To Really Save the Euro, Europe Needs to Take an Ax to Its Tangle of Red Tape
Phase One of the save-the-euro campaign is completed. After a lot of huffing and puffing, the euro-zone countries, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank have cobbled together a bailout that might see Greece and other members of Club Med through this year and part of next. You might term this a success—if you don’t count the facts that it might threaten German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political career, that the ECB has lost its reputation for political independence and that the bailout has reduced the penalty for improvident bank lending.
Phase Two is under way. Its creators have always yearned for central control of the fiscal policies of euro-zone members, and are on a path to getting it. No longer will Brussels and the richer North turn a blind eye to the spending and shenanigans of the
