Thus The Wall Street Journal today. “European officials proposed an overhaul of euro-zone institutions that would create a common budget for the seventeen nations using the common currency and, ultimately, grant powers to issue debt collectively backed by the currency bloc,” the newspaper explains. The plan for the economic union is not new, but there is an attempt to attach a timetable to it. It would take up to five years to reach completion. These changes would “probably” require a change to the European Union’s treaty, the article cautions. Probably? The plan would definitely require such a change, and not only by the seventeen nations in the eurozone. Now, what are the chances the changes would be approved by referenda in all the countries in the Union? This is something the article eschews from start to finish, although the chances are perilously close to zero. And this is the vaunted Union in a nutshell. Top-down. And no bottom.