I am in transit most of today and so have very limited time to write. An ECB Executive Board member, one Jörg Asmussen, gave a speech at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on July 17, 2012 – Building deeper economic union: what to do and what to avoid – where he admitted that the European policy leaders “had made mistakes in the way economic policies and governance were managed inside the monetary union”. I thought that was an understatement but credit for the admission. However, his speech was then steered towards “how best to” strengthen “(p)olicies and governance” – “(w)hat to do and what to avoid”. When he mentioned that the “six pack” and the Fiscal Compact constituted “significant progress” towards what to do and what to avoid I concluded he hasn’t learned much at all from the huge mistakes that the policy elites in Europe have made. The suggestion for a fiscal union is definitely a step forward but the way in which this idea is being constructed represents several steps backwards. The Europeans seem intent on extinguishing their democracies.