09:13 – Geez. Anyone who’s even slightly aware of what’s going on believes that the crisis super-summit tomorrow is the absolute last chance the EU has to prevent the collapse of the euro and the disintegration of the EU. And yet the actions of the leaders of the top four EU countries are reminiscent of the Animal House food fight. We have Merkozy lobbing vicious verbal grenades at each other, both of them publicly making fun of Berlusconi (who richly deserves it, actually), and Sarkozy telling Cameron that Cameron “has missed an opportunity to shut up” and that he’s “sick” of Cameron “interfering” in the discussions. It’s fortunate that European countries no longer have much in the way of military forces, or Germany would probably have invaded France by now. And France would have surrendered. And yet, by tomorrow, these “leaders” are supposed to agree to terms that none of them are willing to agree to and by so doing save the euro and the EU. Not bloody likely.
Not that there’s actually anything that can be done to save the euro or the EU anyway. The euro itself has a fatal design flaw, and no amount of gerry-rigging can fix that permanently. The problem now is that the EU is running out of temporary patches, each of which was extremely expensive and ultimately futile. All of the argument now isn’t about how to save Greece and the euro and the EU; even the politicians by now realize that is impossible. What they’re arguing about now is who will pay the costs of the collapse. Everyone except the FANG nations wants the FANG nations to take the hit, cutting them down to size. The FANG nations aren’t willing to do so. The only thing they’re seriously concerned about is how to minimize the damage to their own economies from the collapse. They’ve already written off not just Greece, but Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and France.