No, no, no, she says, to any solution to the eurozone crisis that looks like debt pooling, as if echoing the words of Britain’s former prime minister all those years ago on the perils of monetary union.
The German Chancellor is bluffing, and doesn’t really mean it, the markets reply, but if this is indeed only a game of poker, she’s certainly got nerves of steel. There will be no joint and several guarantees for euro area debt “as long as I live”, she told a private meeting of German MPs this week. If that’s bluff, then it’s one from which politically she’ll struggle to escape.
The parallels with Britain’s own iron lady are striking, though obviously not exact. Mrs Thatcher pledged to use the British veto to block monetary union. I’m going to stand on the track and stop that train, she said. So she stood on the track and was duly run over by the EMU locomotive.
Looking at the mess into which the eurozone has since descended, many Europeans must wish she had succeeded, but it was not to be. With Mrs Thatcher disposed of, Britain instead negotiated an opt out from a project it believed itself powerless to stop.
Might Merkel suffer the same fate? There are key differences. Mrs Thatcher’s stance was a principled, and as it turns out, far sighted attempt to save Europe from self inflicted disaster.
Full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9360124/Angela-Merkel-isnt-bluffing-like-everyone-else-in-Europe-shes-defending-national-sovereignty.html