"I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all Hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter."
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
The most significant event of yesterday was not the Spanish banking system unlocking the door to the horror chamber and clicking the melt-down button that it found on the wall but what happened at the European Union. That which had been created woke and in its new found consciousness sat upright and staring into the void it turned upon its Master. It should not have come as a surprise, I suppose, but the mockery of the beast was a frightening sight.
For thirteen years the nations of Europe had worked, slaved, propped up their egos with their ministrations and yesterday the Creation came into its own mind and threw off the shackles in which it had been bound and leapt up upon the table and announced that it no longer belonged to any man and that the chains that had held it would not enslave it any longer. Brussels turned, and looking Berlin squarely in the eye, it used impolite words and gestures and essentially said:
"Stick it."
Those living in Belgium, created and paid for by the nations on the Continent, cast off their shackles and announced themselves free men. To some extent it was the fruition of them believing their own proclamations and to some extent it was their believing the dreams that had been foisted upon them but in the end, which occurred just yesterday, they demanded their own Manifest Destiny and announced it to the world.
Brussels has now called for Eurobonds, has called for the ESM to fund the European banks and it a sign of their new felt independence, has thrown all of this squarely in the face of Germany, the Netherlands, Finland et al who are providing the money. Firstly, and most humorously, there is no ESM at present; it does not exist. The markets spiked initially yesterday when Brussels made its grand pronouncement until the collective mind realized that what was called for was only resident in the imagination of those living in Belgium and was not a reality yet, if ever, in the real world. It was rather humorous to be frank, watching billions of Dollars and Euros change hands based upon a fantasy tossed out and written in officialdom for all to read. This was not even reliance upon some contingent asset or promise to pay because the mechanism, while much discussed and surely endorsed by most, had not yet come into existence so that it was rather like talking about what present you would like to get on your next birthday.
Finland emerged from the thaw first and said, “No,” to be followed by Germany that woke up and said “No” and the markets quickly came back to their senses but Brussels had already let the cat out of the bag and it remains to jump up now at any time and scratch everyone rakishly across the face. The European Union, like some amoeba dividing, is itself dividing with the nations needing funding, joined by the bureaucrats in Belgium, demanding total equality where everyone in Europe is to live exactly the same and with the exact same standards of living. This plays out well in Portugal, Greece, Spain et al but not so much in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. However it all goes down I can assure you, one hundred percent, that in the end Berlin will not allow itself to decline to the extent that their lifestyle is exactly the same as those in Athens and Lisbon. That will NOT be happening in this lifetime!
France, the middle player and the supporter of Germany in times past is now firmly aligned with those demanding cohesion. The game has changed. It will no longer be push and shove and muddle through but convictions and ideology that are in stark opposition so that surprises and inflamed statements will become the order of the day and not the exception. If it is to be either Germany for the Germans or Germany for the citizens of Athens, make no mistake in your thinking; Berlin will prevail regardless of the outlying costs to either the nation or to the future of the Union that theoretically governs Europe.
"Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a Hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!"
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Zero Hedge
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