Why is Europe so clearly failing to emulate the United States, which also began life as a loose confederacy of fractious states before consolidating magnificently in response to its various existential crises?

the European Union had lost its integrity by crushing Greece and while it was in the process of forfeiting its soul by abrogating its responsibilities to refugees

Before long the working class in one nation turned against the working classes of all other nations, looking to protectionism for succour. In 1929 protectionism took the form of devaluing one’s currency vis-à-vis others. As we shall see, in 2010 it took the form of devaluing one’s labor vis-à-vis others.

a closed, autarkic (meaning self-sufficient) economy [...] may be poor, solitary and undemocratic, but at least it is free of problems caused by other economies, by external deficits or surpluses

An international fund would be created to play the role of the world's central bank and issue its currency--the bancor, as Keynes provisionally named it.

Thus in 1971 Europe was jettisoned from the dollar zone by a United States intent on preserving its hegemony and unwilling to turn to austerity to save Bretton Woods.

anticipating another anodyne meeting like all the previous ones

The European Economic Community (EEC), as the European Union was then known, comprised Germany, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and Italy, the original six founding members and signatories of the Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957.

Erhard had overseen Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle that had transformed Germany from 1949 to that day

Adenauer and de Gaulle put their signature on the Elysée Treaty; a treaty that was presented to the world as the cornerstone of French-German rapprochement