German Finance Ministry, Berlin. Photo Adam Carr. I had been hyperventilating and wound up too lazy to get mine out of the archives.
This may be the most exciting time to be an alarmist in recent human history.
You have to qualify that statement a bit, and I defer to my pal Mac on that. By that I mean that Raven and Big Mama can no longer talk about what it was like to be young and living lives with the backdrop of Second World War in the background, and the certain knowledge that there were a bunch of clever people actually out to kill them.
Mac remembers that on a personal level, and a time when the whole vast enterprise was very much in doubt.
As of this morning, it appears that it is finally over. Most of the sovereign nations of the European Union have surrendered to Germany.
Yesterday, that astonishing event only made the top five things I was worried about, and if I had slowed down long enough to do a David Letterman Top Ten list, it would have been easy.
10. Jon-no-H Corzine, former governor of New Jersey, and Chair of Goldman Sachs.
9. The COP-17 Indaba Climate Conference in Durban.
8. Exploding Chevy Volts.
7. Unification of Europe on German terms.
6. The illegal transfer of weapons by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to the Mexican Drug Cartels
5. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s laundering of the Cartel profits over a quarter century.
4. What the President meant by making that stirring speech in Osawatomie, that oddly-named town in Kansas.
3. Iran. But that needs another top ten list of its own.
2. The Economy and the risk of another collapse.
And in first place (snare drum!):
1. The cat.
You can see why I had to take a break. I was hyperventilating, typing frantically with key points about everything.
Corzine made $400 million in personal profit when Goldman Sachs went public! I was sweating profusely at that point and needed Spanish-style punctuation to insert at the beginning of each sentence- upside down exclamation and question marks!!!
Hola! The President went to Osawatomie partly because Teddy Roosevelt spoke there! But TR only went because that is where Abolitionist John Brown fought two battles in Bleeding Kansas!
Carumba! have you seen what is on the table in Durban? Global government!!!
Manuscript of Kerouac’s On the Road. Wikipedia Commons.
I felt more than a little like Jack Kerouac, amphetamine-amped and typing the manuscript for “On the Road” on a single roll of paper, fed through his Underwood typewriter. He produced the continuous scroll by taping pages of semi-translucent paper together to feed the typewriter and write without interruption. I ran out of interruptions after only about six pages and I had a soggy mass of a tale, by turns alarmist, depressed, astonished and appalled.
I needed an intervention. I called a pal, who told me to hit “save,” take a deep cleansing breath, and go on about the day. “Take a look at it tomorrow,” she said. “Things always look better in the morning.”
Good counsel. I went to the office and let Friday roll over me. I had a few glasses of wine with Old Jim at The Front Page at happy hour. Willow was closed for a private party, and that was enough of a dislocation to the space-time continuum to put me out early.
When I rose, I found I could breathe normally. The matter of the cat was resolved, though it came with an abrupt and significant chill across the miles. Damn.
Then, I picked up my morning mail and saw that Germany had won without firing a shot.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has argued that the solution to the euro crisis is not a series of short-term bailouts but a long-term overhaul of the rules that govern European integration.
She used the market turmoil as a blunt instrument to force the free-spending southern tier of Europe to adjust to their new impecuniosity by surrendering the authority of their central banks to the de facto master of Europe: The Deutsche Bundesbank.
Due to its strength and size, the Bundesbank- or “Buba” is the big brother to the European Central Bank, conveniently located in Frankfurt am Main.
That is a legacy of the Cold War, of course, when Frankfurt was in the American Zone of Occupation and later the FDR. But Buba answers to the Ministry of Finance is in Berlin, who in turn reports to the Chancellor, who is determined to reduce spending and commence a firm regimen of austerity.
You have to know how desperate the times must be for the proud nation-sates to surrender their budget authority to the Germans, who as they used to say, are either at your feet or at your throat.
I have only been to Berlin once, but I highly recommend it. I was visiting an associate, and during a blitz-schnell tour of the city, I requested a drive-by of the Finance Ministry.
It is a curious place for the leadership of the new European Order. Designed by Ernst Sagebiel, the monolithic building was erected during Hitler’s zenith, 1935-36. Most of the capital was rubble by the time the Allied Air Forces and the Red Army were done with it. The Goddess of Battle saw fit to leave Hermann Goering’s Air Ministry building almost completely intact.
Like the Dai Ichi Insurance Company in Tokyo, its survival made it a natural for the follow-on government of that zone of occupation. In 1945 it was in the Soviet Zone, and was quickly repaired. Only the Ehrensaal (Hall of Honor) was subject to alteration, transformed into the Stalinist neo-classicist Festsaal (Festival Hall), and the enormous Eagle and Swastika that dominated its end wall was removed and trashed.
Once the work was complete, the building was used by the Soviet military administration until 1948, and from 1947-49 by the German Economic Commission.
In 1950-52 an extraordinary 16-yard-long long mural was created at the north end of the building along Leipziger Straße. Created by the German painter and commercial artist Max Lingner, it depicts the Socialist ideal of contented East Germans facing a bright future as one big happy family.
Max had to revise the design five times along the way to a proper Socialist-realist design, and by the time it was done, he hated it.
Shortly thereafter, in 1953, it was the scene of an attempted revolt against the new puppet East German government. That didn’t work out so well, as you can see that in the form of the former STASI HQ not far away.
After re-unification, and the return of the central German government from Bonn to Berlin, the building became home for the Ministry of Finance.
So here we are this morning. Europe is unified in a way that we could not have imagined in 1992 when the Treaty of Maastricht was signed. The Continent reports to the Air Ministry.
Take a deep cleansing breath. Germany won.
A detail from the Max Lingner mural of Socialism triumphant. Photo Wikipedia.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com