The Axis Joining the Berlin Chancellery to the ECB Would No Longer Be Able to Support German Export Companies with a Cheap Euro

Hence the big German export companies would face a Day of Reckoning. The axis which joins the Berlin Chancellery to the ECB [European Central Bank] (at present the Merkel-Draghi axis) would no longer be able to support them (via a cheap euro). Under these changed circumstances, the euro falling apart may be their most promising road to future success. Yes, a re-incarnated DM [Deutsche Mark] would press down on export profit margins; but the menace of US-German or US-EU trade war would recede.

The CDU [Christian Democrat Union] could have new scope to move towards the right and away from the prevailing euro-centrism of the Merkel era, so winning back voters from the parties on the far right while also gaining some middle-class support from savers long disgruntled with the soft euro and negative interest rate euro. The feared descent of Germany into Weimar-style political chaos as could occur if the CDU remains frozen in euro-centrism (eventually joining up with the Greens in coalition and thereby fanning support for the extreme parties) could be aborted.

Yes, Italy would fall out of the euro-zone. The potential for sound money renaissance in Europe, possibly with France, Holland and Germany getting together in a new monetary union, would be real. Europe’s monetary future would no longer hang on a US thread. This possible window of opportunity might be short, given the potential danger of a US inflation storm further ahead as stemming from devastatingly weak public finances.

—Brendan Brown, “How a Fragile Euro May Not Survive the Next Crisis,” in Anatomy of the Crash: The Financial Crisis of 2020, ed. Tho Bishop (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2020), 84-85.