Currency is one expression of a free republic, so I anticipate that each nation will want to distinguish its currency just as it does its flag. Then, as long as their currencies are freely traded on the global currency markets, the dynamic valuations that result from this exchange will stand-in for a single, contrived currency.

This will be a hard pill for the continent’s socialists and technocrats to swallow because it takes the mechanism of valuation out of their polished hands. But it will strenghen the economy of the region by eliminating the E.U.’s valuation-perverting regulations, like unenforced deficit-spending constraints, that have been forced on its component nations, and by generating real political commity on the continent that is underpinned by actual markets and locally accountable government.

This is a trying time for Europe’s social-ist elites! I’m enjoying watching them flop around like minnows on a beach.
-Steve

PRESIDENT CHIRAC of France is preparing to throw Europe into confusion and put Britain on the spot by backing moves to keep the European constitution alive if it is rejected in Sunday’s referendum.

French diplomats say that M Chirac is expected to urge other countries to proceed with ratification because France does not want to be seen to be blocking the European project. Any attempt to persuade other countries to go ahead will dash the hopes of those in the British Government who believed that a French rejection would make a British referendum unnecessary.

The most colourful story in what was a busy weekend for EU news was a report that France’s floundering yes campaign is hoping that the votes of jungle tribesmen in south America will push support for the constitution over the crucial fifty percent mark.

A hang**over from its days as a colonial power, France has dominions (DOM-TOMs) dotted around the globe. Citizens of these dominions are accorded full voting status in referenda – and president Chirac is hoping that these 1.4 million votes will tip the balance in the very tight “home” referendum.

French Guyana’s Wayampi Indians make peculiar Frenchmen, but French they are. The women often give birth at ten and are grandparents in their twenties (actually, they sound more like English girls). They wear red loincloths and, rather than striking and grumbling, list hunting and gathering as their favoured pastimes.

However, like their counterparts in mainland France, they and their fellow DOM TOM Frenchmen have been on the receiving end of numerous ill-concealed bribes to ensure they continue their tradition of supporting governments in referenda. Earlier this year, students from the DOM TOMs were granted free annual air tickets to France. Banana growers in the Caribbean received a big subsidy. Copies of the constitution treaty are being shipped to all corners of the French-ruled world, in the hope that like the 1992 Maastricht vote, a couple of hundred thousand votes from citizens who have never set foot in France will edge out dissenting voices in the mother country.

—

hang

over

is an unacceptable word?????

And they wonder why we decline to join transnational initiatives such as the ICC.

So go ahead and bid on a YES on Intrade; even if the French vote no on Sunday, eventually your bet will be right, and Intrade will have to pay you. :-)

Watch the “French” immediately schedule a new election to give the “French” another opportunity to not “lose” the treaty vote.