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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
This website has a predominantly US readership, I think .
In other news, the Euro and Pound are in freefall , the former down 5% and the later down an astonishing 10% over the past month. This show how bad things are over there even compared to here. Inflation higher ,too. It's a mess over there due to a combination of poor policy, risk aversion (flight to safety trade), and other factors, and will probably get worse. Western Europe pretty much missed out on the entire 90s and 2000s tech boom and you can see it the huge difference between the returns of the US vs. UK stock market starting in the early 2000s which has continued since . There is nothing to be optimistic about over there .
I really do hope they find some new productive niche, as coasting on reputation and accumulated capital is not a sustainable strategy, and attempting to leverage those to be "regulatory leaders" would probably just exhaust those stores faster.
I am witnessing first-hand the EU's desperate attempt to create such a niche in a small communications related field. It is pathetic unfortunately. One clearly gets the idea that anything productive has been taken over by the Americans or the Chinese and this is just scraps. Furthermore, most of the academics involved are Chinese/Indian anyway so even if this stuff produced something useful, who knows how much they will contribute to Europe actually.
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Yeah the Euro going under .96 is bad on its own but it's really just a sign of how weak and overhyped the EU has been for a while now.
The Fed can afford aggressive hikes to contain inflation though it remains to be seen if they will succeed without triggering a great depression. Meanwhile the ECB knows that if they get as aggressive, the weight of southern europe's debts will just collapse them. So they don't and the Euro loses against the dollar, and a weak currency is only good if you're a big net exporter, which the EU with its -250B trade balance most definitely isn't.
I don't see a way out of this that doesn't seriously shrink the pie, and economic strife means political strife. And it's not like there's a way out with our shitty demography and lack of innovation.
Just checked this, the chart is catastrophic! They used to enjoy a trade surplus too.
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/balance-of-trade
The US is much worse though. It will be extremely damaging when the house of cards collapses and foreigners are no longer prepared to export valuable goods in exchange for bits of paper printed by the Fed.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade
I think people rightly think by the time "piece of paper printed by the FED" loses its value, we are probably in so much deep shit globally (nuclear exchange? global shipping collapse? Solar flare? Free for all world war?) that finance is the least of our problems.
That doesn't even apply to the EU. Euro can lose its value and fundamentally not much would need to change in the world.
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True. But any other English language European focused forum I can find out there is pathologically pro-EU. I know some Brussels career bureaucracy types and even they are usually much more sensible about the limitations of the EU than your average pro-EU Redditor. It would be nice to cultivate some habit of broader discussion about these subjects here.
Unfortunately looks like that. Perhaps I should slowly start checking my options for Atlantic migration as well.
Europeans in general are vastly pro-EU. While most Europeans aren't of course going to have the fervor of the most committed Europhiles, it's still generally a popular project, and the most Europhilic contigent is just the tip of the spear of a larger crowd that might gripe about EU stuff occasionally but still wouldn't dream of supporting their country's exit from the Union.
I sometimes think that Americans (the ones with actual interest in Europe) really get a lopsided view about the EU's popularity from following the debates through a British lens, where EU is actually a general subject with strong pro-EU and anti-EU camps. In the continent, the anti-EU camp is really comparably much weaker, which also shows in right-wing populist parties continously moderating their anti-EU views the closer to actual power and mass appeal they get.
I am honestly not so sure about that. I tried to do a deep dive into this subject at some point. I remember that the gist of it was that people gave quite different replies to pollsters about how much they like the EU depending on what they associate with the EU at the time of asking. Eastern Europeans may love the free travel arrangements but won’t stand for the gay stuff or African immigration. The rich northerners suddenly get quite negative about it if you remind them how much they are subsidising the lazy southerners etc.
I believe the politicians coming near power moderate their stance towards the EU primarily to avoid what happened to Syriza or Berlusconi. In practice they have much to gain from working with the EU, damned what their voters wanted, and they know they will likely get crushed otherwise.
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From what I've noticed, the fanatically pro-EU types are mostly blue tribe Americans who adore it as some mythological anti-red America. Most European Redditors(or Europeans in general) are pro-EU too, but lean much more nuanced than whateverthefuck goes on at any given Reddit sub.
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