Quizmodo time. (As with the radio programme “What do you know,” all answers have been thoroughly researched. The questions have not.) Ready? Ok.
Name the first multinational bank:
a) Chase Manhattan Bank
b) The Royal Bank of London
c) The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon
d) The Scribes of Isis and Osiris
Name the first international shipping company:
a) Onassis International Logistics Ltd.
b) Adams and Co. of Nantucket
c) HRH Ferdinand and Isabella de la Reino de España
d) The House of Pliny the Elder
Name the first multi-state free trade zone:
a) OPEC
b) The European Union
c) The United States of America
d) The Holy Roman Empire
If you had a particularly good time in High School, and if the years since have not been too bad, you will remember that the correct answer on any multiple choice exam is “c.” If the correct answer is not “c” then the longest answer is correct. Because bigger is better.
True for multiple choice, true for free trade. (Give me a break, people, not all my transitions are going to rock.) Our assumption is that the larger the trading area, the better the constituent parts within it. This assumption was unconscious when the world’s first large-scale, multi-state free trading zone was established in the newly independent states of North America. Constitutional scholars will recall that one of the big innovations of that document was a setting forth of rules that barred individual states from setting tariffs or other regulations on trade with other states (either within the Union or without.) Tah-dah! a free trade zone.
The problem with a trade zone so large is that economic forces bring relief to one part which exerting pressure on another. The resulting torque can almost rip the thing apart. Imagine, for instance, that one region is heavily agricultural. What they require are relatively low cost manufactured goods — from whatever source — and easy access to capital loans at low interest. Another region, more industrialized, would want to place a premium on manufactured goods from outside the zone and get some sky-high returns on all those profits that have been socked away in banks. Since this is a zone composed of previously independent states, the question begins to arise as to who is the ultimate decider about central banks and tariffs. And if one of the previously independent states does not like it, can they just leave?
I know what you are thinking, “Enough with the ‘The South Shall Rise Again’ bullshit, Sanuk D.” And it is enough. For all practical purposes, we in the United States have settled the question of sovereignty by placing it with the Federal government. Oddly, since no one was ever really prosecuted for the Civil War, the constitutional question has never really been settled. By the end of his life, even Jefferson Davis was clear on the idea that we are one country with one central authority.
One hundred and fifty years later, the same question is facing the United States of Europe. Greece, like South Carolina, brings a rich history and culture to the Union and should be a valuable — if geographically small — part of the newly forming nation (because that is what’s happening.) Greece, like South Carolina, has issues. Both upon entering had unsustainable economic models, South Carolina for moral reasons and Greece for reasons which I have yet to explore. Both have had or will have a central authority to reckon with.
For South Carolina, that central authority was largely unwelcome and resisted. The question remains, however, whether the European Central Bank and the European Union will intervene in a dramatic way in Greece. Then we will see whether or not Greece digs up P.G.T. Beauregard to fire some shots from the batteries of Athens. The solitary chimneys that mark the path of Sherman’s army from Savannah to Columbia should remind the children of Pericles that Union is stronger than tradition and the BMW plant in Spartanburg is a beacon to a more prosperous future once sovereignty is conceded.