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Europe: A fraught marriage

Just about everywhere one cares to look, and on whatever subject-matter, 2012 is not shaping up to be a good year.    The attempts to bring some sort of harmony into the EU and economic stability to boot, doesn't look too good from an objective observation.

"Europe is like an unhappy marriage in which the partners no longer get on but cannot bear to break up because the property settlement would cripple them. It is true that there is plenty of reason to be alarmed on the money front. If governments default on their debts, if banks fall like dominoes, depression looms. If the euro collapses, it will mean chaos and hardship for nations, households and businesses.

But the urgency over money has induced tunnel vision and distorted the dynamics of power. Greater unity over spending and taxes might be good for the currency but the long-term price of this "cure" might be social and political unrest. Resentful voters in individual nations may feel disenfranchised if they think their interests are being over-ridden by distant powers.
Already, there is widespread resentment of the size, wealth and power of "banksters" and their role in the crisis. Governments are blamed for not having reined in the excesses of banks and speculators - "wherever there was a reckless borrower, there was a reckless lender", says one Irish economist - and for allowing them to have grown too big to fail.

A study published in New Scientist in October suggests there is some justification for this view. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich used mathematical models to examine ownership links between more than 43,000 transnational companies. They concluded that just 147 tightly knit companies, mostly financial institutions, control 40 per cent of the world's revenue."


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