MARK SOBEL: U.S. Chair, Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Monetary and Financial Policy, U.S. Treasury.

The Dinner Table Bargain of 1790, brokered by Thomas Jefferson between Alexander Hamilton and Virginia's James "Frugal" Madison--a supporter of decentralization and an opponent of Hamilton's vision of centralized power--provided that the federal government would assume state debts and the nation's capital would be placed in the Virginian's backyard.

Europe's leaders deserve tremendous praise for their trailblazing Next Generation EU [euro]750 billion recovery fund accord. But Europe hasn't assumed national debts. Nor has it agreed to halfway proposals to that end--"Blue Bonds" or "ESBies." It's not a Hamiltonian moment.

More relevant perhaps, is the question of whether the recovery fund represents a major step toward fiscal union. Does it cross the Rubicon? Certainly not for the foreseeable and distant future.

Like the Virginians, the German public--and those of the Frugals--fret about subsidizing wasteful profligacy elsewhere. The Frugals bitterly fought the Merkron proposal, perhaps fearing precisely that it could be the camel's nose under the fiscal union tent.

German public opinion naturally constrains Angela Merkel. But when severe air pockets hit European economies, as they did in the global financial crisis and have again with Covid-19, and the precipice of a euro catastrophe appears, Merkel is no Wile E. Coyote. She doesn't plunge over the cliff. She knows many European nations need help and that Germany has too much invested in the euro to countenance failure. Delaying action until the last moment amid squabbles, though, undermines the integrationist momentum that could come with the actions. Additionally, when "normal" times return, it's back to incremental muddling-through business as usual.

Could...