And here’s my new Telegraph Blogs piece, another one raking over the ‘solidarity’ issues of the #Eurozone:

Uber-Europhiles insist that the right answer to that is get rid of pesky national-level voting, and indeed pesky countries – only an EU-level polis makes sense once economic risk-management is transferred to the EU level. That is as ‘fair’ as can be.

It’s a plan. But what is its moral logic?

It assumes that people across the new political space have shared moral values and instincts to the point that they readily will take on reciprocal open-ended responsibility for each other. Diligent dumpling-zoners who work hard and pay their taxes will not mind too much if they subsidise olive-oilers who work less and are thought to fiddle the tax books.

That is a dangerous assumption. Even within happy families ‘solidarity’ has limits. Who wants to pay out time after time for a feckless sibling who never seems to sort herself out?

There is a case to be made for not dwelling overmuch on ‘fairness’. First, there’s never going to be agreement. Second, when the house is on fire it is silly to bicker too much about who is working hardest to put it out.

On the other hand, focusing on ‘what’s possible’ also may be a false friend, if being pragmatic and generous now fatally erodes capacity to be so in the future.

Germany, the Netherlands and the countries of central Europe are those who have to carry the financing risk. Not France, which has a serious debt problem. And if they close the tap, it will be bad. But if they open the tap too soon and too much it will be worse, because they will run out of water for the next fire.

As European leaders glumly argue to and fro at successive Summits, their minds are on what to say to the media hordes outside. They know they preside over something so complex that it may be unreformable. Their officials scramble in vain to draft good media lines for questions going to both pragmatism and fairness. That’s the only language ordinary voters understand – and want to hear.

One reason why these Summits are proclaimed to launch great new outcomes but splutter incoherently? I think that our leaders are now realising that they just don’t know what to do for the best. They long since ran out of good options, and are ending up with nothing but options of different degrees of awfulness.

And even then if they take the radical decisions urged on them by those who want either More Europe or Less Europe, what guarantee is there that it will make the slightest difference to the underlying reality?

If you think I’m gloomy, read Spengler:

Why should Germany thrive while Spain implodes? That’s like asking why Facebook is worth a lot and Myspace is worth nothing. It’s a winner-take-all world. Countries that do well have to do a few things extremely well. Germany makes the world’s best machine tools, some of the best heavy engineering equipment, not to mention autos. German manufacturing dominates innumerable key niches.

The Spanish don’t do anything well. They haven’t done anything well since the Spanish Empire outsourced its manufacturing to Flanders in the 16th century. Germany has a score of marquee manufacturing brands, as well as hundreds of lesser-known quality manufacturers, of which my favorite is Howaldtswerke, a ThyssenKrupp subsidiary that makes the Dolphin class submarines for Israel. Name one world-class Spanish manufacturing brand. There aren’t any.

 … Some of my conservative colleagues seem to think that if you sprinkle supply-side fairy dust on the Club Med economies they will roar back to growth. In fact, labor market reforms would work wonders in Italy, which has very low private debt, lots of public assets, and many pockets of strength. In general, though, these economies deserve the nasty wake-up call they are going to get.

The trouble with the southern Europeans is that they insist on combining familial amoralism with state dependency: everyone views the state as an enemy when it comes to paying taxes, but insists on handouts and protection from the state. In the case of Spain, you can’t get there from here, as the Maine farmer told the tourist. (Portugal is an exception. The stoic Portuguese work had and pay their taxes, which gives that small country a better shot than Spain.)

Spain should serve as Schreckensbeispiel (a horrible example) to Americans. If we do not give Americans the opportunity to realize their dreams, be the best in the world, hit the ball out of the park, go for the gold, we will fail as a nation. In a winner-take-all world the devil takes the hindmost. If we penalize the winners, we guarantee that all of us will fail…