International institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and even the United Nations spread a center-left, mildly statist big-government version of the US worldview, the "Washington Consensus" among the nations of the new emerging markets.

Experts from Lombard Odier, a Swiss bank, estimate the bulk of Greek bad debt at 875% of its GDP, which means that to meet its obligations the country would have to invest – without any foreseeable returns – an amount exceeding its GDP by a factor of 8.75. The situations in Poland and Slovenia are even more alarming – in their cases the debt to GDP ratio is 15 and 11 respectively. The corresponding average over the Eurozone is 4.34, and in the US – 5.

More arithmetic for you: The Rand Corporation estimates the cost of Korean reunification at $50 billion, Credit Suisse insists $1.5 trillion is the expense, and Stanford fellow Peter M. Beck posits an alarmist $2-$5 trillion. Question: Who's got that kind of cash? Answer: North Korean mines. 360 minerals are sequestered in the Hermit Kingdom's caves, many trapped by flooding and NK's [North Korea's] appalling infrastructure. Billions of tons of coal, iron, zinc, magnesite, nickel, uranium, tungsten, phosphate, graphite, gold, silver, mercury, sulfur, limestone, copper, manganese, molybdenum... worth an estimated $2-$6 trillion (Goldman Sach's figure is $2.5 trillion). Reunification could be entirely paid for by these mines, perhaps with change left over.

China’s growing economic ties to the cash-strapped regime of former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev was a major reason Washington decided to dump its erstwhile ally Akayev after almost a decade of support. In June 2001 China, along with Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, signed the Declaration creating the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Three days later Beijing announced a large grant to Kyrgyzstan for military equipment.

Hayek had the sign and the destination right but was entirely wrong about the mechanism. Unregulated finance, the ideology of unfettered free markets, and state capture by corporate interests are what ended up undermining democracy both in North America and in Europe. All industrialized countries are at risk, but it’s the eurozone – with its vulnerable structures – that points most clearly to our potentially unpleasant collective futures.

This article is published at a time, when Berlin is using the Greek crisis to demand extensive intervention possibilities into the primary sovereign rights of EU member states. The demand for a more aggressive EU foreign policy is accompanied by dictates on member states to reinforce the EU.

America is used to having it all its own way. In 1972, as the US opened diplomatic relations with China, it abandoned pegging the dollar to gold. That enabled it - through its monopoly on printing US dollars - to create huge trade and investment advantages. Its economy grew strongly as it managed the value of its currency at the expense of other nations.

Real gross domestic product growth averaged 2.25 percent a year from 1981 to 1993; slipped to 2 percent from 1993 to 2003; and now stands at about 1 percent.

As Guy DeBord summed it up: “The economy has now come to declare open war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival…. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times.”