Is This the End of 'One Europe'?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

How Europe's crisis resolves itself as yet remains unknown.

But with Sunday's returns from France and Greece, the mega-trends on the Old Continent are unmistakable. And for the European Union, they are ominous.

Nationalism -- be it economic nationalism or ethnic nationalism -- is ascendant. Transnationalism and multiculturalism are in headlong if not irreversible retreat. The European project is itself imperiled.

Europe's Crisis: Beyond Finance

From Stratfor

By George Friedman

Everyone is wondering about the next disaster to befall Europe. Italy is one focus; Spain is also a possibility. But these crises are already under way. Instead, the next crisis will be political, not in the sense of what conventional politician is going to become prime minister, but in the deeper sense of whether Europe’s political elite can retain power, or whether new political forces are going to emerge that will completely reshape the European political landscape. If this happens, it will be by far the most important consequence of the European financial crisis.

Crisis Deepens; Chaos Grips Greece

Demonstrators smashed shop windows, overturned
garbage bins and set fire to at least two businesses.

From The Wall Street Journal
By Sebastian Moffett and Alkman Granitsas

Greece's fiscal crisis took a new turn to violence Wednesday when three people died in a firebomb attack amid a paralyzing national strike, while governments from Spain to the U.S. took steps to prevent the widening financial damage from hitting their own economies.

U.S. Treasury officials have been quietly urging their European and International Monetary Fund counterparts to put together a Greek rescue plan more quickly to contain the damage, it emerged Wednesday, as U.S. policy makers worry the continent's problems could undermine a U.S. recovery much as U.S. housing woes hammered Europe in 2008.

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