The E.U. Cracks Up
Politics / Euro-Zone
Apr 19, 2011 - 05:39 AM
By: LewRockwell
Translation by Autumnson Blog
Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it’s merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead. The core issue is whether Finland ought to be paying for bailouts for other EU states. In reaction to establishment support for the bailout, voters ousted the pro-bailout ruling party and gave an upset victory to the bailout-critical conservative party. Against every expectation, the eternal rule of the social democrats is at an end.
政治動盪已打擊芬蘭，和它純是前面一個更大變化的預兆。核心問題是，芬蘭是否應該金援以救助其它歐盟國家。回應以建立救市的支持，選民們推翻親救助的執政黨，並對批評救助的保守黨給予一失望的勝利。針對每一項期望，社會民主黨的永恆統治是到終結了。
But most striking of all are the gains made by a previously invisible party called True Finns. This is the only party to take a hardcore position: no bailouts at all. It also so happens that this party is predictably nationalist on issues of trade and immigration. But that’s not the source of the appeal. The bailout is what is on everyone’s mind. And you know that the anger must be palpable if it fired up the usually sleepy world of Finnish politics.
但所有中最引人注目的是，賺取成果的都是由之前看不見的政黨稱為真實芬蘭人，這是唯一採取中堅位置的政黨：完全沒有救援。它亦恰巧是這政黨是可預見地是在貿易和移民議題上的民族主義者，但那不是吸引力的源頭。救助行動是在每個人腦中的東西，而你知道憤怒定是顯而易見的，如果它燃起世界上通常地昏昏欲睡的芬蘭政治。
In the sweep of history, few issues are as politically volatile as tax-funded bailouts of foreign countries, especially during difficult economic times. It’s a policy that provokes dramatic political change. The 20th century’s most famous case was in interwar Germany, when nationwide resentment against payments to conquering allied nations ushered in National Socialist rule.
It should be no surprise that over-taxed Finns have no interest in sending their tax dollars to bail out the banking industry of Portugal, a country that is 2,500 miles and two days travel away. Even governments should have learned long ago that it is never a good idea to enact these sorts of policies. In this case, however, every EU nation is bound by a political contract to bail out any other; the bailouts are embedded in the very structure of how the political, financial, and monetary sector is currently structured.
The entire EU system is afflicted with the paper money disease. It creates a boom that balloons the banking sector, allows politicians to spend wildly, and encourages private enterprise to expand operations in an unsustainable way. Then the bust comes and everything falls apart. Government revenue crashes, banks are threatened with insolvency, and mass bankruptcies are apparent everywhere.
There is a fork in the road, one branch labeled liquidation and the other bailout. When the fiat money is available—and with their favorite interest group, the banking establishment, warning of the end of the world—guess which way the politicians choose? This is why member states are being told that they must cough up $129 billion (it will be more) to save Portugal from its own problems.
It’s not that politicians all over Europe (and the US) love Portugal so much that they are glad to lavish it with more paper money. The real fear is contagion. If Portugal goes, Spain and Italy are next, and then the whole shaky system comes down, first in Europe, then in the UK, and finally in the US. This is the scenario that allows politicians once again to paper over the problem rather than confront it.
Wasn’t the invention of the European Central Bank supposed to control credit expansion in Europe? Philipp Bagus, in his book The Tragedy of the Euro, identifies a fatal flaw. There is nothing that the ECB can do, even if it wanted to, about sovereign state finances or the fractional-reserve banking system that feeds on government-created debt. The ECB can control money injections, but it can’t stop debt creation or the banks that thrive on it.
This debt creation generates its own unsustainable boom. A country’s finances then correct to reflect reality and the banking system comes under pressure. Then the bailouts begin. What ends up happening is that the (relatively) frugal states in the European Union subsidize the less frugal ones. There is moral hazard embedded in the very structure of the entire system.
Nothing is going to fix it. Bailouts are only temporary aids until the next round of credit-fueled profligacy. And there is absolutely nothing that the ECB can do to stop it. Every profligate country knows that it is too big to fail, and that it enjoys presumed access to the financial resources of every other state in the EU. So the result is ongoing and worsening bailouts, leading to total bankruptcy.
For this reason, everyone knows that there is far more at stake than just Portugal. The entire system of European finance and monetary arrangements is broken. It can’t be repaired with patchwork bailouts. At some point, the flaw in the system will have to be fixed (via a hard currency) or there will be a reversion to sovereign paper currencies and the Euro will be chalked up as yet another failed experiment in monetary and regional planning.
Keep in mind that this is the third country to be bailed out recently. Ireland and Greece came first. And those bailouts barely worked. Once we plough through the smaller countries, we will move on to the larger countries. And there is not enough money, absent hyperinflation, to bail out Spain, much less Italy.
The European Central Bank, which has been less irresponsible than the Fed in recent days, is the first world central bank to do what should have been done three years ago. It is raising rates with the intention of tightening money. The Fed should and must do the same thing. But there is a problem. If real interest rates reflected financial reality – with no presumed bailouts and no power to create new money – they would be sky high.
The Portugal case and the Finnish reaction should serve as a wake-up call. All these bailouts and stimulus packages cannot hide the fact that the governments and banking systems of the US and Europe are fundamentally bankrupt, sustained only by the power to create money out of thin air. Each intervention is working to buy time but not to deal with the fundamental problem. And each time when the problems return, they are worse than before.
It doesn’t take a True Finn to recognize the injustice of bailouts for foreign governments. Neither nationalism nor bailouts will fix the real problem. We will eventually find our way back to sound money. But it is going to be terrible slogging, and real convulsions, along the way.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author, most recently, of The Left, The Right, and The State.
http://www.lewrockwell.com
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http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article27638.html
芬蘭大選反歐派得票大升
(明報)2011年4月18日 星期一 16:46
四年一度的芬蘭 議會選舉17日深夜揭曉。執政的聯合黨在選舉中險勝，反歐盟 的正統芬蘭人黨得票大升。
初步計票結果顯示，右翼政黨聯合黨在這次選舉中獲得20.4%的選票，取得44個議席；在野黨社民黨獲得19.1%的選票，取得了42個議席。
這次選舉的最大贏家是另一右翼政黨正統芬蘭人黨。正統芬蘭人黨在選舉中獲得19%的選票，在議會中所擁有的議席從原來的5席猛增至39席，一躍成為芬蘭第三大黨。
據分析，正統芬蘭人黨的支持率在選舉前不斷上升並在選舉中獲得好成績，主要是因為目前芬蘭公民的不滿情緒上升，該黨成為一些人不滿情緒的代言人。另外，正統芬蘭人黨反對向葡萄牙 等處於債務危機中的歐盟國家提供救助貸款，得到愈來愈多芬蘭選民的支持。
原先的第一大黨中間黨在選舉中遭到慘敗，僅獲得15.8%的選票、35個議席，比原來減少了16席。
另外，左翼聯盟獲得14個議席，綠色聯盟獲得了10個議席，瑞典 族人民黨和基督教聯盟分別獲得9個和6個議席。
當地政治學者表示，這是芬蘭政治的重大改變，反歐派冒起，將令歐盟拯救債務纍纍的國家，出現問題。由於芬蘭國會有權批審歐盟的拯救計劃，預計將可能拖延計劃。正統芬蘭人黨宋力批評歐盟拯救葡萄牙的計劃，他亦預期可參加新聯合政府的討論。
（綜合）
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/110418/4/nvbv.html
歐元終結？ ...愛爾蘭印自己的紙幣
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