Wither the Euro?

This year just might be the year the whole Euro house of cards implodes even as Estonia ties its economy to the Euro anchor. Even with a Republican House holding the purse-strings in the US; for the Euro to dissolve, what an economic abyss for the whole world to jump into.

How did the Europeans get here? Start with the Treaty of Rome. Then add the hare-brained idea of turning a European economic market into a European wide government lodged in Brussels Belgium. So now stronger economies like Germany are being hit up to bail out the failed economies of Greece and Ireland. Portugal and Spain may follow this year. Thus bankrupting the emergency fund the European Union only just recently cobbled together from European banks and the International Monetary Fund[IMF]. Please note the United States has billions of dollars invested in the IMF so the US taxpayer is already part of the bailout plan. Question becomes, if Portugal and Spain do need bailing out will Germany and other strong EU economies add to their own burden to save these far weaker economies?

One option could be to let countries like Greece leave the Euro zone to sort themselves out while leaving the Euro unscathed. But as Oliver Hartwich notes, the EU bureaucrats have too much political capital invested to even think of such an option. As he notes - Horace's sneer "parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus" ("mountains will be in labour, and an absurd mouse will be born") comes to mind.

The option the bureaucrats in Brussels wants is for the various Euro countries to surrender even more control to Brussels. To further control the various economies. "There is far too much political and economic capital invested in the euro's survival for it to be allowed to fail," said Sony Kapoor, head of the financial think tank Re-Define and adviser to the European parliament's economic crisis committee. The too big to fail argument which is one argument that seems to fail spectacularly.