[PEN-L:108] fascist roots of EU

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

     [sent to several lists]
     At the recently completed Fifth Post Keynesian 
Workshop in Knoxville, Tennessee, Robert Skidelsky made a 
point that Lynn Turgeon has made on occasion.  It is that 
the earliest proposal for an entity resembling what the 
European Union is becoming was made in July, 1940 by 
Hitler's Minister of Economy, Walter Funk, the so-called 
Funk Plan.  It was proclaimed to be a postwar system that 
would involve a multilateral clearing mechanism in Berlin 
in a free trade zone.  Keynes developed his clearing 
mechanism proposal largely in response to this and 
incorporating elements from the existing Schachtian system 
under German control.  Keynes's proposal became the basis 
for British proposals at Bretton Woods that were vetoed by 
Harry Dexter White of the US (curiously enough a Soviet 
agent).  They would later resurface as the predecessors of 
the EU were developed.
     Skidelsky noted that many of the actual authors of the 
Funk Plan were technocrats whose main concern was a 
Franco-German economic union and that some of these 
individuals were involved in the negotiations for the 
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the original 
predecessor out of which the EU ultimately evolved.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
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