Factory on September 9th and Euro on January 1st

Author: Vladislav Apostolov

2045. Elon Musk's seventeenth son is heading to Mars to attend the opening of the largest and most powerful computing center in the solar system. The flight is from the spaceport in Greenland, and during the trip, the boy will watch the first film of this decade made entirely by humans, without artificial intelligence.

At the same time, somewhere in Sofia, the head of a former banker, a representative of the Bulgarian official commentary, who hysterically decided to hide from the world after "that" speech by US Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich from the beginning of the distant year 2025, is sticking out of a boutique bunker.

The bearded, now ex-financial guru and former restaurant advertising face was at his expert peak at the time, but he still panicked and fled the headquarters of his beloved Institute for Economic Fiction, Abstraction and Hedging, abbreviated as IIBAH, missed his third television appearance of the evening, and sank into the depths of the earth.

In his designer bunker, packed with supplies of the European Commission's newly approved yellow mealworm powder, treated with ultraviolet rays, the expert gradually lost track of time.

Now, in 2045, the first thing the financier desperately asked a drone flying overhead was: "Have we entered the Eurozone?" There was no answer, the drone did not have a program that could recognize such words, but instead it played soothing elevator music before sending a signal to the employees of the specialized establishment.

"Blade Runner" meets "Euro Loser." Science fiction with elements of inflation and budget deficits. The idea here is that even if the future isn't exactly sci-fi Martian mirages, it's certainly bleak for concepts like an expanding eurozone and a common currency across our entire continent.

Problems have always been part of the development of the "Esperanto currency" project, as one politician called the euro years ago, but now this push to "sneak in" to the Eurozone during a historic global realignment is increasingly tragicomic, seen from the sidelines.

The problem is that we are not on the sidelines, but part of a society governed in a questionable direction, and I'm not sure the right word is even "governed." Some kind of malicious inertia is pulling the Bulgarian elite towards decisions that are both against the public interest and the new realities.

I'm reminded of the scene where Leo DiCaprio's character wins tickets for the Titanic at cards and falls into euphoria.

But first – the most important thing. Do you have to be an economist with a degree and a grant to have any say in the matter? “In what capacity are you talking about a national currency?” asks the deputy chief financial expert, having just heard an echo from the waiting rooms of the eurozone.

Expertocracy shares have been falling dramatically since November last year, but after J.D. Vance's speech in Munich, it seems that the entire enterprise is on the verge of bankruptcy.

With wishful thinking and wet dreams, you don't change the currency and the board doesn't move. With massaged data, unstable finances, and a discredited ruling class, you don't make the most important and difficult change in your country in decades.

As people who work and pay taxes, we talk about Bulgarian lev and euro. The commentary was wrong about the pandemic, migration, green, pink and the direction of the world hegemon. What are the chances that he was right about the eurozone and the rivers of soy honey and vegan butter that will flow, as they did absolutely everywhere where the euro was soon adopted?

By “absolutely everywhere,” I mean absolutely nowhere. Poland, for example, is the continent’s current economic success story, even making the cover of Capital. Poland holds on to its national currency without worrying that it’s Putinism.

And here Pepi is the Euro, not the Lev, in the lockers, the dressers, under the quilts and laps there is currency-denominated corruption. Every argument against the Bulgarian national currency weakens with each passing day. And with all the new data - like this week's on inflation.

But the pressure continues, which is why people, as participants in the economy, continue to reject "our official position." Poll after poll, even the deleted ones, study after study, unequivocally show that most Bulgarians do not want to enter the eurozone. Let alone from January 1, 2026.

And here we come to Vance's speech about European leaders' fear of their own people. "It won't happen," that's what the new American government told them, in plain language.

J.D. Vance was talking about the scandalously canceled elections in Romania, but he could just as easily have talked about the prevented Bulgarian referendum on the euro.

Here are a few quotes from the speech, painfully relevant:

"I deeply believe that there will be no global security if you fear the voices, opinions and consciences that your constituents express. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis that this continent is facing right now, the crisis that I believe we are all facing together, is one that we have created ourselves.

If you run from the fears of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. And similarly, there is nothing you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything worthwhile in the years to come.

"Have we not learned anything that weak mandates lead to unstable outcomes? But there are so many valuable things that can be achieved with a democratic mandate, which I believe will come from being more responsive to the voices of your fellow citizens. If you want to enjoy competitive economies, if you want to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern because you have to make hard decisions to enjoy all of these things."

The inconvenient truths that European elites heard were about migration and censorship, about policies against the interests of European citizens themselves. This was not just another speech. It was more like a massacre. But take it as a warning. Just don't cancel elections with frivolous arguments. If two-thirds of the population wants one direction, and the ruling class, with weak trust, turns the other – guess what the result will be?

The old schemes will no longer work. The lowering, the tricks, the tricks with the fat – this is ending. At the forefront are sovereignty and national identity, of which the lev is an invariable part.

To abandon your currency now – and with questionable data, financial uncertainty, and no public mandate – in order to step irreversibly deeper into the euro crisis is a form of monumental masochism.

Yes, for some of the players with a direct interest it is more like "Masninkism" and there is no doubt that certain actors will get rich off the play, but perhaps it is high time they saw the curtain. No one will call them for an encore. So let's say it internationally - Long Live the Lev!

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