Spain Demands War Upon The Rest Of Europe

Karl Denninger / Market Ticker

This is a demand for economic warfare:

MADRID (Reuters) – The European Central Bank must take forceful and unlimited steps to buy sovereign debt to help Spain reduce its refinancing costs and eliminate doubts over the euro zone’s future, Spain’s economy minister said in comments published on Saturday.

“There can be no limit set or at least (the ECB) can’t say how much they will use or for how long,” when it buys bonds in the secondary markets, Luis de Guindos told Spanish news agency EFE.

So let’s dissect this and see what this statement means.

Were the ECB to do this then it would be a monetization of the government’s profligacy in Spain. But the cost would fall upon all European nations and their people.

This is theft of property at gunpoint by unelected, unapproved people (the ECB) at the direction of a government beyond the victims’ borders (Spain.) The Spanish could not complain as they have the right to vote out of office the Spanish ruling class involved.

But the rest of Europe does not have any such right. This would be, literally, the theft of their property (the value of their accumulated money denominated in Euros) at the point of a gun.

The people of Europe, other than in Spain, are thus as of today entirely justified in both moral and legal terms to rise and depose the leadership in Spain by any means necessary, and since they cannot vote in Spanish elections this leaves them only two options: Depart the Euro or invade Spain and depose its government by force.

Luis de Guindos may not understand the implications of what he said, but the people of Europe damn well ought to. He has declared economic war upon the rest of Europe and European nations are well-within their rights to respond either economically or kinetically as they, and only they, see fit.

No nation has the right to demand that the citizens of another nation bear the brunt of their debts, nor the cost of their social and other government spending programs. There is nothing different in fact or in theory between invading a nation and seizing its property and seizing its wealth through other, back-door means. Both are identical in their intentions and effects; the people who have no voice, who are not represented, who have no right to kick out the leadership that is acting contrary to their wishes are effectively enslaved.

It was exactly this sort of economic slavery that led to the American Revolution, and with just cause. The Founding Fathers were right — they were being enslaved economically by Britain far more than in any other form or fashion. They revolted, as was their right, and now we have The United States.

A currency union agreed upon on the premise that the central bank shall not buy the debt of any of the sovereigns, that joint and several liability for debts shall not be imposed and that governments shall not run deficits of material proportion is a binding contract upon the participating governments. Those who then seek to unilaterally violate that agreement must understand that enforcement is the right of each and every nation and person who is so-aggrieved, and that aggression of this sort is legitimately seen as an act of war.

Spain’s economic minster, in short, has declared war upon the entire European continent.

Whether that will prove to be wise I shall leave for historians to write about when the dust finally settles.

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