If They Can't Get The Economy Right, Why Trust Them for Peace?

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But the path that led to Cyprus’s current crisis — big banks bereft of money, a government in disarray and citizens filled with angry despair — leads back, at least in part, to a fateful decision made 17 months ago by the same guardians of financial discipline that now demand that Cyprus shape up. 

That decision, like the onerous bailout package for Cyprus announced early Monday, was sealed in Brussels in secretive emergency sessions in the dead of night in late October 2011. That was when the European Union, then struggling to contain a debt crisis in Greece, effectively planted a time bomb that would blow a big hole in Cyprus’s banking system — and set off a chain reaction of unintended and ever escalating ugly consequences. 

“It was 3 o’clock in the morning,” recalled Kikis Kazamias, Cyprus’s finance minister at the time. “I was not happy. Nobody was happy, but what could we do?” ...“We Europeans showed tonight that we reached the right conclusions,” Chancellor Angela Merkelof Germany announced at the time. 

...“I cannot remember that European policy makers have seen anything coming throughout the euro crisis,” said Paul de Grauwe, a professor at the London School of Economics and a former adviser at the European Commission. “The general rule is that they do not see problems coming.” 

And it gets worse:

“The bar suddenly got higher,” said Fiona Mullen, director of Sapienta Economics, a Nicosia-based consulting firm. “It was a sign of how the E.U. keeps moving the goal posts.”

That's one reason not to trust those who interfere from afar.

Like these:

Nearly two dozen European diplomats have urged the EU to intensify efforts to block Israeli settlement in and near Jerusalem, saying such construction on occupied lands is the "single biggest threat" to a Mideast peace deal, according to an internal report Wednesday.

The diplomats also said the EU must ensure that aid to Israel and preferential trade agreements don't inadvertently benefit settlements, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.  They recommended that the EU "prevent, discourage and raise awareness" of direct investments by European companies in settlements, but did not elaborate.

While the recommendations are non-binding, the report, endorsed by 22 heads of mission posted in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, reflects Israel's growing international isolation over the settlement issue.

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