Method in her madness

Polonius:
What is the matter, my lord?

Hamlet:
Between who?

Polonius:
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

Hamlet:
Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men
have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging
thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful
lack of wit, together with most weak hams; all which, sir, though
I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty
to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if
like a crab you could go backward.

Polonius:
[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 193–206


[Quote via this site]


All along I (and most commentators) have been assuming that Angela Merkel's and the ECB's intransigence is because of a purblind stupidity.  But what if, as The Age/Sydney Morning Herald journo Michael Pascoe plausibly argues,  it's part of a plan.

As Niccolo Machiavelli once more-or-less advised, you don’t want to waste a good crisis. Angela Merkel isn’t. And if that means a highly dangerous game of brinkmanship for months to come, sobeit if Germany achieves control of Europe.

There is nothing necessarily sinister about that. If Merkel’s plan to force European fiscal union – the necessary missing ingredient to sustain Europe’s half-baked monetary union – happens to result in Germany effectively dominating proceedings, well, who better? Or perhaps: who else?

Germany already dominates the thinking and actions of the European Central Bank. When it’s suited German needs in the past, the ECB has been compliant in easing money supply. Right now it suits Germany for the ECB to hang very tough indeed, threatening economic Armageddon, and that’s what the ECB is doing. There’s no point in being virtuous if it results in having no economy left to be virtuous about.


Perhaps, after all, there is method in their madness.