Greece is the first train on the EU railway to have derailed. The EU has frantically assembled a hasty 700 Billion Euro rescue package for the country partly underwritten by the IMF. The problem is that before the Greek wreckage can be cleared and sorted out, a number of trains are rambling along those same rickety rails without breaks. The Iberian Local carrying the dual carriages of Spain and Portugal is speeding along on the same rail line of the Greek wreck. Spain and Portugal have had their bond ratings reduced to Junk status by Moody’s as well as Standard and Poor’s.
But it gets worst. The EU is like the Lexington Avenue subway line in New York during rush hour. Trains run on the same track with high frequency. When the Iberian local slams into the derailed Greek train, the Roman Express is due right behind it. The Italian train should not be in operation in the first place. Unlike the Iberians whose brakes have failed, the Italians have removed them completely. According to the rail schedule, the London Special with it’s 125 MPH locomotive follows the Roman Express. The EU is about to have the largest rail pile up disaster in history.
Meanwhile, due to do a management quarrel over how to deal with the Greek derailment, the EU’s high speed flagship train which connects Champs D’Elysses via Brussels to Unter den Linden has decoupled. This has led to a head on collision between the German ICE and French TGV . The EU is having train wrecks galore.
The damage from the Greek derailment and the German-French head on collision cannot be estimated or assessed because of the simultaneous nature of events. Financial speculators on Wall Street are following through with their pledge to crash the Euro currency by the end of the year. The European Central Bank is helpless. The Maastricht and Lisbon treaties aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Unlike the rapid fall of the Twin Towers in New York, the crash of the EU is occurring in slow motion. Each individual crash erupts in a quick bang but the overall destruction of the EU occurs piecemeal.
The passengers on those trains are fit to be tied. The survivors are banged up quite severely yet no help or rescue is forthcoming. The emergency units are coming to the scenes not to check on the health of the passengers but rather to see if they can repair the destroyed rolling stock of the trains and attempt to straighten out the rails . Wounded passengers are told that they should be happy that they’re still alive as well as being informed that lost limbs and open untreated wounds will just have to do. Moreover, those who have uninjured limbs are told by medical teams that they must have all their limbs amputated in order to keep the EU railway working . The results have been insurrections in Greece and increasingly violent protests in Ireland .
The most significant mash up remains the French-German rupture. For more than 50 years, the Franco-German axis was the linchpin of Western European peace and economic prosperity. After 3 bloody wars within a span of 70 years (Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the two world wars) the key to enduring peace on the continent was the economic integration of France and Germany following the Second World War. French President Sarkozy’s outburst against German Chancellor Merkel marks the most ominous sign that European peace has started moving down the rails of history. In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, European Central Bank President, Jean-Claude Trichet was unusually candid in his remarks. He stated that Europe was in its worst crisis since the start of the Second World War . Trichet was unable to make up his mind whether Europe was re-living 1939 or 1914, the year in which the First World War erupted. In March,Germany threatened to pull out of the EU . Last week, France threatened to dump the Euro. The threats and counter-threats between France and Germany are the opening bars of the beating of the war drums. Rumours abound about Merkel’s decision for the German Central Bank to start re-printing Deutschmarks.
The European Union and the Euro currency are mortally wounded. They aren’t dead quite yet. The EU lies in an Intensive Care Unit hospital bed. The Euro is on an operating table in the Emergency Room as doctors send charge after charge of electric shocks using a defibrillator. However, once the pile up on the rails mount and those surviving passengers begin to attack the “rescue” teams, the EU project will be pronounced dead.
