IS THE POLITICAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE EUROPEAN ELITES NEARING ITS END? Euro twilight

Just a few days after the ides of March, the barbarians have crossed the Rubicon into Aphrodite's island. While two thousand years ago, they were welcomed with open arms opened by the citizens on the outskirts of a Roman Empire which was sinking under the burden of debts and currency debasement, the modern-day barbarians come precisely from the "rotten heart" of Europe.

"For a small and open economy such as Cyprus, adopting the Euro offers protection against the international financial crisis", Jean-Claude Trichet was saying in 2008, when Cyprus entered the Eurozone.

Did Trichet really not know the terms under which the Euro was forced upon Europe? That the Euro was an exclusively political project, with minimal ties to the economic reality of the continent?

A few days ago, the British press reproduced excerpts from an interview granted by Helmut Kohl in 2002. "If a Chancellor tries to impose his point of view, he must be strong. And if he is smart, he knows when the time is right. In only one case - that of the Euro - I acted like a dictator", Kohl was saying, according to an article in The Telegraph.

"I knew that we could never win a referendum in Germany. We would have lost the referendum for the adoption of the Euro by a margin of seven to three", the former chancellor told Jens Peter Paul, the German journalist quoted by the British newspaper.

Unfortunately, the statements of Kohl made one decade ago were given little attention in the European press. Why is that? Is it because now, when the economic legitimacy of the European currency proves to be an illusion, we find out that the Euro does not even have a shred of political legitimacy?

Jim Sinclair, a legendary trader on the international markets for precious metals, wrote on his blog that the handling of the situation in Cyprus represents a disaster for the IMF, as president Putin has responded "like a great chess master who destroys their opponent".

Sinclair also said for King World News that "the IMF disaster of Cyprus is comparable to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which started the first World War", because "the historical mistake of Mrs. Lagarde and the IMF threatens to undermine all of Bernanke's work". "The concept that our financial leaders are visionaries that can see the future and calculate every move based on their ability to correctly estimate the results of their actions is absolutely false", Sinclair said.

It would seem however, that there are "leaders" who do know how to read the tea leaves. According to information from Zerohedge, the robbing of the deposits from the Cypriot banks was postponed until the French and German banks liquidated their interbank deposits. The algorithm was easy: the cheap money from the ECB was sent to the Cypriot banks to yield returns of over 4%, as the opportunities for lending on their domestic markets are almost non-existent. And the amounts were in the range of tens of billions of Euros. Obviously, they couldn't allow those deposits to be "adjusted" like the ones of the Cypriot customers.

After the interest carrying interbank deposits reached maturity, the signal for the confiscation was given, just as a recent report showed that the citizens of Cyprus are richer than those of Germany.

Panicos Demetriades was appointed governor of the Bank of Cyprus in May 2012. They couldn't have found a better name, given what was going to happen in Cyprus. I smiled when I read about his appointment, but then I realized that "Panicos" isn't an isolated case, you can find one in every central bank in Europe.

Mario Draghi tried to downplay the importance of the robbery in Cyprus at the last conference of the ECB. "Cyprus is not a framework for action", he said before the journalists and it does not represent "an inflection point". Of course, Draghi was contradicted by the actions and the statements of the ministers of Finance in the Eurozone, who said that they are even considering the taxation of deposits with a maturity of up to 1 month.

The breakup of the Eurozone was considered by the president of the ECB "a theoretical situation for which I have no answer", following a question by Scott Solano of German press agency DPA. "Those who underestimate what the Euro means for the Europeans underestimate the political capital invested in the Euro", Mario Draghi also said.

It remains to be seen how useful the political capital will be for the recapitalization of the continental banking system. Did Draghi see the statement of Kohl, which shows that at best, the political capital in amounts to zero?

In mid 20th century, there was a man who thought he has the "calling" to lay the foundation of the 1000 year Reich. Hubris has made the current European leaders to state repeatedly that the Euro is forever. I wonder how many concentration camps it will take for the end of the European Union to come?