Remaking the euro zone in Germany’s likeness

Angela Merkel Nears a Remaking of Euro Zone - NYTimes.com: "Mrs. Merkel’s leadership has come at a high cost for indebted countries, especially those on the periphery, with cuts in public spending biting just as joblessness has surged. Youth unemployment in Spain is nearly 50 percent, a fact Mrs. Merkel raises with domestic audiences when cautiously selling more intervention. The treaty changes she and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France proposed in Paris on Monday would have been inconceivable at the beginning of the crisis, since it requires states to cede a significant degree of economic sovereignty. It is a process that many observers, in particular the populist British press, say is well underway. German dominance of the euro zone, they say — with Mrs. Merkel as the unofficial but unchallenged leader of Europe — has in fact already arrived. Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation as Italy’s prime minister was interpreted as an omen for Europe’s German-directed future. And confidential draft proposals of Ireland’s December budget were found to have circulated among lawmakers in Berlin last month before opposition lawmakers in Dublin saw them."

The problem is that southern Europe is not Germany, and therefore the "German solution," i.e., "austerity," is not going to work but only create more hardship. When the peoples of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, figure this out, all hell is going to break out. Ireland? First the Irish people are sold out by their leaders for the banks, and now they are being sold out to Germany. Unnecessary suffering is not noble.