Europe Doesn't Need The Euro: Thilo Sarrazin

[Franken]

Ex-Banker: German Euro Rescue is Holocaust Guilt




Thilo Sarrazin

Ex-federal banker turned controversy merchant Thilo Sarrazin has attracted fresh outrage with a book claiming Germany’s European policy is driven by guilt for World War II and the Holocaust.

Sarrazin appeared on a state TV talk show on Sunday evening to defend his thesis against former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, who overcame his usual reserve and described Sarrazin’s ideas as “bullshit.”

In his new book “Europe Doesn’t Need the Euro” Sarrazin says Germany’s efforts to rescue the euro were “driven by the very German reflex that the Holocaust and World War II will only be finally atoned for when all our other interests, including our money, is in Europe’s hands.”

Both Steinbrück and Sarrazin are members of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and both have experience of administering state finances — Steinbrück was German finance minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2009, while Sarrazin was finance minister for the state of Berlin from 2002 to 2009, before joining the board of the German Federal Bank.

He was forced to leave this last post in 2010, after publishing the provocative book “Germany Does Away With
Itself” ( Deutschland schafft sich ab), in which he blamed Germany’s immigrant community for the country’s economic and social problems.

Sarrazin describes his new book as an answer to Merkel’s statement, “If the euro fails, then Europe fails,” and said Germany’s export-driven economy did not need the euro.

[Mike]

My spin on it is that Germany wants the Euro not to atone - although that may be in the forefront of perception - but to recreate a lost but hoped for glory - a German led united Europe. In my view the British establishment is doing the same sort recreating the Empire in miniature in Britain.

It's all Freud's law of the return of the repressed in my view. Ambition has been repressed but returns in a distorted form.