This week, it’s a double header of audio essays on Europe’s elite power-plays.
One From Andrew Collingwood - on the Atlanticists and the Autonomists taking their battle for supremacy into the new EU administration.
And another from Philip Pilkington setting out how a new kind of Trussification may be coming for the states within the ECB…
Is Le Pen mightier than La Banque?
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[Music] We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations. A nil world order. [Music] This week on Multi-Polarity it's a double header of audio essays. One from Andrew Collingwood, on the Atlantis and Autonomous taking their battle for supremacy into the new EU administration. And another from Philip Pilkington, setting out how a new kind of trussification may be coming for the states within the European Central Bank. Is Le Pen mightier than Le Bonque? It's premium week so if you're not already a subscriber, head over to Patreon where for £5 euros or dollars a month you can get all our previous premium content as well as this week's app. Cancel anytime. [Music] So we've been discussing on the podcast quite a bit before about the potential of this trussification of politics. We've discussed it mainly with respect to the United States. We've highlighted some news headlines that seem to suggest that the US may suddenly become vulnerable to a truss style crisis which might hem in or discredit an incoming Trump presidency. I think we were engaged in realistic speculation at the time, but it was speculation, it was just kind of interesting that these headlines had bubbled up at a time when Biden is still president and they were effectively saying that the United States was kind of broke. So I think it was a reasonable speculation, but what happened now in the past week or so has really torn the mask off in a way. So as listeners probably know, there's a French election coming up shortly. The reason it's been called is because the Emmanuel Macron's party ran a song, so it's been renamed to "Lost" very heavily in the recent European elections. And they lost to Marine Le Pen's "Rasamblemont Nationale", so Chrome made what many think now is a very poor choice to call an election, but the election's been called. It's created complete panic in Parisian elite circles, we've again covered this on the show. But what's happening now is very interesting because we're getting Liz Truss talk all over again, we're being told that the French economy is broke effectively. We're getting headlines like why France's far right is spooking markets. Crowns finance minister La Mer, I think his name is, said that France quote, "could experience the same dire consequences to follow the spending plan presented two years ago by then UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, which resulted in her almost immediate downfall." I kind of imagine him saying that latter part with some excitement. It's nominally targeted at the fact that "Rasamblemont Nationale's" program is very spending heavy, they're kind of a left-right sort of thing where they spend big on social programs and then they're very stern on crime and immigration and so on. But it's hard not to see something else going on here, especially given the fact that the French markets reacted effectively. The credit to full swaps blew out big prediction of a higher level, higher ready default and so on. The ECB said basically we're sitting in our hands for this. So it is kind of looking like the trust thing has moved to Europe. Now the interesting thing about the trust thing moving to Europe is that Europe is much better set up for the trust thing. And the reason for that is because countries that are in the Euro don't have independent central banks, if you're France or Germany or Italy, you don't issue your own currency. The central bank issues the currency, that's the ECB. And that also means that if the central bank wants to intervene to stabilize the debt market, it's doing it from the ECB. The ECB has to make that decision, technocrats within the ECB have to make that decision. And the rules are sufficiently unclear that they can basically make that decision arbitrarily. That's different from, for example, in the UK or the US, where the central bank will go into this more in a moment what it means. But the central bank is nominally in control and it's within the country, it's within the remit of the country. So in theory, maybe not in practice, but in theory, if a central bank decides not to stabilize debt markets, the government could fire the board of the central bank and get in a new board in theory. Now, that may not be possible in practice. So the ECB is very well set up to do the trust thing. And arguably, it's done something like it before. If it does so, the consequences for Europe itself and for the structure of the EU and the Eurozone and everything is just really up in the air at that point. But I guess where we'd start with this is just to realize that... What should we realize? How will Christine the Guard cook the Rasamblemont National Goose? How dangerous is it when monetary wonks start to tug at the jessus of real political power? All these answers are on the other side of the velvet rope. And they could be yours for five pounds, euros or dollars a month. Patreon.com/multiplearity. And now, on with the show. Starting to become politicized. And once stuff starts to become politicized, it starts to get very unpredictable. You don't know what happens next. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
