French President Francois Hollande recently announced that he would be pushing for mutualizing European debt, a step that Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland oppose.
There are historical precedents for mutualizing debts. Alexander Hamiltonâ??s assumption of statesâ?? debts in 1790, for example, is often mentioned as a model. There are significant differences, however, between that situation and the one the European Union is facing now. While the United States eventually managed to shape an â??American tribeâ?â??though 70 years after Hamilton, a civil war was fought that shaped this new tribeâ??s eventual featuresâ??the notion of a European "tribe" is not on the horizon.
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