Does the European Commission want Germany to leave the euro?

A euro without Germany will be no euro at all

Almost every scheme anyone seems to devise for "saving" the euro appears calculated to make it more likely that Germany will leave, destroying the euro and the European Union in the process and inducing a recession unprecedented in modern Western democracies.  The latest silliness has emanated from the European Commission – until recently, throughout this crisis, one of the few bastions of near-sanity in a world gone mad.  Once one looks in detail at the Commission's proposals, they are not as crazy as the headlines, but why create headlines about Eurobonds and a €2 trillion leveraged EFSF anyway?  At best these are wacky blue-sky long-term concepts, chucked around for the intellectual delight of their creators.  At worst they can only invite the speculation that the European Commission actually wants the Germans to leave!

How much clearer do the Germans have to be that there isn't going to be debt pooling, that that would not be available as a "solution" to the euro crisis even were it in fact a solution (which it wouldn't be)?  How many times has Merkel now said she won't agree to debt pooling?  The great and the good of the German financial establishment have condemned it as an idea.  The German president has condemned it.  The German constitutional court has declared that debt pooling would violate the constitution.  ARE YOU GETTING THE HINT YET?

Many people seem to imagine that, in the end, the Germans will indeed agree to debt pooling, as if, when they say "we won't", they actually mean "we will"!  One of the greatest television programmes of all time was Jon Ronson's amazing 2001 Channel 4 documentary, "The Secret Rulers of the World: David Icke, The Lizards and The Jews".  The show follows conspiracy theorist (and former notable sports journalist and one-time favourite for the Green Party leadership) David Icke.  Icke is well-known for spicing up the classic Illuminati-type grand conspiracy worldview with the idea that the world's leading elite (the "Babylonian Brotherhood") are, in fact, reptilians from the constellation Draco.  In one of many wonderfully colourful scenes in the show, David Icke clarifies that when he is talking about lizards, he is not using some metaphor to refer to the Jews.  He turns to the camera and states "This is not a Jewish plot."  The journalist then says to David Icke: "“When you say ‘This is not a Jewish plot,’ some people think that’s a metaphor for you saying ‘It is a Jewish plot.’”"

Listen: when the Germans say "We are not going to agree to debt pooling", that is not a metaphorical way of saying "We are going to agree to debt pooling."

Given that the German position couldn't be clearer, any proposal to save the euro via debt pooling can only be a proposal for a euro that doesn't include Germany.  And a euro that doesn't include Germany is no euro at all.  If that is what the world's authorities are hoping to achieve, then they are going about it in precisely the right way.