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weaken the economic power of the continent.
     
    Only Europe’s bureaucracy and political elites will be the beneficiaries of the ‘United States of Europe’ including a central government in Bruxelles. To err is human. Governments make mistakes. The more power they have and the more far-reaching their decisions are, the more far-reaching are the consequences of their mistakes. Prof. Dr. Erich Weede, professor emeritus of the University of Bonn, points out this aspect. The entire European continent has to suffer from mistakes the central power in Bruxelles makes. For this reason we should resist any further centralization of power in Bruxelles. There is a great danger that the centralized power in Bruxelles will develop the same way as the central government in Washington and that Europe also degenerates into a plutocracy.
     
    Already in 1970s with the “Snake in the tunnel” and the “European Monetary System” (EMS) some European states tried to coordinate their currencies and monetary policy. Already at that time the currency-exchange rates could not be stabilized within the exchange rate mechanism in the desired way. The economic performance of the countries and their political orientation were too different. The failure of these experiments was not surprising. It would have been enough to take a look into history. “Seen from a historical perspective, politically stabilized currency-exchange rates have rarely been of long lasting nature,” writes Werner Plumpe, professor of economic and social history at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main. 3
     
    Nevertheless, Europe’s political elites decided to introduce the common currency euro as book money on January 1,1999, and as cash money on January 1, 2002 – from today’s perspective the first decisive step on the way towards a centralized European central state. The majority of Germans, who would have preferred to keep the D-Mark, were sceptical. They were afraid the common currency would not be as stable as the D-Mark, although the D-Mark since it’s introduction in 1948 already had lost some 90 per cent of its purchasing power. On February 7, 1992, the “Treaty on European Union” (Maastricht Treaty) was signed into law. It determined the “convergence criteria” (Maastricht criteria) 4 that were bound to commit all members of the eurozone to a track of stability. However, no mechanism was created to sanction violations of the agreements without any ifs and buts. The wool was pulled over the eyes of the citizens.
     
    “Maximum limits both for the annually new indebtedness and the debt level of public households have been agreed on. Should they be exceeded the union mandatorily can recommend reductions and, under circumstances, enforce them with fines. This ensures a sound fiscal policy also after the entry into the currency union.“ So they said in the brochure, “The euro – as strong as the mark,” which was published by the Federal Ministry of Finance in April 1996. “Also after the onset of the currency union care is taken to ensure that no member will leave the path of virtue and stability.“ Today, many paragraphs of this brochure sound like derision: “Regarding the convergence criteria the treaty must be strictly observed; a maceration will not occur.“
     
    The contract was breached – also by the German red-green federal government. Likewise, the purchase of government bonds by the European Central Bank (ECB) in the spring of 2010 was clearly a breach of law. In this context, one notion George Soros expressed in the Financial Times on Juliy 13, 2011, is interesting. The architects of the euro “laboured under the misconception that financial markets can correct their own excesses, so the rules were designed to rein in only public-sector excesses. Even there, they relied too heavily on self-policing by sovereign states.“
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    1 Siehe ‚Das fatale Einheitsdenken in der EU. Lehren aus Selbsttäuschungen und Fehlschlägen’,