With Ireland and Greece et al, falling under the demeaning tutelage of the world government’s IMF and World Bank, the appropriately-named Max Keiser has made the eerily compelling argument that Germany will soon leave the Eurozone and will then become a world superpower rivalling China and dominating Europe, even though most of the point of the EU was to prevent this very thing from happening:
It would seem that the more coercion you place upon a system — such as the squeezing of a bar of soap — the more likely you are to accelerate the creation of that which you are trying to restrain.
I wonder what Professor Hoppe thinks about Herr Keiser’s prediction?
I also wonder if the pervasiveness of the work of Ludwig von Mises throughout the German-speaking world, particularly via the channel of the post-WWII “Wirtschaftswunder”, has anything to do with this? This German “Economic Miracle” was inspired by Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke, and Konrad Adenauer, who managed to throw off the Keynesian economic shackles of the US occupation power, one glorious Sunday afternoon, when they instigated a successful economic coup on the 20th of June 1948, when the US imperial prefects missed the ball by being at the country club; on this remarkable afternoon these three men threw off the draconian post-war hegemonic regulations of the occupiers and created a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, to help this move away from the US-controlled Reichsmark.
Wilhelm Röpke, in particular, is sometimes seen as being well within the ambit of what you might call the outer orbital sphere of the Austrian School.
Perhaps Herr Röpke still has supporters in Germany who can continue his economic legacy? If these people are sufficiently strong, I wonder what they will call their new German currency if Herr Keiser is right in his prediction? My personal hope is that the new German money will either be named “Die Golde Mark” or named “Die Silbere Mark”.
Thus, it would be interesting if we managed to solve the EU problem in the UK and our dishonest paper money problem, by following an independent Germany out of the EU and by adopting a specie-backed honest money while we’re about it. Because with Germany out of the Euro, our EU strangulation really will be over, because the strangler will be dead — machine-gunned through the heart by the escaping Germans, though I had better finish there before I am tempted to build an appalling analogy based upon either Das Boot or Colditz.
There is just one more thing that needs to be said:
Wir leben in sehr interessant Zeiten
You mean “Goldmark” (we already had that some times ago ) or “Silbermark”? Well, as far as i know the Euro M1 money is 1/3 backed by gold reserves. How about sticking to our EU currency and working together to improve our EU institutions? I would really like to know how Irland is strangeled by the EU? By the money Irland recieved from the EU structure fonds or by the massiv subsides for irish farmers? I respect and like the Irish a lot because they are proud people but sometimes i don´t know what you folks are talking about.
Strange comment at the end: “Hopefully Iran will be the big player in the Middle East”.
Max seems to blend facts with imagination but that does not create new facts. Obviously Germany has industrial strength etc but to suggest long term German intentions to cynically exploit the Euro and then ditch it implies incredible forcasting and manipulation skills that appear impossible for any human to have and also keep it secrete. Clever old Max to discover all this and how extrodinary kind to tell us.
It is weird, that the KGB PR unit is so popular among libertarians/ancaps. I’ve noticed that the lewrockwell.com and mises.org link to the Russia Today content quite often and according to the discussions on reddit many consider Al Jazeera and RT to be reliable sources of information. And that’s already a problem
Max’s ideas have some merit. The German population did not want the Euro, but then neither did any other European population. However, unlike most other member states, Germany is subsidising the fiscal irresponsability of other Euro members. The politicos will not back away from the Euro, but there may be a popular revolt. If Germany says nine to further cross-border bailouts (which are illegal anyway) then the ECB will have to create more money to do it (buy more junk bonds) at which point Germans may refuse to continue importing inflation from other member states. Granted, democracy is all but dead, but there can still come a point where it is impossible for politicians to continue to blatantly oppose the will of the people.