>>The Euro is in trouble, no? I think it has sank more than 10% versus the
>>dollar since its creation. Some of the reasons for this sagging I've read in
>>the press are the "concessions" made to the Italians on budgetary matters
>>and the failure of the ECB to find a single voice.
>Those are as good reasons as any. Those, plus the economic weakness of the
>EU relative to the US.
>>I don't know about there
>>being no coincidence with the war and the Euro. I think its more about
>>"maintaining the credibility of NATO," even thought the U.S. military
>>doesn't seem to have its heart in this one.
>These aren't mutually exclusive reasons. The US no doubt sees a threat in
>the general project of European unification, despite the neonatal weakness
>of the currency. Perhaps scarier than the euro's rivalry to the US$ (ah,
>hegemony - the $ is an ASCII symbol and the ¤ isn't, nor is the ¥) is the
>potential for a European military capacity independent of NATO. As Gowan
>said:
>"A NATO 'victory' in this war could promote the Clinton administration's
>central objective in waging the war: the winning over of Western Europe's
>political systems to us leadership of the new, aggressive NATO. After all,
>the political elites of all the main parties of Western Europe now find
>themselves justifying, day-in and day-out the vital necessity and enormous
>human value of the new NATO: Western Europe is being won to the idea that
>attacking damaged sovereign states is legitimate; shattering their military
>forces, infrastructures and economies is permissible; ignoring the UN
>Charter and the checks built into the UN Security Council structure is
>unavoidable; marginalizing and excluding a currently weak Russia is
>necessary; humiliating and ignoring the interests of the largest nation in
>former Yugoslavia, the Serbs, is vital. And we Europeans could never have
>achieved all these things without the generous leadership of the United
>States."
>>And as far as U.S. imperialism,
>>Treasury Secretary Summers (bleck) and Greenspan are against dollarization
>>for Latin America.
>I think they don't want the implied liability of having to bail out a
>dollarized Latin American financial system.
>Doug