It's ominous indeed for the Eurozone (and the European Union behind
it) that German-originated bonds failed to be fully taken up
yesterday. Slightly more than a third of a modest auction ($8
billion) of the economically strongest nation in the Eurozone failed
to find buyers. On Tuesday, this would have been so unimaginable that
a bookie could have offered 100:1 against this happening and,
probably, no-one would have taken the bet. This surely is the most
significant event yet in the history of this grand Napoleonic reprise
(because, initiated by the French, this is what the European Union
and the Eurozone was meant to be). It is nothing to do with lack of
confidence in Germany per se; it is a realistic assessment by
objective investors that even Germany can't keep on sustaining the
Eurozone as it has been doing.
The attempt at a United Europe was, in truth, a French-led attempt at
a new nation-state which, with a consumer base of 400 million, could
serve as a powerful economic counterweight to America. This, however,
can never be because it would contradict one of the plainest facts of
human history. This is that any successful nation-state needs to have
a predominant, and widely similar, culture within it. At the very
least, it has to impose a common language as soon as possible. It's a
sine qua non.
As to language, examples abound. Two obvious ones are the United
Kingdom where Scottish, Welsh and Irish Gaelic were ruthlessly
persecuted, and the United States of America, where many Native
Indian languages and French and Spanish were expunged. The apparent
anomaly of China, in which 20 or 30 different languages are still
spoken, has, nevertheless, been held together for 2,200 years with
one written language imposed by Emperor Qin.
Hilariously (if it weren't so tragic), the very bureaucratic centre
of a putative United Europe, Brussels, lies in a country which has
two cultures so different (each with its own language), that it
hasn't had a government in over a year, and there's precious little
chance of one anytime soon from what one reads. (Curiously, Belgium
shares this distinction with Iraq. Now that the Kurds have removed
themselves from the country, the Sunni and Shia Muslims are even more
at each other's throats than they were before America invaded.)
Well, I've written all that I intended to say this morning. However,
there's another curiosity which might be added as a postscript.
Business-wise, scientifically, artistically -- culturally, if you
like -- the world is becoming a vast spider's web of many different
specializations where territorial boundaries are gradually becoming
increasingly exiguous. And all these lateral networks are
increasingly speaking one common language -- the accidental cause
being the birthplace of the industrial revolution.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/11/
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