On Its Way: The United Europe of Germany

The banksters will cheer this and are, in fact, behind it, with the long shadow of the US doing the backstage directing. NYT explains:

{German Chancellor] Merkel is in nearly daily contact with Obama administration officials who hope she will master the crisis — or, at the very least, win tacit approval for the European Central Bank to step in more forcefully — even though she deflects their demands for more aggressive action.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner flew to Germany on Tuesday, meeting first in Frankfurt with the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and the president of the Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann. He then spent an hour with Wolfgang Schäuble, his German counterpart, at the Finance Ministry in Berlin. Mr. Geithner said he was “very encouraged by the developments in Europe in the past few weeks.”

But Merkel is the front person:

To American officials, Mrs. Merkel, 57, seems at times shockingly aloof about market turmoil. But as European leaders prepare for crucial meetings this week in Brussels, what may have seemed like timid or even bumbling leadership is looking more like a consistent strategy of brinkmanship aimed at remaking the euro zone in Germany’s likeness...

The treaty changes she and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France proposed in Paris on Monday would have been inconceivable at the beginning of the crisis, since it requires states to cede a significant degree of economic sovereignty. It is a process that many observers, in particular the populist British press, say is well underway. German dominance of the euro zone, they say — with Mrs. Merkel as the unofficial but unchallenged leader of Europe — has in fact already arrived.

Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation as Italy’s prime minister was interpreted as an omen for Europe’s German-directed future. And confidential draft proposals of Ireland’s December budget were found to have circulated among lawmakers in Berlin last month before opposition lawmakers in Dublin saw them.