Gold Magazine January - February 2014, Issue 34 | Page 64

OPINION

All Aboard the Titanic
For the eurozone to have any hope of a viable
economic future, its currency needs to hurtle
towards parity with the dollar.

S

he has been re-elected when all
others of her political classes of
2000 (when she became leader of
her party) and 2005 (when she was
elected Chancellor) have long been
sent packing. She has stamped
her authority, not only on her own people, but
on an entire continent, doing so in a way few, if
any, have ever done without recourse to military
might. And her career will end just as theirs did:
in failure. She is Angela Merkel and she has gone
way beyond her limits to consign the eurozone to
a future resembling Japan’s lost decades.
At some point, historians will reflect on the
economic management of the early decades of the
21st century. When they do, their challenge will
be to decide where it was performed at its worst;
in Washington, Tokyo or Frankfurt? In the case
of the first two capitals, responsibility – or rather
irresponsibility – will be seen as collective. In the
case of the third it will be very much identified by
one person and that person is Frau Merkel. And
yet, despite her negligent hand being on the tiller,
there is a queue to join not only the EU but the
eurozone too.
This month, Latvia has become the eurozone’s
eighteenth member, joining three years after its
near neighbour Estonia. And as was the thinking
in Tallinn, the authorities in Riga believe their
economy is safer in the eurozone than outside it.
Let me make my view perfectly clear: joining the
‘safe’ eurozone is much like boarding the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic, for its population of over one-third
of a billion is sinking into deflation, depopulation
and de-industrialisation, each feeding the other
two. Q