"The make believe world of eurozone rules"

The Eurocrats really do think they are important.
From The Financial Times:

The disagreement between Germany and the ECJ is not about the law, but politics and economics 

Whenever you are in a room with European officials and discuss the euro, there is usually somebody who raises his finger and says: “This is all well and good, but it is ‘against the rules’.” It then gets very quiet. “Against the rules” is a big thing in Europe. Most people do not really know what the rules are. But they do know that rules have to be followed.

The situation reminds me of a short story by Franz Kafka, Before the Law, where a man tries to seek entrance to a courthouse. A door keeper tells him that this is possible in principle, but not at the moment.
The man spends his entire life in front of the court waiting to be admitted. At the end of his life he was told that he could have gone through the door at any time. That man followed the wrong set of rules — rules of the mind, not of the law.

Rules of the mind is what we are dealing with in the European debate about the single currency. Many of these rules either do not exist, or they constitute some rather far-fetched interpretation of existing rules.

During the recent Greek crisis, I came across a completely new rule. I first heard it from Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister. It says that countries are not allowed to default inside the eurozone. But a default was perfectly fine once they leave the euro, on the other hand. 

I later read that Otmar Issing, the former chief economist of the European Central Bank, used almost exactly the same phrase as Mr Schäuble in an Italian newspaper interview. If so many important people say it, then surely it must be true, mustn’t it?

Actually, as it turns out, there is no such rule. There is only Article 125 of the European Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Article 125 says that countries should not take on the debt of other countries. This is also known as the “no-bailout” clause — though that, as it turns out, is a rather loaded interpretation....MORE

Over the years I've wondered:  When EUrocrats dream, are they Capetian or Carolingian?
Capetian, methinks.

I've always liked the Carolingians better,
they seemed more human-

Charles II, the Bald
Louis II, the Stammerer
Charles, the Fat
Charles III, the Simple
Along the lines of the Brit's Aethelred II, the Unready
(my fav. royal nickname)

Anyhoo...