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Commentary: ECB 'plan' won't help Spain or Italy
by http://www.marketwatch.com/story ... -vacation-2012-08-09
Like every good German citizen, Merkel takes her summer vacation in good times and bad, though at only two and a half weeks, hers is shorter than that of most of her compatriots, who like to take four weeks in summer and then another week or two in winter for skiing.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer arrive at the opening of the Bayreuth Wagner opera festival.
After attending the opening night of the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Merkel has spent most of the time in the mountains of South Tyrol, the historic Austrian region that became part of Italy after World War I.She and her husband, the chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, stay in a rustic hotel in Sulden (Solda in Italian), a village outside Bolzano at the foot of Mount Ortler, and spend the time rambling through the spectacular alpine landscape.
Of course, German press reports make a point of saying, she keeps her cell phone handy in case of an urgent crisis and a contingent of bodyguards and staffers accompany the couple to their vacation site.The mountain air is no doubt a welcome change from the miasma of euro politics. A couple of weeks amid the eternal verities of the Alps may give the German leader a fresh perspective on the crisis gripping Europe.
Draghi’s promise of a bazooka and his subsequent retreat — saying “Hold that thought” — was apparently enough to calm traders eager to take their own vacations and give everyone a respite from euro angst.
Nothing he said, however, made it any likelier that Spain and Italy will be able to stay in the euro zone. These countries cannot sustain 20%-plus unemployment and a decade of deflation no matter how many government bonds the ECB or European Stability Mechanism end up buying.
But Draghi and Merkel remain intent on forcing these conditions on the southern European countries in exchange for their “help.” And increasingly it seems that French President François Hollande — who progressives in Europe hoped would challenge these austerity policies — is willing to go along with them.
If authorities can continue to buy time and avoid a calamity like a major bank failure, there is a chance that the euro will indeed survive, although in a truncated form that will largely resemble a D-mark zone in northern Europe, including a subservient and submissive France.
Italy and Spain will likely be gone and it hardly matters whether Greece, Portugal or Ireland stay or leave.No doubt the members of this rump euro will be happy to keep the door open to all European Union members to join or re-join after a suitable restructuring.It’s hard to imagine, however, that the U.K., Sweden, Denmark or any of the other current holdouts would be in a hurry to do so, and it is an open question whether the joint currency would be a help or a hindrance to further European integration.
It is doubtful that this is the vision of Europe that Jean Monnet and the other founders of the original European Coal and Steel Community had in mind when they sought a way to tame German power after World War II.Even if Italy leaves the euro zone, the South Tyrolean Alps will still be there for Merkel and other German tourists to enjoy. German is still widely spoken in the region, which has its autonomy guaranteed by international treaty.These mountains have, after all, seen empires come and go, played host to the Hapsburgs and Napoleon, and were home to scores of different currencies over the centuries.
When Merkel comes back sometime in the not-so-distant future, it may be that the conversion rate between the euro and the new lira will make her hotel even cheaper than now, when it costs around a $100 a night per person, with dinner and breakfast included.
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