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Nicholas Kaldor on the Common Market (1971)

• toyg 11y ago
  Kaldor wasn't the only one to say this, either then or later on. In fact, most proponents of the current Euro will freely admit that they were well aware of such possibilities. However, they were clearly hoping that the inevitable crisis would be resolved in what they believed was the most rational way: by accepting full federation as inevitable if Europe wants to maintain their wealth and status among the world superpowers. Unfortunately, most federalists seem to have misjudged how much Germans would be tempted (and able) to reestablish their economic sphere of influence after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now the European project finds itself in need of a magnanimous Germany, something that cannot be delivered by neither its elites nor their electorate. Unless an alternative bloc can emerge to balance out German influence, Western EU countries are basically sleepwalking towards their own economic (and hence political) doom.