[real life] Breakup of EU and 'Germanies' going their own way....

Well, the electoral results have me wondering how good St John is at picking
race horses because if I had to guess, we were looking at the laying of the
foundations for the creation of the FSE and NSL.

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A lot depends on how it goes in the next while. Germans were already
torqued off about paying for earlier retirement and state-funded
holidays in Greece and having to bail out most of the rest of Europe. With
France and Greece apparently headed for 'screw you, deutschebankers!', it
becomes unclear how the Euro can operate or how the rest of the EU will have
any
sort of money to use for the so-called 'growth' budgets.

It seems to me seperate currencies and perhaps even seperate trade policies
focusing on internal trade within countries may be on the horizon. To some
extent, globalism has lowered the value of labour to the detriment of
labourers in the rich countries. It was fine as long as we got cheaper stuff
and had jobs, but when the jobs started to migrate, we took a fairly different
view.

Germany isn't (unless they are insane) going to float too many more loans to
the 'we won't pay it back anytime soon and don't honour our commitments'
crowd.

And we all recall Germany's historical approach to resolving serious financial
disputes with France...

I don't claim to understand all the shenanigans that led to this mess, but I
do understand that blowing off the people who have and would possibly continue
to loan you money for liquidity is something next to crazy.

It's funny how quite a few of the things Jon predicted in whimsy all those
years back have or are coming to pass (albeit often for different reasons and
with some variances in detail).

Just watched a program where a pile of historians debated various places in
history where there was a turning point, the right man or woman was at the
helm, and things could have turned out differently otherwise. It was
surprising how many they came up with from the 20th century where some small
changes could have vastly changed the geopolitics of the era with some minor
trigger.

One I thought most interesting: Sometime I think before WWII, Churchill went
to New York. He got in a traffic accident, got some awful complications, and
almost died. Imagine England without Churchill. They might have survived, but
Europe might have ended up Russian or German.

Another one is how close the Soviets came to revolting on Stalin during his
brutal efforts to fight the Germans. It's possible if the Red Army had screwed
up in a couple of key places, the Russians could have thrown out the
Stalinists and the Germans may well have been able to stabilize their control
of some quite wide areas after smashing the Red Army.

There are a lot of others that are smaller and hinge on less well known, but
still important as it turns out, people.

I think one of the fellow was Jeff Greenfield who wrote "Then Everything
Changed" which focused on the American political side. The other authors
contributed Canadian, British, and other perpsectives.

This is half of why alternate histories, despite being the fluff we wrap our
games in, are so interesting.

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I don't claim to understand all the shenanigans that led to this mess,

Simple on a personal level.

Spend more on luxury consumer good than you earn, repeat until the elevated
level of consumer spending is now the expected norm. Do this when you have no
job.

Protest when parents try and insist on a balanced budget. Have temper tantrum
and smash up parents car.

Borrow money from local loan company, refuse to pay back loan.

Protest to all and sundry when you can't borrow any more money and when the
loan companes come in and reposess your goods.

Resist the bayliffs and get the police involved.

It's stupid on a personal level but somehow OK for governments to do it.

> On 07/05/2012 10:04 AM, Ryan Gill wrote:

I think it might be a little early to make any guesses.:) I mean, Hollande
hasn't even formally taken power yet, and, most politicians end up tacking in
favour of the status quo after election, no matter what they say during the
campaign itself.

Granted, this is the 50,000 foot view, but I haven't seen anything that
indicates that Hollande's a Euroskeptic in any way. So, the only way I can see
this going wrong is if the far Right or far Left in France or Germany somehow
leverages media coverage into a general campaign of anger, and that seems to
be pretty unlikely at this point.

JGH