Deriving their just powers

We Americans have a simplicity that, while unsophisticated to the usual European Suspects, as a clarity that can cut to the chase.  As this line does, from our credo:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

I was pondering the crisis of the EU in general, and the Euro Zone in particular, and it seems that this is a big part of the problem.  The EU is famously undemocratic, with a (mostly) unelected and (entirely) unaccountable bureaucracy.  That Bureaucracy has made a series of increasingly speculative decisions, including the "EU Constitution" and the Euro itself, and both have come to teeter on the brink of the abyss.

And quite frankly, neither has much to recommend it in terms of legitimacy.  And so why wouldn't Greeks, Italians, and Spaniards pull their money out of banks that look like a bad risk to devaluation?  I mean, institutions build legitimacy in good years so that it's banked (so to speak) for the (expected) bad years.

Except the EU bureaucracy spent the good years fattening their contracts and "protecting" British consumers from the scourge of butchers selling meat by the pound (rather than the Kg).

And so while I must say that it will be a Very Bad Thing Indeed for us here in the New World when the Old World implodes in a couple of weeks (or months - who knows?), it is more than anything a crisis of legitimacy.  Naming the root cause of the problem is the first step towards correcting it.  Sadly, the EU won't - can't - do that.  The leopard cannot change his spots.