Well now, what do you mean? You know, the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by committee, because that is what the Eurozone is looking more and more like. A gaggle of bigots endlessly meeting and endlessly talking in repeated all nighters, hours and hours of pointless debate that invariably end up with a statement putting off any serious decisions to the next meeting.
Worse, perhaps, is that other little foible, mostly (if not exclusively) encountered in the Germans. When they can’t just shout “Nien!” and click their heels in our faces, they say, Jah, okay… and before the ink has dried on whatever they may have signed they start back tracking. Yes, a banking union is good, but we mustn’t act in haste! God forbid! We must take it step by step.
And before that, under Monti’s pressure, Jah… banks can be recapitalised directly through the ESM, but… first caveat, this will only apply to countries not yet in trouble (thank you) and second we must establish a banking union first. But we can’t do that in a hurry! We must put it off till next summer. As if they had all the time in the world. That is the committee designing the horse which turns into a camel in the end.
Now you could say that it makes good sense to do things slowly and put some real thought and planning into it. You could say that. But you would be wrong. The only reason Germany procrastinates this way is to negate anything and everything she has been forced to agree to but will be damned if she will do it! Like Eurobonds “over my [Merkel’s] dead body”. Or growth. When she knocked the wind out of Hollande’s sails by saying Jah! to growth. Of course. Only pushing it quietly out of all following agendas. Or, in effect, referring it to committee.
In his blog, having been accused of being anti Europe, Paul Krugman makes a very pertinent remark:
“My problem” he says “isn?t with Europe, it?s with the bad policies that are ripping Europe apart, and with the officials who for whatever reason ? intellectual inflexibility, ideological blinders, or, I suspect, sheer personal vanity, an unwillingness to admit that they were wrong ? have refused to consider any modification of these policies despite years of disastrous results.”
So we should count ourselves lucky if we do manage to end up with a camel even. As to the desired horse… With that lot at the helm, you must be joking!