The dollar’s recent lower evaluation has nothing to do with “spending projects”, but rather rates of taxation, which were put into effect well before 9/11. So the domestic economy gets a boost not from the war but by the fact that the consumer has more money to spend, fueling the economy.

And the old adage that the war was all about the oil falls flat when one realizes that, since the war, the price of oil has gone up. The economic gains from the war are nil.

As to your trust in the euro… things look quite bleak indeed for the euro. There’s even talk that the monetary union might eventually break up, as more and more welfare states decide that they want to hold on to their states’ welfare policies, and look to fund that through control of their own currency.

No, the euro will never be a reserve currency of any substance, precisely because the European welfare state consumer doesn’t have that much money to spend after taxes. However, the Chinese yuan certainly does have that possibility, sometime in the future.

Oil; most important commodity; sold globally in dollars; needed by everybody –> petrodollar, everybodys dependance on dollars –> artificially high value of dollar –> possibility for the US to boost it’s domestic economy by increasing money supply by large governments spending projects (wars) without a fear of dramatic inflation.

We’ll see what happens to the euro but considering the deeply rooted problems of the dollar there’s a substantial incentive for everybody to seek for an alternative reserve currency that’s value is based on real economical fundaments unlike that of the dollar.

As to your attempt at suggesting the US military is using force to control the value of the dollar, please, go back to school and study some economics. Your ignorance is thundering.

Reserve currencies idea is to be a good store of value. For that purpose Euro has a much better recored than dollar. For a very long time already dollar has been in a continuous slide if you look at the trend line. Dollar is a negative investment and doesn’t serve the function of a reserve currency. For USA the only way of “controlling its currencys value” is by using force to keep dollar as THE currency of commodity markets. That’s what the US military is for and the Americans pay more and more for this control. However, that doesn’t seem to be enough. U.S. consumers and the federal government are borrowing and spending more than they produce. Dollars inevitable slide is going to be healthy but painful.

We live in interesting times. And y’all thought the dollar was going to be worthless paper…

This is, after all, the man who claimed that Waterloo was actually a victory for Napoleon.

I think now some of the areas which can be salvaged like consulting with national parliaments and interpreting the symbols ( the 12-star flag, Ode to Joy anthem, the Unity in Diversity (In varietate concordia) motto) etc…

It is also too soon to be writing a constitution when the economic foundation of the EU has not solidified. And that is proving to be a much bigger challenge, given stagnant growth rates which don’t show any sign of abating, and welfare state resistance to the necessary cures.

The whole project is still irrelevant to the US, as Europe with or without a constitution shows no signs of even wanting to give up its freerider status.

http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=A1esXWD27Wvb

It’s a long article but the ten points should be there. Klaus is a diehard opponent of the welfare state who got elected President thanks to the votes of hardline Communists. Both factions are obviously united by a wish to stop the EU and soon. As the Czech government disagrees with him on almost everything, there is a bitter dispute all the time about who has the right to utter the official Czech point of view.

The problem is that even if there are people like Thatcher and Klaus in Europe who may share Phil’s opposition to the welfare state, their main reason to oppose the EU is not an economic one. Klaus is above all a nationalist. The Conservatives like him (a minority of European Conservatives) oppose the EU because they love the centralized nation state. So I’m still wondering if there’s any notable politician in Europe who would agree with Phil on what the right reasons to oppose the constitution would be. There are plenty of right-wing people with right-wing reasons but these have only one part in common with Phil’s libertarianism.

I don’t think the NON vote is irrelevant to the Bush Administration. They have been trying to help Turkey’s bid to join the EU, which hasn’t exactly increased Turkey’s popularity in France and Germany. In that project, the Republican administration has had great allies in Tony Blair and Gerhard Schr?¶der. Even if the NON vote wasn’t about Turkey, it is more convenient for everyone to interpret that the problem was Turkey rather than France itself. If I’ve interpreted Olli Rehn’s comments right (and he should know what impact the French vote has on Turkey), exactly because of the French vote EU will be taking a harder line on Turkey.

Whereas I support Turkey’s EU bid, I have nothing against the same criteria being applied to them as to everyone else. What I’m worried about is that Turkey will pay the price for France’s internal problems. According to a poll, about 20% of those who voted on Sunday actually felt that they voted on the constitution. A far larger group felt that the vote was about French domestic politics. We all pay the price for the French NON in the end. The Dutch will be happy because they would have voted NEE anyway; now they are not the founding member who shot EU in the foot first.