The summer of 2011 like the summer of 1914 in Europe?

[pampango]

In the summer of 1914 the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig was on holiday in Ostend with fellow writers and artists. One afternoon, noticing the sudden appearance of uniformed soldiers on the promenade, they buttonholed an officer: "Why all this stupid marching around?" It was 3 August: war was less than 24 hours away but it seemed impossible.

The European elite, because it believed the era of peace, social liberalism and globalised trade could never end, walked blindly into its ending. Today the political elites of Europe stand in danger once again of destroying a dream. They have convinced themselves the single currency and the European Union are the same project, and that the collapse of either would be the end of the world they know. Therefore it cannot end. This fallacy is now about to be tested.

Out of the allied victory, the Marshall Plan and – four decades later – the rapid incorporation of east Europe grew not just the institutions of trans-European solidarity but an implicit social deal.

Europe would be a social market economy: there would be a safety net for the poor, cross-border wealth redistribution through the Social Fund. East Europe would adopt the market but limit the amount of organised crime and corruption to levels commensurate with those in the west. The former dictatorships of Greece, Portugal and Spain would shower social benefits on their populations in return for a gigantic act of forgetting who had done what to whom. Northern Europe would pay for it all and – by way of quid pro quo – drench its blond chest hairs with sunscreen on the beaches of the Mediterranean.

It is this deal that is falling apart.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/24/european-dream-single-currency

[Warpy]

1. Fortunately, Europe is no longer controlled by royal families

with their own inner alliances, so plugging an Archduke in the Balkans won't lead to overnight war among blocs of nations.

However, this might be the quiet before the storms of 1848. There are more parallels for that one.

Rich idiots will never realize that austerity doesn't work until the rest of us start lopping their heads off.