08/06/2012
Die Welt this morning parades Kit Juckes, an economist at Société Générale, telling us that: "If Europe's leaders do not communitise the debts of their countries, perhaps in the form of eurobonds or eurobonds through the back door, the euro will not survive".
Mr Juckes, however, does not foresee this and thus expects further weakening of the euro, even reaching parity with the dollar. Currently, it is quoted at around $1.2550, but this level is not expected to hold, underlining market doubts about the value of current political statements.
Elsewhere, the paper
follows up on the transaction tax "deal", recording that the details are very vague. There is a long way to go before the issue is settled.
The Cameron visit in the German press is relatively low key, but not so in the jingoistic
Telegraph. As does Lambeth council protect its residents from herds of wild elephants rampaging through the high street (evidenced by the absence of pachyderms on the pavements), so this newspaper has David Cameron
pledging: "I'll protect Britain from European superstate".
Since Angela Merkel is specifically talking of a two-speed Europe, with only the eurozone contemplating further integration, the idea that the UK should join in has not been tabled. In fact, quite specifically, it is taken as read that the UK will not be joining in. Mr Cameron is "protecting" us from non-existent elephants.
This superficial, flag-waving approach, shared by the
Grauniad and others, obscures (perhaps intentionally) the detail of what is going on. The visit was a very strange affair. Apart from being ambushed over the transaction tax, Cameron was pressed to attend an open discussion with a carefully selected group of 100 "international" students, on "how to deal with the challenges of the future".
Furthermore, Mr Cameron was not the only prime minister in Berlin. The Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg had been invited, and it is difficult to ascertain with whom Mrs Merkel spent more time. Sensibly, though, the Norwegian left early to spend the afternoon in a Biergartethe, leaving Mr Cameron and Mrs Merkel to talk to the students.
This is a very odd way of doing business in what is supposed to be a major crisis â can you imagine Herr Hitler treating Mr Chamberlain is such a manner at Munich? Instead of serious, face-to-face talks, we had Merkel in the presence of the British prime minister
talking to students about "Learning from each other", under the a Stalinesque slogan: "new paths in the relationship between citizens and the state".
Despite an existential crisis that threatens to tear the very fabric of Europe apart, bringing down the entire global economy in its wake, Mrs Merkel was chatting about politics, airily pronouncing that one had to consider long-term developments rather than merely look at the next elections, asking for suggestions on "Democracy in the year 2022".
The way it is going, the idea of predicting the shape of the world in 2022 is an impossible dream. Yet this surreal aspect of the visit has been completely missed by the British media, which has been treating the Cameron-Merkel interface as if it was a proper meeting between grown-ups. It was anything but, and one wonders precisely what is going on. This was not a serious way of doing business.
This reinforces a growing suspicion that this latest initiative isn't really serious. Either it is displacement activity, or Merkel is perpetrating an elaborate charade, either to conceal the real agenda (whatever that might be) or simply to conceal the fact that the "colleagues" have run out of things to say to Mr Cameron.
Whatever is actually going on, the theatre of the surreal in Berlin wasn't even the half of it. The hard, grey men in
les couloirs in Brussels are, or course, the ones to watch. But they are invisible. One cannot help but feel that we are being taken â as always â for fools.
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