Euro-Skepticism was Thatcher’s Most Relevant Legacy; Had Europe Only Listened

Margaret Thatcher, former UK prime minister died on Monday. "Euro-skepticism was Thatcher’s most relevant Legacy" says MarketWatch in its report If Europe had only listened to Thatcher’s warning.

Thatcher’s basic take on a tight European federation was that it was unnecessary, unworkable, and dangerous. The nation state, she insisted, should remain at the heart of the international system, and a federated Europe would threaten its sway.

Moreover, Thatcher had misgivings about the Continent as a source of moral inspiration. “During my lifetime,” she reminisced, “most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one form or another, from mainland Europe, and the solutions — from outside it.”

That insight alone is priceless, but it still pales compared with what she wrote more than a decade ago, when the euro was still a toddler, and the economies of Greece, Spain and Cyprus seemed as distant from calamity as they now are from salvation. “The European single currency,” wrote Thatcher in 2002, “is bound to fail — economically, politically, and indeed socially.”

Thatcher’s reasoning for this was not ideological. It was monetarist. There can be no such thing as a united currency without a united budget, she argued, at a time when it was impolite to suggest that the euro’s newlyweds would soon accuse each other of theft, deceit, laziness, imperialism and oppression.

Economics of a Housewife vs. Career Socialist Politician

“I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife,” said Jacques Chirac, a future French president in 1987. He should have. Look at France now.

Margaret Thatcher's Last Shot at the Socialists



I have linked to the above video before, and it's certainly worth a replay now.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com