Attn Deutsche: Mr. Frog’s Giant Robot Ruins the Volke Family Vacation

[Oneiromancer]

Yesterday I awoke from another dream about the European debt crisis that is about to trigger a global run on the banks, resulting in a second Great Depression that begins next year. The theme of this dream is specifically about Germany and France, and their current frantic attempts to save the faltering European Union. The first post of this thread will describe my dream, and the second post will interpret it. __________________ I find myself within the scenic setting of a beautiful mountain chalet on the Swiss Alps. I have a small room there, while the remainder of this chalet is shared by a couple and their kindergarten-age children. This robust-looking family is on vacation, and they are all happily playing in the front yard of the chalet. Although no words are spoken in my dream, I sense that this family is from Germany, so I will call them the ‘Volke family.’ Nearby is another chalet, occupied by a lone thin man who wears a black mustache and black clothes. He is out in his front yard, tinkering on a powerful 8-foot-tall silver robot. I sense that this man is from France, so I will call him ‘Mr. Frog.’ I pay Mr. Frog a visit to inquire about his immense and formidable invention. Mr. Frog proudly offers to demonstrate the awesome abilities of his automaton. He silently leads me, with his mechanical man closely following us, up a slope to the mountaintop, much of which is covered by a thick glacier. The sides of this glacier are very steep, so that it poses an inherent risk of avalanche. Upon Mr. Frog’s command, the giant robot extends an immense cane that repeatedly taps upon the mountaintop. It does this in order to shake off any loose snow, and thereby reduce avalanche risk. But instead of its expected result, the entire glacier is dislodged and rapidly slides down the mountainside, causing widespread devastation. To Mr. Frog’s horror, his invention has just caused the avalanche that it was intended to prevent. He realizes that gendarmes will soon arrive to investigate this unparalleled man-made disaster. We rush back to his chalet, where he dismantles his wayward robot. In order to eliminate the evidence, Mr. Frog stretches his mouth impossibly wide and consumes the pieces of his invention. Somehow he manages to swallow all of it; regurgitating only a couple of pieces of stamped plastic that are slimed with traces of his vomit. Repulsed by all this, I leave Mr. Frog’s chalet and return to my own. It appears that Mrs. Volke and her children have fled for their lives, and are nowhere to be seen. I enter my chalet room and am surprised to find Mr. Volke there. He has fallen ill and was too sick to accompany his family, so he took to bed and is now unconscious and inert. Apparently Mr. Volke can no longer afford the better part of this chalet, so the big enfeebled man has laid himself down uncomfortably on my smaller bed in the cheaper room that I had occupied. [end of dream]

[Oneiromancer]

The Swiss Alps and its vacation chalets represent the pinnacle of European prosperity. The Volke family represents the German people and their future generations. Mr. Frog represents France, and his giant robot represents the European Union (EU) - or more specifically, the Economic Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) that is meant to save the EU from the threat of financially disruptive European sovereign debt defaults. The glacier avalanche represents a run on European banks that will be triggered by the sovereign defaults of weaker EU members (i.e.; an avalanche of debt onto the European landscape). Presently German Chancellor Merkel is under enormous pressure from French President Sarkozy and the bulk of EU eurocrats, who desperately need Germany to accept their plan for leveraging up existing funds in the EFSF. If the EFSF is not increased from its current 440 billion euros to at least 2 or 3 trillion euros, it will fail to provide a financial firewall for the teetering too-big-to-bail economies of Italy and Spain. Only countries with AAA credit rating can contribute funds to the EFSF, thus giving it AAA credibility to reassure panicking financial markets. But leveraging up the EFSF will cause France to lose its AAA status, so that the only major country retaining its AAA rating and able to contribute yet more money to the EFSF will be Germany. This leaves German taxpayers on the hook, with potential responsibility not just for the hundreds of billions of euros it has already contributed to the EFSF, but for the funds entire leveraged amount, which will be measured in trillions of euros. Germany has no legal (or even moral) obligation to pay for the financial mistakes of its neighbors. Germany can simply exit the monetary union and exchange its euros for deutschmarks, which it is hastily printing up now for ‘contingency’ purposes. The German High Court, fearing that Merkel might bend under pressure, has taken matters out of her hands, and recently transferred the decision of additional funding for the EFSF - including leveraging - to their parliament, the Bundestag (which directly represents the German people). Many eurocrats are willing to do anything to save their precious EU dream, and may even resort to bribing or threatening German officials in order to persuade or coerce them to act against the financial interests of the German people. Thus, Sarkozy and others are pressing the German High Court to reverse its decision handing veto power to the Bundestag. If that fails, they will urge the Bundestag to yield its veto power to a ‘financial committee’ of just nine parliament members, ostensibly for quick action in response to a rapidly escalating European bank crisis. The real reason, of course, is that these eurocrats can more easily and affordably ‘influence’ a few members than it can the entire Bundestag. My dream tells me that Sarkozy and the rest of the EU will succeed in thwarting the will of the German people, who would otherwise never sanction paying out trillions of euros just to keep the EU dream alive. Any EFSF ‘rescue loans’ to weaker EU members that subsequently default on their sovereign debt will become permanent gifts of German taxpayer money to Germany’s EU competitors. When Italy and Spain and even France eventually declare default, their sovereign debts will be forgiven (i.e.; transferred to Germany), but Germany’s own sovereign debt will skyrocket, condemning the German people to generations of deep financial depression. Deutsche Volke - you have now been forewarned.