German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) said on Thursday the euro's troubles offered a chance for the EU to strengthen its economic and political union, not just its common currency. Speaking at a ceremony in Aachen where Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for furthering European unity, Merkel said the future of the EU was at stake in the challenges to its monetary amalgamation. "If the euro fails, not only the currency fails. Europe fails too, and the idea of European unification. We have a common currency, but no common political and economic union. And this is exactly what we must change. To achieve this -- therein lies the opportunity of this crisis." In a speech broadcast live on WDR television, Merkel said the crisis over the euro's future was "not just any crisis, it is the strongest test Europe has faced since 1990, if not in the 53 years since the treaties of Rome." "This test is existential -- it must be passed. If it does not manage to (do that), the consequences for Europe and beyond are unforeseeable," the conservative Christian Democrat said. – Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: Europe must unite to save itself.

Free-Market Analysis: (Updated.) So maybe the power elite doesn't have in mind raping and looting Europe and leaving after all, as some in the alternative press have recently been reporting. (Yes, they'll rape and loot, but they'll likely stick around just as we've been suggesting this past week.) Seems like the EU dominant social theme is yet too valuable to discard. No surprise to us, or our readers and talented feedbackers – who've been pitching in of late with inordinate, though not surprising, brilliance.

Even the just-made Spanish media news-claim that Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to pull France out of the euro (if Germany didn't agree to a bailout) doesn't surprise us much within this context. As we've reported for nearly two years, the EU and the euro may be unsustainable, given the animosity between the various tribes of Europe, and it's no surprise tensions are rising at a time when the union is indeed on the edge of unraveling. In fact, these tensions have to do with pressure one the one-hand to preserve this insupportable power elite meme and the pressure on the other provided by all the forces that are spinning the EU into entropy.

If the EU does break apart, we've always believed it might be a slower process, driven by the discontents of the "man on the street" who is seeing his savings evaporate and sees little hope for the future as the fiat euro continues to erode. The pressure would be conveyed upwards, in other words. (How exactly, we wonder, would Sarkozy himself go about "pulling France" out of the union?) It would, in fact, be surprising if EU leaders initiated the break-up, given the common cause that Europe's socialist leaders have made regarding the EU in the past decades. Centralizing global governance is an important element of the elite playbook, and given the incredible resources poured into the project, the EU is a central element in that strategy, in our opinion. Here's something from a perceptive report in the UK Guardian on Wednesday on the same subject of EU centralization that Merkel has begun to pound:

"In the end, we cannot have a monetary union without an economic union," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso .... Herman van Rompuy, of the European council, went further still: "We can't have a monetary union without some form of economic and – er – political union." They have economic logic, if not political realism, on their side. In its essentials, this crisis was entirely foretold by the critics of the original design of monetary union in the 1990s. You cannot have a strong, durable monetary union, they said, without a fiscal union, allowing for effective fiscal discipline and compensatory budget transfers across the whole currency area, and without higher levels of labour mobility.

No, as we suspected, the elite (the uber-elite and the political elite) doesn't want the EU to unravel after 50 years of hard work. Yet, rarely has the power elite looked in aggregate so inept as it does now, in our opinion. Turns out that the job the Internet has done in stripping the top-rung of the elite of their mystery and secrecy leaves us with a small group of ultra-wealthy families and individuals whose playbook is severely limited. High IQs but low grades for innovation.

Indeed, the Internet is filled by now with millions of articles about the power elite and its yen for global government. Thousands of articles shout that the power elite tends to manufacture political and economic crises in order to pursue their insane vision of further globalization and centralization. So what does the power elite do? It manufactures a crisis in Europe and then begins a campaign for further globalization and centralization based on the European dysfunction that it has generated! Is this brilliant or what? With tens of millions watching and reading on the Internet, the elite's EU political go-fers jump right in with both feet anyway and do exactly what people have been predicting they'll do. Again, high IQs, or so we are told (Merkel has a degree in physics), but low marks for imagination.

Heck, even we took a stab at the predicting gig, and a not-too-shabby one either in our humble estimation. Here's what we wrote at the beginning of the week:

EU Consolidation Is Key to Halting Crisis ... We have been predicting along with others in the alternative media that the drumbeat for further consolidation (of the political kind) within the EU would rise steadily as this latest financial crisis unfolded. We have seen signs of it, though few full-blown articles. Now, however, it seems the battle may be beginning in earnest, with twin blasts being fueled by the New York Times and the Economist (see article excerpt above).

It's no secret at this point that the EU powers-that-be intended for crisis to spur the EU toward closer political union. We're on record of course as writing that the crisis seems to have been worse than what the EU bargained for and the leaders of this questionable union seem truly rattled by what has occurred. But of course, being who and what they are, they are not giving up. Power elite promotions never seem to subside like that. ...

Paul Krugman's article ... is about a "bold" solution. He writes for the NY Times (May 6): "... The problem, as obvious in prospect as it is now, is that Europe lacks some of the key attributes of a successful currency area. Above all, it lacks a central government." There it is again. What the EU needs is a central government. And of course, this is the last thing that the EU needs.

www.thedailybell.com/1037/Paul-Krugman-EU-Consolidation-Is-Key-to-Halting-Crisis

It can't get much clear than that, can it? Even we, with our rudimentary cognitive facilities were able to see what was barreling down the pike. "We have been predicting along with others in the alternative media that the drumbeat for further consolidation (of the political kind) within the EU would rise steadily as this latest financial crisis unfolded," we wrote. Well, that's exactly what's happening, isn't it? After floating a couple of articles in their bought-and-paid-for-press, the elite has hastily and desperately pulled the trigger on an upgrade of the EU "happy family" promotion. Now it turns out that the EU needs psychoanalysis, a firm parent and closer, sterner, families ties.

And if we can see this coming well in advance, so can you dear reader! We produce the Bell, but you had the perspicuity to seek it out and check in on a regular or irregular basis. This is a far greater feat (putting up with us) than scribbling a few articles every day. Even as we write these words, we know you have realized and internalized these points long since. You are smarter than we are. And even smarter than the power elite.

As we just pointed out, this is an elite that still doesn't seem to realize there is such a thing as an Internet. The power elite, now entirely exposed – to the degree that wretched scribes throughout the blogosphere can predict their every move well in advance – seemingly persists in the idea that no one has figured out what they're up to. What's up with that? What egomania drives this determined lack of acknowledgement? What exactly do they think they're getting away with at this point?

And still they plot and plan. A crisis having been manufactured (though a larger one than had been expected), they are ready to implement the top-secret coup de grace. And what's that? Why ... MORE EU UNITY. Having created chaos out of order, it is now time to produce a NEW ORDER out of chaos. O brilliant! The IQ level is just sizzling. The only trouble is that a 13-year-old conservative blogger writing from his basement in Outer Podunk has already figured it all out (thanks to what's on the Internet) and predicted it in detail. As have so many who are NOT 13-years-old.

In our case it is quite a feat, a truly tremendous accomplishment. Our collective IQ is surely no higher than that of a single Master of the Universe. These men are literally one-in-ten-million, we are told. They go to the best schools and then, if they are brutal enough to their classmates and facile enough with numbers, they are tapped for Rhodes scholarships and, like Bill Clinton, groomed for greatness. So how is it that we – along with 13-year-olds from Podunk and sundry bloggers throughout the alternative media blogosphere – can be predictively accurate about their moves and motives, nonetheless? First, we have taken the time to figure out the promotional mechanism that the Anglo-American elite has erected at great expense in the past century or so. Second, as smart as the elite is individually, maybe, just maybe, it is made up of kinda lazy individuals.

It's a strange thing to speculate on. Many in this circle are apparently told that they can trace their genealogy back to Babylon, that they are born to rule and that the laws of humankind don't apply to them. Many of them, having perhaps never held a real job, don't see the need to work very hard, generally. Perhaps their manifest and over-riding character-trait is arrogance and secondarily contempt for almost everyone else. And the upshot? The end result? It takes a while to change with the times. There's no real incentive when you have so much money, is there? In the case of the Anglo-American power elite, a good while.

Like the inheritors of an out of date factory, they may have concluded, unfortunately, that if it was good enough for father and grandfather, then it's good enough for them. Meanwhile, the real world has passed them by. Yes, as we wrote just yesterday, all the brilliance in the world cannot overcome an out-of-date playbook. And, given what the Internet has done to their strategies and methodologies, the playbook of the power elite is badly in need of updating.

We've been hitting this issue so hard because it sits smack in the middle of the Bell's brief. We cover dominant social themes and the EU is a very important theme in our opinion – as is the power elite's continued competence when it comes to promoting its dominant social themes.

If indeed the Internet is making it difficult for the elite to continue to promote a coherent fear-based message then the ramifications are tremendous – for anyone investing in a myriad of Western faux (Green) technologies and for citizens of the West in general. The impacts would ripple out to the elite's perverse think tanks, perverted educational facilities, twisted NRO, crooked world organizations, meretricious non-profits, etc. Most of the soiled fabric of the Western world would have to be reupholstered – one way or another. So pay attention!

There is a lot more to write about regarding this issue, but we are running out of space and time. In brief, we intended to re-emphasize in some detail what a hash the power elite has made of putative EU bailout from the point of view of its much-vaunted central banking system. (We wrote about that yesterday in an article entitled "Fiat Central Banks Down for the Count?") Another promotion (central banking) nearly a century a-building has been badly damaged in our opinion by the inept handling of the power elite and their apparently panicked machinations both in the EU and America.

What has the power elite succeeded in doing in the past two years? Have they secretly and furtively and purposefully destabilized the West's economy with their pathological price fixing of the rate and quantity of money? Perhaps. But we can't help but observe the more obvious ramifications: America is convulsed by its anti-government Tea Party movement; Britain is increasingly restive and Europe is ablaze from Germany to Greece (and apparently there are riots in Ireland as well after all, though the news is supposedly being suppressed).

Conclusion: We are sure, soon enough, we shall read another spate of articles about how the Masters of the Universe have once again secretively manipulated all the institutions of the world and come up with a devious and brilliant plan to further combine nation states into one easily ruled coalition. Again, this is not by any means out of the question. Maybe they are indeed more successful, currently, than we understand. Having risked all, they are set to gain all, as well. But we are not so sure that everything is breaking their way. We ask (as we did yesterday) how is it possible to implement and reinforce fear-based promotions of control when so many are already aware of the mechanisms of promotion? Is this the best they can do? Is it enough?

(Updated with French reports, 5/14/10)

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