I think the polarization of US politics and the inevitable implosion of debt will play a big part in how Europe looks to the future.
Government, as executive and regulatory function, is analogous to the central nervous system, while money and banking mirror blood and the circulation system, distributing and presumably harmonizing value across the social body.
We've evolved to the point of realizing government works best as a public utility, but haven't yet realized the same principle applies to banking.
When the medium enabling markets is privately held, we are all just tenant farmers to the banks.
While markets need money to circulate, people see it as signal to extract and store, yet a medium is not a store. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store.
While we might view it as a commodity to mine from the economy, it is the social contract enabling it.
As a medium, we own the money like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and most importantly, are not responsible for its value, like a personal check.
As an accounting device, to store the asset side of the ledger, a debt has to be created to back it.
Since government is public, but banking remains private, the banks have the upper hand, as they don't have the same levels of oversight and don't have to work around election cycles. Consequently they have managed to hollow out the more effective aspects of government, leaving a bunch of flunkies and grifters, whose primary job is the create the public debt the banks need to function. While the stock markets might get the attention, the real money is in bonds and much of it publicly held. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
So if it seems our politicians are little more than puppets and actors, saying whatever is on the teleprompter and doing what they are told, it is because those with the money are the ones pulling the strings and making the real decisions.
The evident problem this creates though, is that government is the decision making function and without an effective decision making function, pure greed becomes the dominating principle, corroding all social and cultural tradition, respect, responsibility, long term planning, etc. It becomes a metastatic cancer and has all the strategic aptitude of bacteria racing across a petri dish.
We are getting close to the other side.
