John Taylor On The Parallels Between The European Union And The Congress Of Vienna

Some historical parallels on where the current state of disintegration of the latest artificial European Union construct falls in historical terms from FX Concepts' John Taylor.

The Congress of Vienna and the European Union

By John R. Taylor, Jr.
Chief Investment Officer

As supporters of the hypothesis that historical events display cyclicality that if studied and understood can improve decisions about the future, we are always trying to place current events in a historical context. Our goal is always to develop a strategy that can anticipate the twists that current historical actors will take. The recent crumbling of the Eurozone has been a perfect example. As an eventual collapse of the common currency will be a very significant strategic defeat for the countries involved, Europe as a whole, and the Western world powers in general, getting a handle on this macro event is critical. Long-term cycles are not exact as they are a function of human lifespan and generational changes. In a world where everything seems to move faster, these cycles are actually moving more slowly – because we live longer and have children at a later age. Eighty years has been a good guess for the long generational cycle, but now it could be stretching towards ninety. Looking back from here, the world Depression through WWII, the unsettled period between 1848 and 1871, and the revolutionary upheavals and wars starting around 1789 and running through Napoleon to 1814 are likely matches for the troubled period we are entering now.

Finding a way to examine these events, we compared the situation leading up to the troublesome periods. We found a very interesting parallel between the 34 years following the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 which ended with the tumultuous 23 year span of revolutions and nation-building in Europe, and the time that followed WWII until the millennium, a 55 year span. This period ended with the founding of the euro. The parallel between 1815 and 1945 is interesting as both years marked the defeat of a tyrant whose armies had totally destroyed the societies and countries of Europe, rewriting laws, relationships, and creating a new society. The goal of the Congress of Vienna was the complete removal of any trace of Napoleon’s activities – putting Europe back to where it was before the French revolution. Not only were the Germans defeated in 1945 but the Allies reestablished all the old boundaries and governments. It took many years before the event that we would consider equivalent to the Congress of Vienna occurred. The Treaty of Rome created the Common Market in 1956 to make it impossible for another war to occur in Western Europe. Both major treaties were reactionary events as they put things back to where they were before the periods of war and both were extremely
successful for a long time.

Going back to the way things worked before might be a good idea for a while if the underlying situation fits the old structure. In both these cases things did fit, but then they didn’t. In 1815 there were no railroads, no telegraph, and manufacturing was on a very small scale, but 30 years later all these things changed. By the mid-19th century, crossing Germany from Hamburg to Munich on a train would have involved crossing as many as 7 borders. Business was difficult. Cities grew rapidly and workers rushed in. In 1848, revolutions across Europe signaled the collapse of the Congress’s structure and the beginning of the Italian and German nation building, processes that were completed in 1871, under the leadership of two great statesmen. From 1871 to 1914 Europe was at equilibrium again. Today, Europeans have enjoyed 54 years of EU dominated peace and prosperity, but the customs union has been padded with more and more responsibility, ending with the euro. The Eurozone has faced two crises this year, papering them over and hoping for better times in a few years. Trade is no longer the critical issue for Europe, it is equality and transferability of education, capital, professions across the continent. True unification will take decades – just like 160 years ago, an uncertain but vital voyage.

Comments

[DollarDive]

Day in the Life of an Central Banker: 

8:30am - Market expects ECB Bazooka

9:00am - No Bazooka 

9:01am - Euro Dives - selloff - "Where's the Beef?"

9:45am - Trichet issues huge buy orders to "Buy the fucking Dip"

9:47am - Euro Shorts - SKEWERED !

10:00am - Trichet and Cronies - Back to bridge and booze for the day.

[hugovanderbubble]

I think Germany is overplayed .

Im opening shorts at these levels in DAX futures 6930

[DollarDive]

"BUY THE FUCKING DIP" !!!

[Eternal Student]

Well, this is an interesting idea; certainly one that I hadn't considered. I appreciate calling attention to this, but the article is a little short on exploring the parallels.

That said, I think it's also important to look more at history for a deeper understanding of where we are, and what we're looking at in the future.

Here's something disturbing which was mentioned by Steve Keen. Namely, that Economic History appears to have been mostly removed from Universities. Not completely, but one has to go out of one's way to find it. As opposed to when he was a student, and it was a requirement of the core studies. Has anyone else noticed this?

Those who understand history are at a key advantage over others who are left wondering what's going on. So it kind of makes you wonder why this has been removed. That's also why I'm delighted to see an article like this, even if it doesn't go into the idea in more detail. Positively refreshing, as I thought this sort of stuff had been mostly censored.

[erik]

The VIX is staying stubbornly high right now.  It is still above 20.  It should be around 18 when compared to the S&P current level.  That either means people remain hedged, or are not willing to give up their new put options quite yet.

[scratch_and_sniff]

I bet John is s***ing himself at the antics of the ECB...how short is he, i wonder? A few bln perhaps, enough to start scraping the annals of history to convince himself that the euro will collapse before he's squeezed, at least.

[Shylockracy]

"Not only were the Germans defeated in 1945 but the Allies reestablished all the old boundaries and governments."

This statement is innacurate as Germany lost nearly 50% of its pre WWI territory and roughly 20% of its population between 1939 and 1950.

What the author of this piece considers the necessary birth pangs of the super Eurostate seem fortunately more like its death throes. No revolutionary leader like Napoleon, Hitler or Lenin could achieve the union and Western renaissance that Charlemagne did. They managed however to send millions upon millions of innocents to their graves in name of their statist ideologies and promisses of earthly paradise. The paradisiacal promisses of the European Union are not any less vacuous and deceitful, and the soon they are dispersed, the better.

[MrPalladium]

"They managed however to send millions upon millions of innocents to their graves in name of their statist ideologies and promisses of earthly paradise."

And now with the commercial ideology of consumerism - the fundamentally marxist notion that for a human to care about anything other than his immediate material needs and wants is fundamentally irrational - we have a collapsing population of indigenous Europeans being replaced with Turks, central asians and sub-saharan Africans.

We shall see how that works out over the next 50 years!

Demographics is destiny. Same genocide - different marketing!

[erik]

Let me make sure I get this straight.  ECB rumors prove false, and Euro bond yields absolutely collapse afterward.  Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, they are all okay now since the ECB did nothing.  They are definitely routing the Portugal bond shorts today.  Insanity.

[desgust]

One more fucking dirty shark shorting the euro since summer. Where is the parity, thug?

[bank guy in Brussels]

It's good to look at history, but as you truly dig deeper, you arrive at perspectives quite the opposite of pre-conceptions. Taylor misses some things here imho.

For one thing, Napoleon was not Hitler. He is an ambiguous figure, with positives and negatives. A conqueror, yes, but his campaigns did things like:
- Largely bring an end to the use of judicial torture in Europe, establishing widely the idea that prisoners be treated humanely, and executed humanely (the guillotine has an awful image, but beheading or the firing squad are much more humane than strangling people at the end of a rope, maybe more humane than the 'lethal injections' too);
- Napoleon advanced education and the idea of a responsible professional civil service;
- The great legacy of the Napoleonic code, the world's greatest legal system, embodying the principle of popular revolution and sovereignty, and judges humble before the people. Much better than the Anglo-American system, the fake 'rule of law' where judges and lawyers tyrannise people for oligarchs, as happens in the US now, and in Britain to a lesser degree.

The reason Western Continental Europe is the best place in the world to live today, has much to do with the French revolutionary heritage and Napoleonic Code law, which is much less oppressive on ordinary citizens (fewer people in jail, much less legal-lawyer harassment, much less fear of law and lawyers, your assets thus actually much safer in 'socialist' Europe than in the USA with its mafia-judge-and-lawyer extortion-confiscation system). The USA has now proven that 'legal rights' on paper can become worthless, spun into dirt by judges and lawyers, without people in the streets ready to back them up.

The Congress of Vienna was in some ways the opposite of the European Union, restoring the idea of national sovereignty against over-centralisation.

This moment in Europe, now, feeels like the Revolutions of 1848, when popular dissident and anti-establishment moments swept across Europe. That seems about to break out again, with the Greeks having led the way.

We have perhaps reached the moment of 'peak EU', and the EU will go back to what it was a few years earlier, a customs union and free-commerce, open borders area, but not a machine driving toward super-state integration.

Europe's citizens in the streets, the great heritage of the French revolution which we have not lost here, will likely see to that very shortly. It will still be the world's best place to live, even if a little poorer and with some defaulted banks and bonds. The banksters will not win here in Europe, though the elites do not quite realise that yet.

[jmc8888]

John Taylor is a fucking fascist idiot.

Look how he takes American ideas, ideas the oligarchy he now promotes tried to stop.  Where did Germany's ideas for railroads come from?  The U.S.

John 'I don't know my history' Taylor.

Even look at the way he talks about the 1814-1815 Vienna as a good thing.  Are you kidding me? That congress of vienna was about what was going to replace the East India trading company and divide up Napoleans Europe into British monetarist controlled sections.

Fucking fascist, retarded, non-history knowing, cunt.

Here's a nice one from LaRouche from 2008, on the Taylor's great fascist fuckfest ''congress of vienna'. 

http://www.larouchepac.com/node/7134

Here's a nice long quote (still just a smattering of the article)

From the time of the establishment of the British Foreign Office by the British East India Company's Lord Shelburne, in 1782,^{6This occurred under the British Rockingham government, but Lord Shelburne was already the power in that government, even prior to Shelburne's becoming Prime Minister on the occasion of Rockingham's death. The British Foreign Office, in which Shelburne's favorite Jeremy Bentham served as controller of the Office's Secret Committee—the one which organized and ran the French Revolution through British-run French and Savoyard freemasonic conspirators, did not represent the autonomous interests of the British monarchy at that time, or under Bentham and, later, his protégé and principal successor Lord Palmerston.} the essential feature of British imperialism has never been the British colonies as such, but, rather, the overreach of the British East India Company of Lord Shelburne, Jeremy Bentham, et al., and the Company's Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier hierarchy, as extended throughout most of the planet as a whole. The legacy of the Seven Years War of 1755-63 stamped the character of the British imperial system since that time, a character to which it has returned in a clearly visible way, again and again, especially since the 1865 failure of its determination to break up the United States, a failure brought about through its defeat, with Russia's help, by forces under U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. This British defeat by Lincoln's republic, was a menacing defeat of what had been Britain's imperial policy under the British Foreign Office's Jeremy Bentham and Lord Palmerston, successively, the defeat of the British intention to isolate and destroy the U.S.A.'s continued existence as a potency within the Americas themselves.

Had the British not mobilized to incite warfare throughout Eurasia at that point, the British Empire—the Anglo-Dutch empire of usury—would have long since ceased to exist. The threat to end British imperial power, was a reflection of the adoption of the model of the American System of political-economy, whose influence, and imitations, had been spread from North America into continental Europe and beyond. Thus, from that moment, the U.S. influence's challenge to the tyranny of British sea-power, on which the British empire depended, became the so-called "geopolitical" issue around which the British Empire has repeatedly launched general warfare ever since, especially since the Prince of Wales succeeded in prompting the ejection of Chancellor Bismarck in 1890. Essentially, all important warfare on this planet since those times, has been an expression of the model of the so-called "geopolitical" conflict between the American republican and the British imperialist models of society.

British rage against President Lincoln was obviously the primary motive for the British intelligence services' assassination of President Lincoln, as also Presidents Garfield and McKinley, later—and these have not been the only cases; but, British imperialism's strategic interest in eliminating the U.S. republic as the most deadly challenger of continued British imperial power, as by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been primary. Assassinations, or corruption of the U.S.'s Presidency and legislatures, has been the more commonplace efforts to the same general effect. However, the fact of the British monarchy's role in bringing about the ouster of Germany's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, that done in order to bring on what became World War I, exposes the broader, continuing anti-American strategy of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system over the entire period since February 1763.

To illustrate that point of principle, consider the following.

During the time after his 1890 ouster from office, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck warned that the sole cause for what was, in fact, to become London's intended Balkans wars, wars which would lead, predictably, into the 1914 outbreak of general warfare, was an intended British re-enactment of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier interests' launching of that 1755-1763 Seven Years War which had resulted in the establishment of the British East India Company's emergence as an imperial entity and world power at the February 1763 Peace of Paris. It is that British imperial, international financier-oligarchical institution, which is determined to weaken and destroy would-be challengers of the British role on this account. That role has been a reflection of the intent to establish Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier power as the only truly world-wide, "globalized" empire on this planet, from that time to the present day. As for the British monarchy itself, it is simply a creature of the imperial financier oligarchy whose modern political and financier power is an institutional expression of the so-called New Venetian party of Paolo Sarpi and his followers.

To understand this should be a simple matter for any educated person who is not also a silly ideologue of a Rudyard Kipling sort of "Colonel Blimp" category. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written by Edward Gibbon as a report delivered personally to his master, Lord Shelburne, is the actual draft of all long-term objectives, and of the adopted imperial character, by Shelburne, of the intended existence of the British Empire. What is prescribed as doctrine for the empire is the adoption of the model of Julian the Apostate, as the characteristic feature of the empire's design was so described by Gibbon, and has remained the manifest intention of practice, since that time, to the present day.

Thus, we came to enjoy, courtesy of Shelburne, Gibbon, et al., not only the 1914-1918 general war, but both World War II and the post-President Franklin Roosevelt U.S.A. "Cold War" under British accomplice President Harry Truman.^{7The theological doctrine of Shelburne's favorite, Jeremy Bentham, leaves no room to doubt that the British Empire harbored its own Julian the Apostate, as British imperial practice since tends to affirm this. Take the cases of the contemporary Prince Philip of the pro-Satanic World Wildlife Fund, and of his like-minded son, Prince Charles, for example.} The Truman-Churchill creation of the long conflict between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union were never anything, in principle, but, exactly as Chancellor Bismarck understood, continuations of the intention expressed by the followers of the British East India Company's Lord Shelburne in the continuing aftermath of the February 1763 Peace of Paris.

So, the French Revolution of July 14, 1789 and beyond, and London's and the Habsburgs' use of Napoleon Bonaparte's ruin of continental Europe to long-term British imperial, strategic advantage, were expressions of the principal type of wider operations among those machinations of the British Foreign Office run by the British East India Company's British Foreign office, as under the leadership of Shelburne and his followers. From that time, to the present day, these have been the followers who were proceeding, under the same imperial strategy used by the British East India Company for the orchestration of the 1755-1763 Seven Years War.

1. Unwitting British asset Napoleon Bonaparte was used, in this same way, to the advantage of his all-the-while giggling, British puppet-masters, all done to the same purpose as the Anglo-Dutch Liberals' orchestration of the "Seven Years War." As former Chancellor Bismarck was to emphasize implicitly, the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna was one among a succession of the true successors to the British East India Company's imperial triumph in the February 1763 Peace of Paris.

After the defeat, by President Abraham Lincoln's leadership, of the British Empire's fresh efforts to destroy the challenge of the U.S.A., through the empire's operations which had been run continuously through the British Foreign Office of Lord Shelburne, Jeremy Bentham, and Lord Palmerston, over the 1815-1865 interval, the British Empire launched what became "geo-political" World Wars I and II. This new, post-1865 emphasis in British imperial policy was on a continuing succession of general, imperial warfares, as typified by the role of the British Prince of Wales Edward Albert's use of the ouster of Bismarck to set the stage for pitting the Russia of Czar Nicholas II against the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II. At the same time, Prince of Wales Edward Albert wooed Japan's Mikado into the 1894 launching, on Britain's behalf, of Japan's 1894-1945 wars aimed for the twofold goals, of destroying the government of China, dismembering that nation, and also, destroying the Pacific maritime power of the Mikado's and Britain's common adversary, the United States.

So yeah John Taylor, master of idiocy, ruler of the historical truth on the Congress of Vienna, and how these old systems are so good, and how 1815 and 1945 look so similar to now.  You mean the other two times the British Empire FUCKED OVER THE WORLD??????????????????????????

That's the parallel you see John 'fascist fuck' Taylor and it isn't good.  Say it how it is, not how you 'a captured fuck' see it with rose colored glasses on.

[scratch_and_sniff]

relax

[Die Weiße Rose]

Excuse me for ranting,

but i am mad at the world,and this is my way for letting off some steam.

You call Europe an Experiment ?

Well, I call the French Revolution and the resulting slave-trading America an ongoing Experiment, about 200 Years of experiment...and already in dire straights.

You live in a colony that was built on human trade in slaves and the blood and sweat of its native Americans,and your history is what: 200 years if you dare to remember?

Give me a fucking break! you are part of that tragic failure of an Experiment called: the French Revolution with Tyrants and Despots and Madmen like Napoleon Bonaparte.

I am a European,and last time i checked, so were most of you.

Alien extra - terrestial Life-forms and Outer-Solar-Galaxy Space-Dwellers excepted.

I am European and so have been my people for many Generations.

I am a European and my ancesters were the ancient holy Roman Germanic Empire that lasted for over a thousand years with its political Centre in Vienna.You could say that The holy Roman Empire was the first European Union. In 1792 after the tragic experiment of the French revolution,Napoleon Bonaparte,a 25 year old french revolutionary upstart who had great ambitions came across our German border with 18000 terrorists to invade and plunder my home and disturb our peace by rapeing and pillaging our women towns and villages.Until then there had been order and great learning in the Age of Enlightenment in the holy Roman Empire,my Home.

Napoleon brought much suffering,in the name of freedom,equality and fraternity.

Napoleon abolished our Church as head of State,no more taxes would be collected by our Kings and Dukes and not even our Emperor.

Napoleon now made new rules, new Taxes, all would be paid to him.There was a window Tax,a furniture Tax,Taxes that were never heard of before,all being paid straight to Napoleon.Much suffering and pain and poverty came across all of our Empire.

A week now had ten days,there was no more Sundays,no more holy days,and even one hour had now 100 Minutes and a Day had 10 Hours.Napoleon,the revolusionary had become corrupted by Power,he wanted to be greater than our kings and Emperors,greater than Friedrich the Great,greater than Alexander the great,Napoleon was now the greatest Tyrant!

The Treasures of our churches were confiscated and instead we were issued with worthless french revolution bonds.There was much suffering across all of the once mighty empire.

Napoleon wanted to blockade England into submission,To do this he placed his army all along the European coast-line.Thats hen he over-reached himself.

To the disgust of everyone,Napoleon,the figure-head of the french revolution crowned himself Emperor of what had once been our holy roman Empire.

Napoleon crowned himself with barbarossa's and Charlamaine's Crown,the crown of our Empire that had lasted over 1000 years.It was too much.Beethoven was disgusted and scratched out his dedication of a symphony he had earlier composed for a free new age,

when he realized that Napoleon Bonaparte was a fraud,he was not a liberator of Europe,

Napoleon was a Tyrant,the biggest Tyrant of all.In the name of Liberty,Egality and Fraternity he had deceived many fools.He had started conscription in my hometown of Baden,near Strasbourg ,he had stolen from us,raped our women,killed our People until we finally defeated Napoleon in Leipzig,together with the Russians.

I am European,and my history goes back for thousands of years on european soil.

Now if you are an American or Australian or Canadian,those  colonies would be about 200 years old, founded around the time of that failed experiment:

The idiotic failed experiment of the french Revolution.

What I am saying is this:

~Europe has been here and will be here forever~

or at least as long as human civilization and much longer than

that failed experiment of the french Revolution and deposed Tyrants like Napoleon Bonaparte .

So before you call Europe a failed Experiment ,make sure you know

where you come from, so you know where you are going.

Because it seems to me, most of you have not got a fucking clue about

Culture or even your own History with not even the faintest Idea about Europe.

[revenue_anticip...]

Re: Value and Uses of "History"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche

Ad Hominem discourse has, in Larouche, quite a bit of value...regards "LaRouche" the history-revisionist as a person...the above wiki seems 'fair and balanced' enough

Uses of "History" is enhancing the propaganda, the hidden/open agenda, of the CURRENT power structure, the dominant culture, etc...(conceptually "history is written by the victors")

One, current knee-jerk reaction, in the USA, is 'Fascism=bad' 'communism=bad' 'socialism=taxation-higher'....

another USA big push, empire-wide is 'democracy (50%winners) =good'   THIS one we, since 1950 fought aggressive, essentially fraudulent wars - Gulf of Tonkin...

ALL of the above replies, are mere 'knee jerk' and shallow, and/or 'parroted near paragraph for paragraph, say from 'LaRouch' and/or less obvious sources....

Taylor is an "investment" analyst, and also PUSHING his money-making version of TRUTH...indeed,'investment advisors' usually dont even pretend to scholarship/accuracy regards history...no wonder the many 'replies' - ALL of which from a 'certain viewpoint' at least have more depth than Taylor...

Just means 'beware' of 'hidden/open agendas' EVERYONE is pushing 'their investment book'