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What the judges didn’t explicitly say, of course, is that this mission creep — this treaty change on the down-low — is not a bug but a feature of EU policy. The message from Karlsruhe is that this obfuscation must stop. If you want to save the euro permanently, the judges are saying, write new rules into the European treaties and explain them to your voters. These German judges would be happy to apply them, because they actually love Europe. But if you’re not ready to have a proper currency union, with joint debt and governance, then at least be honest enough to admit that.  In that case, we must have an open and democratic debate about how, gradually and cautiously, to unravel the euro area as it is. This is the fundamental question for Europeans of this generation. Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 6 maj 2020  Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.  He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.   Germa...

Did people in the late Bronze Age know their civilization was collapsing?  Scholars hear worrying historical echoes in the stresses building up in the US, and the global shocks of war, migration, climate, disease and famine. The collapse of societies has fascinated historians, archeologists and anthropologists from Polybius in ancient times to Edward Gibbon in the 18th century and a growing interdisciplinary field of scholars today --- scholars  PIIRS Global Systemic Risk Research Community at Princeton University https://risk.princeton.edu/ --- For others, such as the authors of How Worlds Collapse, it’s the people in the late Bronze Age, the Han and Jin dynasties of China, the Aztecs and Kievan Rus — and even honey bees (whose hive societies have been collapsing for decades, with huge implications for pollination and thus food and humans). The hard part is assigning causes to these collapses. Temperamentally, scholars range from hedgehogs (who point to one big thing) to foxe...

These two competing narratives frame a central debate about the EU’s future.  Bruegel, a Brussels think tank, caricatures them as 1) the bloc is being “hardened by adversity,” leading to perpetual integration, versus 2) the “sky is falling” for the EU, which causes its disintegration. Does that mean the EU is fated to enter the fossil record, as many species have done before?  Not necessarily, but possibly.  Evolution is not about improvement toward some noble ideal but about adapting to reality. Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 22 July 2020 När och hur spricker EMU?

Yes, inflation is dangerous, but deflation may be even more so, as the rise of Hitler showed. There was hyperinflation during the Weimar era, and it did contribute to a general sense of chaos that undermined the fledgling republic. But that peaked in 1923, the year Hitler botched a putsch and went to jail — a full decade before he seized power.  By contrast, the monetary and economic event that contributed directly to the Nazi takeover was the crisis of the early 1930s, and in particular the deflation, or general fall in prices, that caused mass unemployment That’s not how Germans “remember” history, however. Haffert, Redeker and Rommel did surveys in which they asked participants to estimate inflation in 1923 and 1932. Most thought that prices were also soaring in 1932. Almost nobody knew that prices fell that year. The biggest surprise as that the more educated respondents were, the more likely they were to be wrong. Adenauer and many others subscribed to conventional wisdom and ...

 på konkreta tidsplaner för att nolla utsläppen till 2050. Ända sen 1988 har forskarnas varningar varit kristallklara. För varje år har prognoserna blivit mer säkra. Och politikerna har visserligen kommit med utsläppsmål långt fram i tiden samtidigt som utsläppen stadigt ökar. Det är en sak att besluta att utsläppen ska nollas till 2050. Men hur ser tidsplanen ut på vägen dit? Hur ska utsläppen kunna komma ner med 5-6 procent v a r j e  år när det inte ens är politiskt möjligt att höja bensinpriset?  Erika Bjerström SvT 9 augusti 2021 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/regeringars-brist-pa-konkreta-handlingsplaner-ar-mer-skakande-an-ipcc-rapporten Without “immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions” in emissions, curbing global warming to either 1.5C or even 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 would be “beyond reach” Financial Times 9 August 2021 https://www.ft.com/content/9a11b08c-4fb3-49ec-8939-9d853745bfce Most people cannot comprehend the prospect of catastrophic ...

Forces the bloc to decide whether it wants to be a federation or just a club. Brussels, obviously, cannot let this stand. That situation would overturn the EU’s presumed vertical hierarchy, in which the European Court, based in Luxembourg, sits atop the 27-member nations’ high courts the same way the U.S. Supreme Court has primacy over state courts.  The EU tried to adopt a constitution once, but in 2005 French and Dutch voters rejected it in referendums. In its absence, the bloc continues to rely on treaties among the member states. But those are clearer on the European Court’s horizontal supremacy — its power to review the law coming out of other pan-European institutions — and rather vague on its vertical authority vis-a-vis national courts.  Another constitutional convention would revive the idea of “ever closer union,” which implies a sovereign European state as the ultimate destination.  Europe’s leaders and citizens may regard that as unrealistic or even undesirabl...

Owing to the coronavirus, the EU’s rules on debts and deficits have been suspended and most member states have vastly overshot their normal limits.  But at some point next year we’ll have to talk about how fast to apply the rules again.  Given the extraordinary macroeconomic situation, it’ll be tempting to tweak them — for the umpteenth time. Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 25 February 2021 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-25/the-european-union-should-ditch-its-fiscal-rules-and-try-this

Not Aquarius. A new-old period of realism has returned The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War and prompted a false diagnosis of the “end of history.” Al-Qaeda’s attacks against the US on Sep. 11, 2001, seemed instead to debut a “clash of civilizations.”  In this brave new-old world, military power will once again assert its primacy in international affairs, with economic, political and “soft” power lining up as its attendants. This will raise the profile of the martial — such as the US — and lower that of the meek, including the mercantile and post-heroic European Union. This is why EU members like Sweden and Finland will join NATO in 2023. The main difference between this era of Realpolitik and previous ones — from Thucydides’ to Metternich’s and Bismarck’s — is instead the existence of a new and apocalyptic externality. This is anthropogenic climate change, with all its side effects — from zoonotic pandemics to flood...

Västvärlden har fryst 3 000 miljarder kronor av Rysslands tillgångar. Fortfarande tvekar dock väst att ta steget att beslagta de ryska tillgångarna av rädsla för följderna. En oro är huruvida det vore i enlighet med internationell rätt.  USA och Storbritannien sägs nu trycka på för ett beslagtagande och menar att man har hittat en lösning på de juridiska problemen.  Frågan ska diskuteras på G7-mötet i februari. Expressen 23 januari 2024  https://www.expressen.se/ledare/lat-ryssland-betala-for-kriget-i-ukraina/ Seizing Russia’s Central Bank Funds Is Illegal and Unwise Breaking international law is the wrong way to help Ukraine.  Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 26 december 2023  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/12/seizing-russias-central-bank-funds-is.html Brittisk JK ansåg Irak-kriget olagligt - Secretary Albright: “get new lawyers.” Englund: Brittisk JK ansåg Irak-kriget olagligt - Secretary Albright: “get new lawyers.” (englundmacro.blogspot.com)

Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s finance minister, said on Tuesday 20200519 : “We will be constructive partners in this discussion as well, but at the same time we will co-operate with the ‘frugal four’. There are big question marks when it comes to borrow for spend and whether it is allowed with EU treaties.”  Olaf Scholz, Germany's finance minister, said the EU was approaching its "Hamilton moment” - in reference to the first US Treasury Secretary who in 1790 turned the US into a fiscal union by converting state debt to federal debt. His French counterpart Bruno Le Maire called the deal a “historic step for France and Germany and also a historic step for the whole European Union”. But some northern European states are digging their heels in. Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that he and his counterparts in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden would only accept a rescue fund that dished out loans. FT  19 May 2020 Tyskland har motsatt sig att den sortens ekonomisk...

 The European Union is often eulogized as history’s greatest peace project. What future, if any, does the greatest-ever peace project have in this harsh new era?  This is a question I’m asking myself as I move back to the US after 11 years of living in Berlin and covering Germany and the EU. This fault line between east and west, long before Putin’s invasion of 2022, cleaved the EU one way, while a different rift, exposed by the euro crisis, was pulling apart its north and south.  The north (which included the UK until it exited the bloc) tends to be more market-oriented, economically strong, fiscally conservative, and culturally Protestant. The south leans more corporatist, spendthrift and culturally Catholic or Orthodox. In some ways, the ancient Roman Limes still divides the continent. The postwar West Germans viewed European integration as a way of re-entering Western civilization after their Nazi crimes. were not only willing but eager to cede sovereignty to “Europe....

 How Spain is coping with the heat https://www.dw.com/en/spain-coping-with-the-heat/a-62826918 På sina resor han förnam, hur väl försynens nåd reglerat,  som floder överallt placerat där stora städer stryka fram. - Falstaff, fakir skrifter av Axel Wallengren. From the Rhine to the Tigris Global warming disturbs the jet and gulf streams that used to reliably circulate our atmosphere and oceans. Lake Mead — where the Hoover Dam blocks whatever remains of the Colorado River — is drying into a puddle and displaying everything from sunken boats to dead bodies. As these rivers, from the Yangtze to the Colorado, slowly evaporate — their water molecules destined to inundate islets or coastlines elsewhere in the world — the emphasis among scientists and policymakers is shifting to “adaptation.”  We’ll certainly need a lot of that.  Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 17 augusti 2022 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-17/rhine-tigris-river-water-levels-are-grave-climate-ch...

One of them is Philip Gordon, who also served in the administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Another is Rebecca Lissner, a diplomat and scholar. While at the Council on Foreign Relations between the Obama and Biden terms, he wrote a book with the telling title Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East.  His narrative charts the failures, follies and unintended consequences of US interventions in the region.  Those include the ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 (which, via many twists and turns, gave us today’s anti-American theocracy in Tehran),  Bush II’s misguided invasion of Iraq (which spawned, among other ills, the Islamic State and left Iran as the paradoxical winner), as well as misadventures in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. The book that Lissner co-authored, which was published at about the same time as Gordon’s, hews to similar themes. Her conclusion is that the US nowadays lacks the ...

 They keep coming — and keep dying.  The running tally of migrant drownings for the year so far is 661, according to the International Organization for Migration. That makes about 20,000 such deaths since 2014. If there’s more dying, it’s because there’s more migrating again. Illegal entries into the EU, by land or sea, were up 64% in 2022 over the previous year, to the highest number since the refugee crisis of 2016. The EU is at a loss. It doesn’t want so many people to come, but also doesn’t know how to stop them or what to do with them once they reach European shores.  Only 21% of the roughly 300,000 migrants told to leave the EU every year actually go. The reality is that migrants will keep coming to Europe for the foreseeable future — and in growing numbers — just as they’ll also keep trekking from South and Central America to the US. They’re doing what I would do too.  As the EU’s 27 leaders haggle about tweaking their dysfunctional asylum regime this year, le...

We all have different psychological mechanisms for coping with the reality of climate change. For activists like Greta Thunberg, it seems to be depression, anxiety and rage. For others, it’s resignation. For others yet, it’s denial. And people like me cycle between all of them.  But hardly anybody has already reached the last stage of grieving, which is acceptance. Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 13 januari 2023  https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-13/skiing-and-its-resorts-are-paying-the-price-for-generations-of-ecological-sins A Snowless Davos Tells the World’s Elite All They Need to Know 12 januari 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-12/davos-2023-world-s-elite-face-climate-reality-with-increasingly-snowless-slopes Knappt någon i den svenska debatten – eller i regeringen heller, för den delen – verkar förstå omfattningen av vad som nu sker. Eller vilka konsekvenser det får för oss i Sverige. Samtidigt klubbas klimatpolitik i ett häpnadsväckande tempo...

 The US National Security Strategy marks a break with American postwar tradition, being semantically neutral toward adversaries like Russia and China, but vitriolic toward democratic mainstream politicians in Old Europe. The document claims that the European Union and other transnational bodies undermine political liberty and sovereignty, and asserts that Europe practices censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition. The strategy paper proclaims that the US goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory by cultivating resistance and aiding the growing influence of patriotic European parties, effectively putting Old Europe on notice that the US will meddle in its domestic politics. As I re-read the frightening section on Europe in the new National Security Strategy of the United States, I couldn’t help but recall, with a rueful chuckle, a book titled The Postnational Constellation, by one of Europe’s most influential contemporary philosophers, Juer...

At that time, Russian President Vladimir Putin already fantasized about restoring his country to tsarist and Soviet greatness but had not yet broken openly with the West.  Reading the man and the moment wrong, US President George W. Bush decided to invite Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.  American scholars in the realist tradition thought this was a big mistake, as did NATO leaders such as Angela Merkel of Germany or Nicolas Sarkozy of France. In a disastrous compromise, the Bucharest summit ended with a declaration that “these countries will become members of NATO,” but didn’t specify a timeline.  While Kyiv’s membership was never really on the menu, though, Putin and his minions still used the Bucharest offer to spin a toxic narrative about a perennially hostile West encroaching on the “Russian world,” which to them includes Ukraine.  Ukraine was neither in nor out, as it has been ever since. When the Ukrainians in 2014 sought to join that West (via the European Unio...

The Rubicon has not been crossed. The €500bn Merkel-Macron plan is not fiscal union. It is not the start of eurobonds or joint and several debt issuance. It is not a great leap forward in the constitutional structure of the EU that many wish it to be. Nor does it rectify the structural failings of monetary union, nor restore the post-Covid solvency of Italy and Club Med states facing a debt-deflation trap.  The money will not start flowing until next March.  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 20 May 2020  If you have common bonds, is that not a fiscal union of sorts?  The key problem with the euro since its founding in 1999 has been that it was — and is — a currency without a fiscal union.  Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are fundamentally against the idea of mutualising debts.  Netherlands is the key country to watch. FT 21 May 2020 Politicians and analysts say the plan could mark a turning point in the history of the EU....

Breaking international law is the wrong way to help Ukraine.  REPO for Ukrainians Act. The law, if it becomes one, would authorize the US president to confiscate billions of dollars owned by the Russian central bank but held in the US, and to give that money to the Ukrainians instead. roughly $300 billion in assets held by the Russian central bank in accounts in Western countries. Since Putin’s attack, those funds have been frozen,  The bulk of Russia’s money abroad is sitting in Europe, and in particular in Belgium, home to a securities depository called Euroclear. For REPO to help Ukraine, it would therefore have to inspire the Europeans to emulate it. Such a move would raise geopolitical questions. One practical consequence would be to signal to China and other countries that have tense relations with the US that their central-bank assets will be confiscated next  Since Putin’s invasion, the US and its Western allies have professed that Ukraine is the front line of a g...

  Oro på Wall Street –  halvledarbolagen föll https://www.di.se/live/oro-pa-wall-street-halvledarbolagen-foll/ The U.S. trade deficit surged in January https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-us-trade-deficit-surged-in-january.html Krisstämning bland Europas ledare, som nu svänger om belåning   Prodi: It is politically impossible to propose that now. But some day there will be a crisis and new instruments will be created." https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/krisstamning-bland-europas-ledare-som.html Germany’s MEGA Day Sometimes you can feel the global  economy’s tectonic plates move under your feet.  This is one of those times https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/03/germanys-mega-day.html Saab satte kursrekord,  medan fastighetsbolagen stod som förlorare . https://www.di.se/live/tungviktarindex-vande-till-gront-kursrekord-for-saab/ Stockholmsbörsen faller på torsdagen     vilket delvis kopplas till den tydliga kronförstärk...