hegemony. Françoise Hollande got the EU to paper over France-Germany differences, but it's clear that the big stick of German Iron Chancellor 2.0 Angela Merkel forced France to accept giving Greece as harsh of a deal as it got.

Germany? A lot of people are claiming it overplayed its hand. However, the fact that it publicly displayed a card hand of wanting to give Greece a five-year boot shows that Merkel, along with her financial minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, knew exactly how close to the vest to play. And, the fact that other eurozone diplomats wanted to "teach Greece a lesson" only underscore this.

Finally, the whole world is a loser if part of the results of this German-pushed deal force Greece to sell off historic world heritage assets.

A couple of #Grexit and #Eurozone jokes — and #grexit_songs

First, have you heard about the hot new mixed drink sweeping Central Europe?

The Berlin Boomerang is the hot new drink replacing the Moscow Mule.

It’s composed of two parts schapps, a dash of sauerKraut juice and a double pinch of bitters.

It's a favorite of Angela Merkel, the Iron Chancellor 2.0.

It’s often an apertif drink with the new Athenian dessert, Brokelava.

Brokelava? It’s just like baklava, but with a few differences.

You follow a baklava recipe, but cut out 30 percent of the butter and don’t add the almonds or pistachios.

After it’s baked, you relayer it, add the nuts, but then take 90 percent back out.

Germans love its austere taste; Greek tax collectors love it after they chase it with three shots of ouzo.

Meanwhile, the European Union has recognized that a weak financial union looks like the United States’ old Articles of Confederation. Some folks are pushing for fuller unification.

To start it off, they have proposed a new “national” anthem for the Eurozone.

Euro, Euro über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,
Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
Brüderlich zusammenhält.
Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
Von Ebro bis Ägäisch,
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!

(Translated, first the original, then mine:

Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world,
when, for protection and defense,
it always stands brotherly together .
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From the Adige to the Belt,
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!

Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!

Euro, Euro above all things,
Above everything in the world,
when, for protection and defense,
it always stands brotherly together.
From the Meuse to the Memel,
From Ebro to Aegean
Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!

Germany, Germany above all things,
Above everything in the world!)

Voila! European Union! Best pictured when sung by the Iron Chancellor 2.0.

(All images via Wikipedia.)

#Putin, #Syria, #Realpolitik, blind pigs and American exceptionalism

Update, Sept. 18: The UN investigation seems to tie the attacks to senior officers of President Bashar Assad. Whether they were following orders or not may still not be final, but the linked New York Times story indicates the answer is yes.

That said, per the oft-cited piece by William Polk at the Atlantic? His "cui bono" was, and still is, a good question. And, if part of why he wrote that piece was pushback, given America's generally poor history of regime change in the Middle East, the neocons leading the charge again on this one and Obama not having a Syria exit plan, the shoot-first warmongers can still look themselves in the mirror.

Now, back to the original blog post.

I certainly don't agree with everything Vlad the Impaler, aka Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, wrote in an op-ed that's in the New York Times and The Guardian.

Let's just say that blind, or self-delusional, or self-inflating, pigs can still find acorns, even multiple ones.

Yes, his invocation of the pope as part of the reason to oppose strikes on Syria is funny. His discussion of how the "Big 5" permanent members of the UN Security Council got absolute veto powers conveniently overlooks the fact that his predecessor leader and country, Joe Stalin of the USSR, pushed for that.

Even more laughable is his worries that America is too randomly attacking other countries. That said, most of the worst against Chechnya happened under Boris Yeltsin, not Putin, who just uses natural-gas based economic blackmail.

And, his claim that "God created us equal" is massive hypocrisy, when he clearly believes gay people aren't equal.

All those caveats aside, there's two important points he makes.

The first is about realpolitik. If John Kerry is going to consult The Phantom of the Chilean Opera, Henry Kissinger, the alleged master of realpolitik, then he should listen to Putin:

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough al-Qaida fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations.

This gets back to the whole, broader issue of nation-building, and how US presidents, US governments, and the US bipartisan foreign policy establishment continues to think it can create democracies out of nothing, pick "winners" and "losers" in this process (to riff on libertarians), and force this down countries' throats.

That, in turn, gets to the other issue, of American exceptionalism, and how we think "we know better" because ...

We're America, fuck yeah (apologies for the "French," and for much more of it in the video.)


That's the best version of that video, by the way, in my opinion.

Anyway, despite all my previous caveats, Putin's last paragraph is spot on about this. The "Assad did it" fanatics, besides re-asking, "do we know who did it," need to read Putin on American exceptionalism:

"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States' policy is "what makes America different. It's what makes us exceptional". It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

Throwing out my previous caveats, plus the new one of Putin buttering up Obama, the American exceptionalism warnings are well taken.

Basically, this whole excursus and debate on Obama's stance toward Syria in part reflects how liberals and left-liberals in America split on seeing American foreign policy, as I see it. And, I proudly stand accused of being some sort of left-liberal on this issue. Most American liberals on foreign policy? Wilsonian interventionism, when preached by liberals rather than neoconservatives, is the foreign policy equivalent of neoliberalism.

I am in no way saying Putin's perfect. That said, as far as surrender/punish, again, punish who? Remember Iraq, where Hussein kept telling us, I don't have any WMDs, and ... he didn't? Here, it could be rogue generals, or al Qaeda groups. That's why, again, we have to have a reasonably surety of who did it. Then, if it's not Assad, but rogue generals, the Free Syrian Army, or Al Nusra, we have to have a reasonable game plan for what all our steps are.

I don't think Obama has a game plan for anybody but Assad, and that's part of what scares me. We were lucky, so far, to muddle through Libya, ignoring the Islamicists attacking our spook shack in Benghazi. Syria's far more complicated as well as more dangerous.

And, to restrain America, there's only two people in the world who have a chance of doing that.

Contra Putin, Pope Francis is not the other one besides him. It's Xi Jinping, president of China. Actually, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has enough weight in NATO to be somewhat of an anchor weight, though not enough to stop him.

If some people don't like that, well, sorry.

I'd rather have America ask more questions first, before shooting, if we want to riff on an old cops joke.

David Brooks' rose-colored fiscal morality

Brooks, in comparing the U.S. and Germany (wo bist du, Herr Bobo?) says this nuttery:
Why are nations like Germany and the U.S. rich?...

It’s because many people in these countries, as Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, believe in a simple moral formula: effort should lead to reward as often as possible.

People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness. 

Well, lemme see, the 1 percenters believe exactly nothing of that, David! And, to be honest, a certain amount of non-1 percenters probably have the same unbelief.

Beyond that, long before the meltdown, America's economy, more than Germany's, was built NOT on "self-control" but self-indulgence.

That said, while Brooks is right about Greece, and somewhat right about Italy, Krugman has a more nuanced picture of the whole Eurozone. And, labor retrenching of the last decade aside, Germany in general still rewards regular old labor better than the U.S. in many ways.

And, neither one of them has totally tackled this issue: Many Germans' lingering fears of 90-year-ago hyperinflation means that Germany is not liable to go too far in working with even non-Greek parts of the eurozone. Booting Greece from the zone might work. But, the rest of the eurozone would be hugely weakened without Germany.

And, all the fractions of blame that lay out there, it's clear both on this side of the pond and inside Europe that the whole eurozone is in trouble. Most economic pundits are saying if Italy caves, that's it; that's too much burden for the eurozone.

That said, I'm not a professional economist, and I don't play one on TV. But, I don't think a eurozone collapse is as bad as the 2008 global financial turmoil. Now, coming on top of a slow recovery from that, it could extend a "lost decade" in fair parts of both Europe and the U.S.

On the other side, China has said it wants to invest sovereign wealth fund money in both areas, in infrastructure improvements. One hundred and fifty years ago, their labor built our railroads; now, their money might rebuild them.

DON'T throw a #TARP over the #Eurozone

Stop me if you've heard this before:

If (it) fails, bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely crash, and ... economies would crater. Nations ... could see their economic output fall temporarily by as much as X percent, according to ... forecasters. The financial and economic pain would spread west and east as (Europe) and Asia get ensnared in the credit freeze and their exports ... collapse.

Oh, yeah, October 2008. Wall Street's collapse was going to destroy America.

Only now, the Eurozone's collapse is going to destroy Europe.

Of course, Wall Street wasn't allowed to collapse.

BUT, while I don't agree with tea partiers about not having acted in 2008, as well as disagreeing with the idea of running a nation without some sort of central banking system, it's clear that the no-strings TARP "cure" for Wall Street wasn't a cure for the American economy in general, either in 2008 or 2001.

So, let's hope that Western Europe's version of paper-pushing technocrats attaches some strings to Eurozone reform. If Greece needs the boot, then boot it. If the European Central Bank, or the degree of "federalism" emanating from Brussels, needs to be strengthened, then strengthen it. And, if member nations can't agree to that, then wind down the Eurozone.

We probably could have "wound down" Wall Street, too, if its kleptocrats refused to accept tight strings as part of TARP. Unfortunately, the corruption of mainstream bipartisan American politicians, including in having deliberately reduced shareholders' power to sue corporate boards, meant that the wind-down option here in America wasn't that viable. A Darwinian Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase likely would have survived. A vulture-like low-feeding George Soros would have repeated his 1998 international exploits on an even grander scale.

That said, because Europe's crisis is in part a monetarist crisis, or so it seems, failure to achieve a good resolution one way or the other probably will enable the Soroses of the world even more than the Goldman Sachses.

At the same time, because the Eurozone "project" isn't the same as the U.S., the whispered-about possible cataclysm isn't likely, should Eurozone ministers "fail."

I actually see the current crisis as worse, from the financial world POV, and from member nations' POV, than the U.S. debt supercommission, but not as serious as TARP. Germany IS too big to fail. The U.K., which has problems enough of its own, is outside the Eurozone. The Netherlands is fine. If push comes to shove, for France, Nicolas Sarkozy will perform financial cunnilingus on Angela Merkel, if necessary, to bind Gaul that tightly to the Deutschland. Both Euro and non-Euro parts of Scandanavia are doing well, too, as is Switzerland.

That all said, per my one poll on the left, it is indeed possible that the combined European Union economy, including Eurozone and non-Eurozone members, will fall behind the U.S. as a result. It is even vaguely possible that the EU, not just the Eurozone, could at least "reformulate," if not break up.

And, maybe it needs to.

Just don't throw a TARP over it.

If nothing else, maybe the U.S. can still teach Europe a thing or two -- about what not to do.

A new European Union?

When leaders of both the EU and its member nations wave copies of the U.S. Articles of Confederation and admit they should have read them through before negotiating and approving the Maastricht Treaty, you'd like to believe a new EU, one with at least some degree of fiscal power over its member states, actually will happen.

But, I'll believe this new EU idea becomes a reality when I see it.

First, who gets booted? A Greece wouldn't qualify, at least. Certainly, none of the former Eastern Bloc members, or would-be members do, with the possible exceptions of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Second, how much do you strengthen the EU executive to do things like that?

Third ... if power at the center increases ... when does the France-Germany tussle also increase? And THAT is the bottom line.

Fourth and related, what's the focus of foreign policy? The recent Libya excursion demonstrated tensions in NATO. Old colonial power France can be expected to want to look at Africa and Southeast Asia, while also looking at counterbalancing the U.S. in general. Germany can be expected to want to continue to look east.

Until No. 3 is settled, major economic reforms will only go so far. Until No. 4 is settled, along with the relationship of a stronger EU to NATO, you'll not have a lot more than a Europe-wide Switzerland.

EU agrees to let Greece 'default'

In exchange for more loans to Greece, the European Union has agreed to let it technically default.

Here's how this played out:

In a declaration crafted here after hours of haggling, and a whirlwind trip Wednesday to Berlin by the French president, the leaders put forward billions more in new loans to Greece. But they extracted a price: Greece's private-sector creditors will accept a bond exchange that gives them less than originally promised. ...

Greece was reeling under its huge burden, and its woes were threatening to engulf other countries.

To push back against that contagion, the euro zone also agreed Thursday to a wide expansion of its €440 billion bailout fund. ...

"We created a solid firewall and better fire-brigade equipment," said Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union president.

That creation had been a long time coming. In spring of 2010, when the euro zone was debating the first Greek bailout, the countries—at the firm insistence of Germany— insisted that rescue loans would come only when absolutely needed, and would be issued at punitive rates to discourage countries from slacking on reforms and falling back on cheap aid.

Germany has made a stark reversal. Chancellor Angela Merkel, once the euro zone's "Madame Non," led a push to assemble the new Greek bailout program. In the face of stiff domestic opposition to creating what the German press dubbed a "Transferunion," she opened the door to far greater fiscal aid than her country had once contemplated. In return, she won a commitment that banks and other creditors—and not just taxpayers—would have to bear some of the burden.

Here's the details, with euphemisms, of how this will allegedly work:

Private creditors who hold Greek debt that matures in the coming years will "voluntarily" turn in their bonds and accept new ones that mature far in the future. The Institute of International Finance, a banking trade group, said its members had committed to participate in the exchange.

The banks, Germany and France's largest institutions among them, offered to take new 30-year or 15-year Greek bonds. The offer includes a menu of four different flavors of bonds with varying coupons and types of insurance—some would be backed by triple-A-rated collateral. Some of the bonds on the menu include a 20% discount to principal.

The euro-zone leaders said the private sector's "contribution" would amount to €37 billion through 2014 and €106 billion through 2019, though it didn't detail the calculation. They also said a debt buyback program would yield an additional €12.6 billion by taking Greek debt off the markets at discount prices.

That said, is this going to work, or is it pounding more sand down a bottomless rathole?

I vote the latter.

Greece's problems are not just due to Europe's version of financial and housing bubbles. Tax evasion and general corruption have been rampant there for decades. Until there's reform in Athens, all we have here is a larger Band-Aid.

That said, kudos to German Chancellor for making private lenders talking a haircut on stupid loans to a country that was corrupt before it joined the eurozoneand never reformed itself.

But, whither Germany? And Merkel's coalition with Free Democrats? At least one Free Democrat in parliament has called for Greece to be booted from the eurozone. Can her coalition hold? Will a push develop within the EU to force a confidence vote?

And, can the EU hold? Can the eurozone hold? Will German bankers and businesses continue their push to invest further east in Europe rather than to expand their involvement in a morass?

Obama's dumb oil move

Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

First, the amount it contains? 727 million barrels, per Wikipedia, is enough that it can't be tapped too often, too hard.

Wiki also says the current consumption per day is 21 million barrels so Obama's 30 million barrels actually lasts less than a day and a half (just over 1 day, 10 hours to specific), per fried Leo Lincourt.

So, add up A and B, and contra Salon's Andrew Leonard, it's possible this will NOT stop oil speculation. (I'm also assuming Saudi Arabia's talk about raising production is a lot of talk and not much else, given its recent unmothballing of a field that that had been in drydock for years.) The market remains relatively tight. It might take the sharpest edges off speculation, but that's about it. And, due to the realities of what the strategic reserve contains, commodities speculators know that.

Beyond that, Obama's never showed any real inclination to reign in speculators. If he had, he would have tighten commodity, commodity futures, and commodity derivatives legislation.

But, since many of those folks are the ones who were major bankrollers of the mythical Citizen Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and whom he hopes will be the same in 2012, he's not going to regulate them in the future.

This was just about trying to give the economy enough of a nudge, without having to make any actually liberal political decisions, to boost his election chances.

But, this is about more than Obama. The International Energy Agency signed off on this too.

This is also in part about post-Fukushima Japan, worried about summer energy needs with some of its nuclear plants offline. Or so I'm guessing. It's about the EU, hoping this will take the mind off of bailout trauma in Greece and bailout payment trauma in Germany. And, it's about China hoping it can continue to keep its housing and other bubbles from bursting.

Well, I don't know what the answer is for Japan. For Greece, austerity won't address a culture of tax evasion and corruption that makes the legal-on-paper antics of folks like the Koch Bros. look like kindergarten, and cheap oil won't camouflage austerity. For China, as Paul Krugman wrote the other day, only an upward re-evaluation of the renmimbi (yuan) has a serious chance of deflating those bubbles without too much pain or destruction.

On Europe, as I learn more ... it's supposed to replace the missing Libyan oil, most of which went to Europe. So, I wasn't totally wrong there.

China? At least one market analyst in that area, as well as some in the U.S., suspect "coordination" with Fed chief Ben Bernanke's speech about a slowing economy, and that this will be the gateway for more "quantitative easing," but by different name and means. In fact, Forbes calls it QE2.5

Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating "suspicious" trades in oil just before the decision was announced. Getting back to lack of regulation - such insider trading isn't illegal in the commodities markets.

And, back to the "timing" issue, too. The story notes the Saudis had already announced a production increase.

So, many this was a bank shot against the non-Saudi members of OPEC, played in conjunction with Riyadh?

US should make like Germany on jobs

Germany pays employees of companies that cut workers to part-time rather than lay them off, making up about 60 percent of the different in salary.

That would be even better than layoffs and extended unemployment benefits. Workers would "stay employed" on their resumes, in their mindsets and psychologies, companies wouldn't have to train new hires when the economy bounces back, transitions would be smoother and everybody would be less stressed.

Germany ends conscription

Well, technically, it "suspended" it. And, technically, in Germany, it's been "universal service," with community service work readily available to conscientious objectors.

That said, as Germany joins most fellow NATO members with a professional army, it's the end of an era.

First, it's a financial issue.

It could save 8 million euros.

And, under Germany's universal service law, 65 percent of youth weren't drafted. 20 percent opted out to do conscientious objection service work and only 15 percent served

Along with that, the army will be cut from 240K to 170K, part of how it's saving all those Euros.

As the Spiegel story notes, Germany thought universal service with conscription would democratize the army and better anchor it to larger society after the formation of West Germany.

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"In postwar Germany, conscription was always more than a means of filling the ranks. It was supposed to symbolize that the Bundeswehr (Germany's postwar military) was something completely different from the (prewar) Reichswehr -- not a state within a state, but a citizens' army. For decades, both the conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats exaggeratedly declared conscription to be an untouchable pillar of democracy. It belonged to postwar Germany just like the deutsche mark. Now it is being abolished -- and nobody minds."

"The fact that this reform is taking place with so little fuss is also related to the typical postwar German indifference to all things military. People would prefer to have nothing to do with it. This is a peculiar kind of historical awareness, a distant echo of the horrors of World War II. In addition, everyone knows that conscription in Germany has long been just a show. In 2010, fewer than 60,000 recruits were drafted -- around a quarter of the total 20 years earlier. The Bundeswehr, which has long been a de facto professional army, does not need conscription anymore. Leaving aside postwar German mythology for a moment, this reform is just an overdue adjustment to European norms. In the era of high-tech weaponry, large conscript armies are a relic of the 19th century."

Well, not totally true. As the Chimpster and Rummy were slow to learn, occupation work still needs boots on the ground. Besides, NATO should have learned that in Bosnia.

Is Merkel in trouble?

Quite possibly. It appears the German presidential election is a de facto confidence vote on Chancellor Angela Merkel. Judging by the choice of her candidate, she deserves to lose. That said, if she does, will the Social Democrats undo old statements and agree to coalition with the New Left, aka leftover Communists, if new parliamentary elections are called?

Greek bailout hostage to German elections

Chancellor Angela Merkel has to act tough in the North Rhine-Westphalia state election or she could lose her coalition majority in German's upper house. So Athens has to come up with long-term, not one-year, budget cuts before she'll sign on to a bailout package.

Herr Ratzinger, aka Benedict, has ANOTHER problem

Holy crap, Bavarian neo-Nazis and Catholics. Uhh, Herr Ratzinger, when you get a chance, between child sex abuse woes and getting Jews mad, and speaking of that, you might want to tackle this:

A chapel built on a mountainside in Germany is turning into a shrine for neo-Nazis after it emerged that it was built with marble and grainte taken from the ruins of Adolf Hitler's luxury retreat.

A swastika was reportedly found carved into one of the wooden beams of the Wegmacher Chapel, which was built in 1997, while local residents claim a number of shaven-headed, leather jacket-wearing 'pilgrims' leave behind notes of praise to Hitler and candles burning in his memory.

It was only recently that the Bavarian government admitted that material from the wreckage of Hitler's retreat, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, was used in the construction of the chapel.

Some of the stones are from the terrace of the Berghof - quarried by Jewish slave labourers in concentration camps.

Oh. My. Fucking. Doorknob. Why the German Catholic Church hasn't taken the simple solution and just razed this place to the ground, I have no idea.

Merkel will be cautious on new agenda

Angela Merkel, soon to be officially installed into her second term as German chancellor, is unlikely to adopt Free Democrats’ more radical ideas. Expect m ore friendlyness toward nuclear power plants, some modest tax cuts far short of what the FDP wants, and little change on Germany unemployment policies.

Thatcher opposed German reunification

Well, the “Iron Lady” of the Falklands War, and the PM who famously told Poppy Bush not to go wobbly on Iraq, will have to surrender about half of her foreign affairs cred.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly told Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 that she opposed German reunification, opposed the implosion of the Warsaw Pact, etc.

Wow. Sounds like Maggie got a bit wobbly herself.

Germany and France officially out of recession

In another sign that, contra economic sneerers on the equivalent of Don Rumsfeld, the “old Europe” of the Eurozone has plenty of vigor, Germany and France are both officially out of recession with second-quarter economic growth.

That said, overall Eurozone growth dropped 0.1 percent. However, that’s still smaller than the U.S. second-quarter drop. In the rest of the EU, the UK seemed to the biggest laggard, with its financial sector still struggling more.

Germany also wrong way to do stimulus

The G8 members continue to disagree over how to address the global recession. Yes, we all understand hyperinflation, but that happened in Germany 85 years ago. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deficit reduction worries might be a bit too much.