Bernard Connolly > Quotes

“Baldwin, speaking of the 1930s press barons, famously attacked as ‘power without responsibility: the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’. In”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“While political scientists see ‘Europe’ either as a new form of political structure, having little in common with the nation-state, or as a structure for advancing the interests of existing nation-states, Delors wants to create a new state, ‘Europe’, and to create with it a new ‘nation’ based on some supposed cultural identity that can be defined only in terms of what it is not, what it is antithetical to. Delors”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“as the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony put it recently, ‘For quite a few centuries, it seems as though it’s been the British nation-state15 (together with its admirers in France, America, Austria) that has been teaching the world what it means for peoples to live in freedom and decency, while the idea of “Europe” has spawned a succession of tyrannies.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“If anything, the unmistakable clues provided by the reports that highly intelligent and politically aware central bankers and Treasury officials became, as a collective, squabbling half-wits, should have encouraged further attacks by the markets. Market operators were at times strangely afraid of the imagined cunning, intellectual superiority and capacity for collective action of ‘the authorities’.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“As one highly placed énarque has recently put it: ‘Of course we want monetary union. Ninety per cent of the élite want it. There is a little danger because the people do not want it: but we will take care of that.’ Is”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“Unemployment in France is officially put at 12.5%. Youth unemployment is double that. Many people in their twenties have never had a job and will soon have exhausted their entitlement to unemployment benefit. When they do, the sporadic rioting of 1994 might turn into a nightmare of urban alienation and violence. The”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“By hamstringing the ability of French governments to act in the interests of the French people – or, to put it more realistically, by giving them an excuse for not so acting – that embrace has destroyed political legitimacy in France. It has contributed to a contempt for democratic politics so profound, among both rulers and ruled, that the survival of the Fifth Republic may be brought into doubt in the next few years, ‘Europe’ or no ‘Europe’. The”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“When Trichet, at a meeting of top international monetary officials, defended the franc fort policy against North American critics by telling them that they did not understand ‘Europe’, one of his antagonists declared of himself that he might not understand ‘Europe’ but he did understand economics. Trichet did not deign to make any rejoinder.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“Like Hitler, like Stalin, the énarque believes that power will always prevail over economics.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“Schmidt agreed at the Bonn summit of world industrial leaders, in July 1978, to increase Germany’s budget deficit. The Bonn summit was a classic example of international economic ‘coordination’: one country agrees to do something that is bad for it on condition that another country does something equally bad for it. The world economy suffers, a diplomatic triumph is proclaimed, and the bureaucratic policy-making establishment on all sides comes away with a mandate for increased misdirected interference in economic life.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“In understanding the collapse of the ERM, however, what is important is that to subordinate domestic (that is, national) economic considerations to national foreign policy goals almost always corresponds to subordinating the preferences of the population at large to those of a political élite, and can never be unconditional, except – possibly – in the most ruthlessly efficient totalitarian state. The”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“political correctness – the suppression of rational thought”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money

“Western capitalism contained is Western capitalism destroyed. Toothless and drugged, the caged tiger is prey to lethargy, disease, premature senility. Worse, only the bars of his cage protect him from the new, fierce and powerful capitalist animals of Asia. If he stays inside with the door locked he will rot. If he opens the door, the new cats will leap in and maul him to death.”
― Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Europe's Money