Today's Stock Market and a European History Lesson

The following quote is from: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross/european-failure-collective-action-latest-cause-stress-163535505.html
Investors are now in a situation in which stability — and perhaps their ability to sleep — rests on effective European collective action.
Read the Financial Times, or read some histories of 20^th century Europe, or spend some time in Budapest and Prague (as I did last month), and a theme emerges: European governments and institutions have been very poor at crisis management. Time and again through history, minor disputes over religion, borders or royal succession turned into wars that persisted for decades. The 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian separatist led to a devastating, continent-wide war that ultimately drew in the U.S. The 1920s and 1930s brought hyperinflation, banking system meltdowns, and the rise of Hitler. You can't spend 15 minutes in Prague without learning how Europe collectively sold out independent Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938.
In the post-war era, Europe finally seemed to get its hands around the problem of collective action. The creation of NATO bound Western Europe together in a security alliance. The creation of a (very weak) common government, a (stronger) common market, and a single European currency under a single monetary policy lead many to believe that the United States of Europe had finally arrived. (See, for example, T.R. Reid's 2004 book: The United States of Europe: The Rise of a Superpower and the End of American Supremacy) end quote.

So, the likelihood that Europe will be able to end their Crises anytime soon is unlikely. But let me point out something else. Europeans like Americans tend to be very pragmatic and always have been. Otherwise they wouldn't have survived so many wars over the last 1000 years or more with their countries intact. So, don't underestimate Europeans in the long run. One does at their own peril. The same can be said for the United States. There is an ongoing resiliency to democracies everywhere. They may have to adapt to a new world and find new ways to go on. But if you look at Europe that plague after plague and war after war always found a way to pick up afterwords and make the best of things we must also see a very pragmatic Europe and a very pragmatic U.S. that no one should underestimate long term at their own  peril.

The real point of the quote is that Europe may find a useful answer to its problems in the long run but it may be very expensive in the short run because of all the money that will be wasted trying to make it all work without solid enough universal agreements in place. Until Europe finds a way to be a little more like the U.S. with independent states having less power and one overall government having more power it is going to be pretty painful both for Europeans and for the rest of the world alike to watch.

Of course, the alternative will be for the whole thing to blow apart and for everyone to go back to their own currencies. In that world there likely would be less suffering in the near term but more in the long run. So, in the end all Europeans must choose how much pain they are willing to endure and what kind in order to get to where they want to all go wherever that is.