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 presid
