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Furunculus

11-25-2011, 16:42

warner on the end of days:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8913884/Death-of-a-currency-as-eurogeddon-approaches.html

from the article:

"From the UK Treasury on Whitehall to the architectural monstrosity of the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, everyone is desperately trying to figure out precisely how bad the consequences might be."

I imagine that deep within the bowels of the Bundesbank they are very discreetly firing up the dusty printing machines labelled "DM" in preparation for the eurocalypse.

"In its current form, the single currency may always have been doomed, but it has been greatly helped on its way by an extraordinarily inept series of policy errors."

No, not "may" have been doomed, it was always destined to be doomed. This is a Headless Sovereign crisis because the combined polities are so diverse that no mandate for action can be sought and receive a majority, which means that policy action must remain unaccountable, and rips any shred of legitimacy from the project.

Had the eurozone been limited to Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries and Finland, the euro currency "may" have stood a chance as that lack of representation and accountability would not have been quite so insurmountable.

That of course did not happen

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

11-26-2011, 01:17

Come back to the fold, Europe.. The Marshall Plan 2.0 beckons.

How yuh gonna pay for it this time? Don't forget, it took almost 70 years for the UK to repay the last one.

Vladimir

11-26-2011, 03:36

Come back to the fold, Europe.. The Marshall Plan 2.0 beckons.

Ahh, sorry. In less they all get upity again and we have put them in their place, again, that aint happening.

InsaneApache

11-26-2011, 09:45

How could so many clever people get it so wrong? The flaws in the euro project are not just clear with hindsight; they were visible at the outset and were widely pointed out. It was never going to be possible to jam widely divergent economies into a single monetary policy. It was plainly reckless to invite Italy and Greece to join the new currency when their government debt was at twice the permitted level of 60 per cent of GDP. Plenty of doubters said so at the time. Yet, in every national parliament, in every central bank, in every university faculty, in every television editorial conference, there was a collective suspension of disbelief.

How could so many clever people get it so wrong? The flaws in the euro project are not just clear with hindsight; they were visible at the outset and were widely pointed out. It was never going to be possible to jam widely divergent economies into a single monetary policy. It was plainly reckless to invite Italy and Greece to join the new currency when their government debt was at twice the permitted level of 60 per cent of GDP. Plenty of doubters said so at the time. Yet, in every national parliament, in every central bank, in every university faculty, in every television editorial conference, there was a collective suspension of disbelief.

Twilight of the Eurocrats: Angela's valkyries are riding to their doom (Illustration Michael Daley)

Why? What were they thinking? If you listen carefully to what Euro-integrationists were saying when the single currency was launched, you hear a subtext. It's not so much that they liked the euro, it's that they disliked the people who opposed it. Listen, for example to Charles Kennedy in 2002:

The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success. We cannot afford to be isolated from our biggest and closest trading partner any longer.

Or to Ken Clarke:

The reality of the euro has exposed the absurdity of many anti-European scares while increasing the public thirst for information. Public opinion is already changing as people can see the success of the new currency on the mainland.

For such men, the issue was never really economic, or even political, but tribal. Having defined the question, in their own minds, as a Kulturkampf between sensible progressives and ignorant bigots, they became more or less uninterested in the facts.

The extraordinary thing is that many euro-enthusiasts are still at it, quite unabashed by how things have turned out. Here, for example, is the historian Norman Davies in the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago:

‘How marvellous,' they chortle in the Tory clubs; ‘the busybodies of Brussels are meeting their come-uppance. After all, those ghastly Greeks who cooked the books to enter Euroland in the first place are sure to be cooking them again with an eye to ever larger bail-outs. Greece will push French banks down the chute first; but German banks won't avoid it, and together they'll finish Italy off. With luck, Italy will suck Spain into the abyss; Portugal will follow Spain, and Ireland Portugal. Just think of it! Those Irish traitors from 1922 will get their deserts! Terrific!'

Then continental banks lock their doors and the cash machines dry up. Minestrone kitchens appear on the streets of Rome. Spanish bullrings house the destitute. The bridges of Paris fill with rough sleepers. Weeks and months pass free of money. Europeans relearn the art of barter. When the cash flow stutters back, machines distribute drachmas again, the franc nouvel and the peseta nueva. Yet Britain's latterday Blimps will still not be satisfied. They hanker for the whole hog; before we pull up the drawbridge, they say, the EU itself must vanish.

For what it's worth, I have yet to meet a British eurosceptic who is enjoying the economic turmoil on our doorstep. It is plainly in our interest that the eurozone-which takes 40 per cent of our exports, and comprises our allies and friends-should flourish. That's precisely why we are alarmed at the readiness of eurocrats to sacrifice their peoples' prosperity so as to keep their monetary union together.

Not that Norman Davies is much interested in what eurosceptics actually think. One of the oddities of the whole debate is that euroenthusiastic commentators who are quick to spot prejudice in others when it comes to racism, sexism or xenophobia are quite unable to detect it in themselves when it comes to people who don't share their Weltanschauung. (By the way, Professor Davies, one uses nouvel before a masculine noun beginning with a vowel – le nouvel an, but le nouveau franc. When loftily dismissing people as anti-Europeans, it's a good idea to get your own French right.)

None of this would matter if it were simply an academic debate. The trouble is that the people running the EU refuse to learn anything from their errors. Since the crisis began four years ago, they have had only one response: massive loans. They have reacted to the failure of each bailout by accelerating the policy, until it has acquired a momentum of its own, like a runaway train: bailout-and-borrow, bailout-and-borrow, bailout-and-borrow.

Why this mulish determination to stick with a strategy that is impoverishing Europe? Supporters of the project have taken to offering the old cure-would-be-worse-than-the-disease shtick. They no longer dare argue that the euro has brought benefits — two thirds of the citizens who use it believe it has made them poorer, according to Eurobarometer — insisting instead that leaving would be impractical.

To British ears, such claims are eerily familiar. When it became clear that the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the euro's baleful predecessor, was wrecking our economy, the Establishment lined up to argue that, whatever the flaws in the system, we now had no option but to stick with it. Pulling out, declared John Major, would be "the inflationary option, the devaluer's option, a betrayal of the future of our country". In the event, of course, Britain's recovery began the day we left the ERM and continued for a decade and a half before Gordon Brown blew it away.

Yes, there would be practical difficulties with returning to national currencies, but none would be insurmountable. By definition, all the countries in the euro have recently managed precisely such a changeover: that's how they joined in the first place. Oddly, I don't remember any eurocrats at that time droning on about the huge costs and complexities of having to replace your banknotes. And, indeed, the switch would be easier now than it was a decade ago, because more money is digitised, and banknotes represent a smaller proportion of the currency in circulation.

Nor should leaving a currency union be any more complicated than joining one. I asked a Slovakian economist the other day how his country had managed the monetary transition when it divorced the Czech Republic. "Very easily," he replied. "One Friday, after the markets had closed, the head of our central bank phoned round all the banks and told them that, over the weekend, someone from his office would come round with a stamp to put on all their banknotes, and that, until the new notes and coins came into production, those stamped notes would be Slovakia's legal tender. On the Monday morning, we had a new currency."

Why not do the same today? Because, to repeat, the euro was never about the economics. As Angela Merkel told the Bundestag in October:

Nobody should take for granted another 50 years of peace and prosperity in Europe, and that's why I say, if the euro fails, Europe fails. We have a historical obligation: to protect by all means Europe's unification process begun by our forefathers after centuries of hatred and bloodshed.

Put in those terms, of course, the issue is literally beyond argument. If you oppose the euro, Mrs Merkel suggests, you're in favour of war.The trouble is that, on any objective measure, the euro is stoking rather than soothing national antagonisms. Relations between Germany and Greece haven't been so poor since-well, since the Second World War.

The reason, of course, is that people in both countries see politicians lining up with the Brussels elites against their own constituents. The few national leaders who dare challenge the EU risk being overthrown.

George Papandreou did something unforgiveable in the eyes of Brussels when he proposed a referendum on the loans-for-austerity package. Eurocrats dislike and distrust popular democracy. Referendums at any time are frowned on; but a referendum when the euro was teetering on the edge was seen as the height of selfishness and ingratitude. Within a week, Papandreou had been forced out.

A similar thing happened in Italy. Observing the EU's reaction to the Greek crisis, Silvio Berlusconi calculated that Eurocrats would do anything to prevent the break-up of the euro: if his austerity measures were insufficient, Brussels would come up with the extra cash. Accordingly, he let it be known that he was relaxed about whether or not Italy should remain in the euro. If the Brussels elites wanted to preserve their continental currency, he implied, they would have to pay for it. "Since the euro was adopted", he breezily told his countrymen, "most Italians have become poorer." Once those words were spoken, he, too, was doomed. An EU official at the Cannes summit was quoted as saying: "We're on our way to moving out Berlusconi." Five days later, il Cavaliere had been forced to announce his resignation.

The funny thing is that neither of the ousted premiers was a eurosceptic. Papandreou, indeed, was a federalist. Their crime, rather, was to pay too much attention to their electorates. Leninists had a term for people who, while committed Bolsheviks, none the less behaved in a way which endangered the movement. They were known as "objectively counter-revolutionary". The supreme counter-revolutionary act, in the EU, is to ask voters what they want.

If you think I'm exaggerating, consider the way the EU deals with referendum results when they go the "wrong" way. Ponder how Brussels swatted aside the verdicts of the ballot box in France, the Netherlands and Ireland. As José Manuel Barroso put it last year: "Governments are not always right. If governments were always right we would not have the situation that we have today. Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong."

People sometimes talk of the EU's democratic deficit as if it were accidental. In fact, it is essential to the whole design. Having lived through the 1920s and 1930s, the founders had little faith in democracy — especially the plebiscitary democracy which they saw as a prelude to demagoguery and fascism. They were therefore unapologetic about vesting supreme power in the hands of appointed commissioners who were to be invulnerable to public opinion. They were disarmingly honest, too, about the fact that their dream of common European statehood would never be realised if successive transfers of power to Brussels had to be approved by the national electorates.

The euro was the culmination of their scheme. It would never have got off the ground had the decision been subject to national referendums. The only two countries to vote on whether to join — Denmark and Sweden — opted emphatically to keep their national currencies. Nor would the bailouts be approved today by the voters of the contributing states; nor, indeed, would the austerity packages be agreed by voters in the recipient states. In order to pursue these policies, two regimes have had to be replaced with what are called "national governments" — although their sole purpose is, of course, to carry out programmes that their nations reject.

These "national governments" are headed by "technocrats" — meaning, in this instance, the euro-apparatchiks whose policies created the mess in the first place. The new Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, is a former European Commissioner; his Greek counterpart, Lucas Papademos, a former Vice-President of the European Central Bank. Mr Papademos, indeed, was running the Greek central bank when the calamitous decision was made to join the euro with twice the permitted debt level. In recent weeks, the EU has made explicit what was implicit all along. Bureaucrats in Brussels now deal directly with bureaucrats in the stricken peripheral states. The people and their elected representatives have been cut out. Greece is now as much a satrapy of the European Commission as ever it was of the Ottomans. Its people are learning at first hand that you can have European integration or you can have full democracy, but you can't have both.

While most people recognise that the EU is undemocratic in its own structures, few understand the extent to which it subverts the internal democracy of its constituent states. In order to participate in an inherently unpopular project, the 27 national governments are repeatedly obliged to defy their own electorates — or face the consequences.

The downfalls of Papandreou and Berlusconi are eerily reminiscent of that of Margaret Thatcher. She, too, was an elected national leader who had got on the wrong side of the Brussels machine. Her emphatic rejection of Jacques Delors's scheme for federal unification in 1990 was followed by the famous "ambush" at the EU Rome summit, when she was left looking unprepared and isolated. That was the trigger for British europhiles to move against her.

It's true, of course, that all three leaders were already unpopular: Thatcher because of the poll tax, Papandreou because of the austerity measures and Berlusconi because of innumerable scandals. None the less, it is sobering to think that the Italian premier, having weathered allegations of corruption and mafia links, of bribery and underage sex, having shrugged off investigations by (at his own count) 789 prosecuting magistrates, having survived in office longer than any leader since Mussolini, should have been felled in the end by the EU.

Borrowing a felicitious phrase from C.S. Lewis, I think of the phenomenon as the EU's "hideous strength". In his science fiction novel of that name, Lewis tells the story of a diabolical plot to take over Britain, which takes the guise of an apparently beneficent bureaucracy called the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments: NICE. The functionaries of NICE have deep pockets, offer generous salaries, and are vague but upbeat about their aims. They succeed in subverting one institution after another.

The EU has a similar power to purchase the loyalty of NGOs, charities, business organisations, local councils and, above all, governing parties. Again and again, it persuades politicians at the domestic level to act against their national, party and personal interests for the sake of Europe. To give only the most recent example, all three British party leaders put out a three-line Whip against the parliamentary motion calling for a referendum on EU membership — despite the fact that 67 per cent of voters wanted their MPs to support the resolution, and despite the fact that all three parties were promising referendums on one aspect or another of European integration before the general election.

The truth is that the EU, run by its 27-member politburo, is barely more democratic than the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia". While its member nations are all, in themselves, parliamentary democracies, Brussels functionaries fear and resent public opinion, or "populism" as they call it in their peculiar argot. Their attitude might not be quite so objectionable if the technocrats actually displayed any real expertise. Yet, time and again, they have been shown to be wrong, the mass of ordinary voters right.

Rarely has this been more obvious than in their response to the financial crisis. Most of us know that the last thing an indebted friend needs is more loans. Most of us understand that if you're in debt, you should cut back on spending, not go on a binge. Most of us can see that if jamming disparate economies into a single currency isn't working, the answer is less integration, not more. Yet these truisms are quite lost on the European elites.

The leaders of the eurozone are, of course, free to make their own mistakes. If they want to inflict penury and emigration on their southern members, and perpetual tax rises on their northern members, that is their prerogative. If they are prepared to pay a ruinous price to keep the euro — or, more precisely, to ask their peoples to pay, since eurocrats are exempt from national taxes — that's up to them.

What I find inexplicable is that the United Kingdom should be investing political capital — let alone actual capital — in supporting the project. At the time of writing, Britain is on the hook for £12.5 billion in the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts — a colossal sum even in these wastrel times, equivalent to £500 for every household in the land. To put it in context, consider that all the spending cuts made by the Coalition in its first 12 months in office amounted to £6.2 billion. Yet, if we are drawn into the Italian crisis, the bills will be far higher: ministers talk of Britain injecting a further £40 billion through the IMF.

In justifying these subsidies, ministers tell us that the prosperity of the eurozone is in Britain's interest, and so it is. Yet it is now surely clear that the euro is a recessionary device. The survival of the single currency and the economic success of its constituent members, far from being synonymous, are becoming incompatible. Britain, in short, is being made to pay for the privilege of impoverishing its neighbours.

What the devil are we thinking? According to the most thorough study so far, conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, Britain's interests would be better served by the break-up of the euro than by its maintenance. There would be short-term pain followed, after about 30 months, by a higher rate of growth. Yet the Coalition continues to insist that the survival of the euro is an essential British interest. How has the Conservative Party moved so swiftly from "save the pound" to "save the euro"?

The short answer is that it won office. It is difficult, until you encounter it at first hand, to grasp the intensity of the euro-fanaticism in the civil service and, most especially, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The guiding principle of our Brussels mandarins is that they must always be present at the table: being human, they have an understandable tendency to conflate their own influence with the national interest.

A minister who seriously challenged the basis of our relationship with the EU would be declaring war on the permanent apparat — a war that would consume his energies for an entire parliamentary mandate. Such ministers are, of course, rare. Which is why, in every EU member state, euroscepticism has so far been an exclusively opposition phenomenon. In most EU states, the governing cadres are as steeped in Keynesian economics as in euro-enthusiasm. Government employees are perhaps naturally sympathetic to doctrines which encourage state intervention, and their reaction to the financial crisis was the same as their reaction to all crises: to increase spending. As Mark Twain observed, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

We can now see where such profligacy has led Europe — and, indeed, where it has led the United Kingdom. Our treasury is empty, our credit exhausted, and we are reduced to relying on inflation to erode a deficit which we daren't tackle with spending cuts. Yet, broke as we are, it is seriously being proposed by our immaculately educated officials and ministers that we borrow billions more in order to prop up a currency union which is asphyxiating its participants. My masters, are you mad?

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4208/full

gaelic cowboy

11-26-2011, 16:25

Hmm you ask what they were thinking

Well I remember what they were thinking here if that's any good

The 1992-93 currency crisis was still fresh in peoples memories and the politicians played up the ability of the currency to avoid such things.

Of course not a single person really thought about interbank lending as a potential problem and now we see where we are.

Tellos Athenaios

11-26-2011, 20:38

The DTCC tables I linked to show the gross notional USD value of outstanding CDS on (eg) Italian debt to be 312bn, with the net amount 21bn. This is compared to 2.2trn of outstanding Italian government debt (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=it&v=94).

Hah, that's nothing! Just look at the outstanding Dutch debt. 3.4trn, according to that site anyway. No, I am not making this up: if that site is to be believed the outstanding Dutch debt multiplied a thousandfold over the years 2005 and 2006 ... :book:

phonicsmonkey

11-27-2011, 09:08

Well that does look extremely odd and the chart doesn't match the data table below either for the Netherlands. The Italian figure of 2.2trn is correct though, I have seen it cited elsewhere.

a completely inoffensive name

11-27-2011, 09:10

I have a bag of old European currency from before most of western Europe switched to the Euro, should I hold onto it?

InsaneApache

11-27-2011, 10:13

I have a bag of old European currency from before most of western Europe switched to the Euro, should I hold onto it?

I should imagine that in order to combat tax evasion. No. There will be 'new' Drachmas, 'new' Liras, 'new' Escudos etc. etc.

Shame really 'cos so have I. :laugh4:

gaelic cowboy

11-27-2011, 16:28

I should imagine that in order to combat tax evasion. No. There will be 'new' Drachmas, 'new' Liras, 'new' Escudos etc. etc.

Shame really 'cos so have I. :laugh4:

There still legal tender all you have to do is bring the to the local central bank of whatever country and they exchange them for Euro.

phonicsmonkey

11-27-2011, 23:26

There still legal tender all you have to do is bring the to the local central bank of whatever country and they exchange them for Euro.

I thought there was a window for that which had now closed...but I could be wrong.

Nowake

11-30-2011, 21:21

Without one bit of pleasure derived from correcting the schadenfreude displayed by our Backroom's yanks who were at pains to gleefully warn us about the unavailability of a second Marshall plan:

The severity of the ongoing economic crisis in the Eurozone is perhaps best brought home by astriking statement (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/29/polish_foreign_minister_urges_german_action_on_euro.html) made Monday by conservative Polish politician Radek Sikorski. "I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say this," he said, "but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity."
Poland is not in the Eurozone, but it’s easy to see why Polish officials are panicking. Exports to the Eurozone members constitute more than 10 percent of Polish GDP, so a recession there would almost certainly spill over to Poland.

Should Americans share this fear? A similar analysis for the United States suggests we have much less to worry about. Our exports to the Eurozone are closer to 1.3 percent of GDP. That’s not nothing, but it’s a pretty small piece of the economic pie. It suggests that the economy has less to fear from reduced exports to a careening Europe than it does from the looming expiration of the Bush income tax cuts and the Obama payroll tax cuts.

But a different kind of analysis suggests that the United States could face catastrophe if the Eurozone tanks.

This terrifying possibility is suggested in a Nov. 7 lecture by Princeton professor Hyun Song Shi, “Global Banking Glut and Loan Risk Premium” (PDF (http://www.princeton.edu/~hsshin/www/mundell_fleming_lecture.pdf)). The starting point for his analysis is the fact—well-known to financial practitioners, unknown to the public, and perennially rediscovered by the economics profession—that a very large share of the world’s dollars are held in non-American accounts. Indeed, for several years in the late aughts the total dollar assets of non-American banks actually exceeded the total assets of the U.S. commercial banking system and even today the ratio is close to 1:1.

These foreign dollars—mostly held by European-headquartered global conglomerates—are not isolated from the American economy. Just as U.S. firms and households deposit money in American banks and take loans from the banks, European global banks intermediate between savers and spenders of dollars. A 2010 Bank of International Settlements survey (PDF (http://www.bis.org/publ/cgfs39.pdf)) revealed that as of 2009, 161 foreign banks were operating 226 branches in the United States that raised more than $1 trillion in wholesale funding, largely through money markets. Dollars raised in the United States tend to ultimately work their way back to the United States (which, after all, is where you can use dollars to buy things) through the shadow banking system. European banks aren’t the only ones in this game, but they are the largest player. The upshot is that decisions made in Europe about how much leverage to take on play almost as big a role in determining American credit conditions as do decisions made in the United States.

The lecture goes on to argue that European decision-making played a large role in inflating the now departed credit bubble of the mid-aughts, an interesting technical issue that needn’t keep you up late at night. The implication, however, is that a massive and sudden contraction of the European banking system would have the effect of automatically contracting credit conditions in the United States. If European credit markets tightened, the dollars held by European banks would suddenly become much less available as the basis for lending to American financial intermediaries and, ultimately, firms and households.

As George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen put it "if true, we are doomed (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/if-true-we-are-doomed.html)."

It sounds counterintuitive to believe that less lending and less debt could be a problem when we’re currently suffering from the excessive borrowing of the past. But this hangover theory (http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1998/12/the_hangover_theory.html)is mistaken. Less credit and less borrowing now will only make our problems worse. Some currently solvent enterprises and households will be pushed into bankruptcy by difficultly rolling over their current debt. Others will curtail purchases and investments. Both factors will reduce incomes and drive overall spending down, further adding to America’s already large stock of idle facilities and unemployed workers. The punch will come, in other words, not because the collapse of the European banking system will cripple the European economy and thus indirectly hurt our ability to sell things to Europeans. Instead the collapse of the European banking system will directly cripple an American economy that depends on European banks to provide a fair share of our credit. The middling growth of the past year has been powerfully driven by an incredible boom in equipment and software investment (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=3Ba) by American firms that could dry up overnight and deal a devastating blow to an already fragile economy.

Conventional thinking about Europe’s difficulties does not yet appear to take the effect on American credit markets into account. Yesterday the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released updated economic forecasts (http://www.oecd.org/document/47/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_49095919_1_1_1_1,00.html) reflecting new pessimism wherein “Euro area growth is forecast to slow down from 1.6 percent this year to 0.2 percent next year” while having only a modest impact on an American economy that will still grow 2 percent.

We can cross our fingers and hope that’s right, but since 2008 policymakers have suffered from a bias toward optimism. Europeans were initially far too smug about the idea that they were insulated from problems relating to a housing bubble on the other side of an ocean. Then, in 2010, American policymakers were far too impressed (http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/06/362234/two-ways-of-looking-at-the-job-market-in-march-2010/) by good news from the labor market and leapt to unwarranted conclusions about a “recovery summer.” Now the risk is that American leaders will overestimate our degree of insulation from the European banking system. You never want the people in charge to actually set off a panic by speaking too soon about hypothetical calamities, but we’d all better hope that somewhere in the basement of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve they’re prepping a Plan B to keep money flowing even if European finance dries up.[FONT=Verdana]

Source (http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/11/the_terrifying_new_theory_that_europe_s_economic_troubles_could_devastate_the_u_s_.html)
Complementary research paper (http://www.princeton.edu/~hsshin/www/mundell_fleming_lecture.pdf)

phonicsmonkey

12-01-2011, 02:55

Without one bit of pleasure derived from correcting the schadenfreude displayed by our Backroom's yanks who were at pains to gleefully warn us about the unavailability of a second Marshall plan:

Source (http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/11/the_terrifying_new_theory_that_europe_s_economic_troubles_could_devastate_the_u_s_.html)
Complementary research paper (http://www.princeton.edu/~hsshin/www/mundell_fleming_lecture.pdf)

Yes in the markets these are known as "Eurodollar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar)s"

Papewaio

12-01-2011, 03:01

phonicsmonkey

12-01-2011, 05:07

CDS seems to be more of the problem then a solution. Unregulated debt should not be the governments fault. Let this be the first too big slice of the cake to fail.

The whole idea of having a CDS on something you don't own smacks of someone rooting for the system to fail. Seems to be used by the ultimate form of parasite ... Finance vehicles created to create inertia and make systems fail so they get a payout.

Well guess what, call the bluff let the parasites play musical chairs with each other and do not give a single tax dollar to bail out their schemes.

The problem is systemic risk. Say a bunch of CDS speculators and those who are owed money by them go bankrupt. They are highly unlikely to be solely in the business of speculating on CDS, so their bankruptcy hits others who are engaged in other businesses, and in turn others etc etc.

The ripples spread outwards affecting parts of the financial system with no direct connection to CDS speculation.

Having said that I don't think the CDS is the issue here, it's just a peripheral second-order effect that is important to avoid. The main issue is providing liquidity to solvent yet illiquid governments (Italy) while they restructure and while a long-term solution is found to save the Euro.

gaelic cowboy

12-02-2011, 11:04

I dont think CDS is the problem yet.

I was under the impression the problem at the minute is Euro banks slimming there balance sheets of Asian assets to obtain dollars in order to hedge against possible Euro collapse.

InsaneApache

12-10-2011, 12:47

All very entertaining stuff. The 'Boy' v The Poison Dwarf. I'm neither convinced nor impressed.

3/10 See me.

InsaneApache

12-11-2011, 12:01

Oh dear. There's talk of chucking us out!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,802823,00.html

Good.

Fragony

12-11-2011, 14:04

The insults are hilarious as always, they should write rap.

' "What was on offer was not in Britain's interest ? so I didn't sign up to it," Cameron said. A little later, he made it clear that his country would not want to adopt the euro in the future either -- he was happy not to be in the Schengen Agreement, and happy not to be in the euro, he said.'

Isn't that from 'How to fry an eurocrat's brain in 3 simple steps'

rory_20_uk

12-11-2011, 16:59

Resurrecting our focus on the commonwealth would be a far better idea as if nothing else that would lead to diversified trade rather than all eggs in one basket.

~:smoking:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-11-2011, 18:11

Resurrecting our focus on the commonwealth would be a far better idea as if nothing else that would lead to diversified trade rather than all eggs in one basket.

~:smoking:

True. More to the point though, all this talk of "punishment" and "marginalisation" is foolish. If they try to make Euro-transactions exclusive to the Eurozone this will be interpreted in the same way as any other protectionist measure, a sign of a severe lack of confidence. There will just be a flight to dollars and a to a lesser extent sterling.

Also, trade embargo? With your only bi-lateral trading partner? Uh, no. The attitude in the Eurozone is that if we are bullied we will fall back into line, and if there was ever something to turn me decidedly anti EU this was it. And it has, so congratulations Eurocrats, I now positively believe we would be better off out in every concievable way.

It will be interesting to see how the non Eurozone countries shift their positions, Britain having broken ranks looks marginalised right now, but I can't honestly see the Czechs or Scandanavian monarchies signing up to something that restricts their soverignty for the sake of a currency union they aren't in. Britain having refused to sign up at EU level gives them an obvious opt-out down the road and it will only take one other country to back out after having made a show of engaging for other to follow.

Cecil XIX

12-11-2011, 21:13

Cameron did the right thing. I imagine a good deal of the criticism against him in EU circles is driven partly by the fact that he is actually listening to his constituents, a habit which would destroy the EU if others followed suit.

Nowake

12-11-2011, 21:33

:shrug: Yes, let me see *picks up the Political Leadership Compendium, turns a few pages*

Chapter VII: Statesmanship - Oh, no no no *turns a few more*

Chapter X: Vision - Certainly not! *searches page by page*

Chapter XIII: Populism - Ah, here we are, nicely put! It's the people's will and You are their Leader ergo You must Follow them!

Cecil XIX

12-11-2011, 21:43

Given that the changes in question would allow the EU to veto national budgets, and thus remove from the nation the absolute power to spend it's own money, Cameron's agreement would have been tantamount to signing away the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. That's something he has no authority to do in the first place.

Nowake

12-11-2011, 22:16

rory_20_uk

12-11-2011, 22:16

The previous rules didn't allow countries to have debts of over 60% GDP and budget deficits of over 3%. Who bothered with that?

So, now the alcoholic promises really hard to obey the similar rules.

If a country is in breach and basically says "sod you" when the EU tries to reprimand them, then what? They get thrown out of the EU? I doubt it. Many countries are agreeing to this as they have no intention of obeying the rules if they happen to be in breach.

~:smoking:

Papewaio

12-11-2011, 22:21

Cameron would have to be the head of state first before he could sign away sovereignty. I presume the very fact that sovereignty was on the table would have automatically stopped him from signing. After all he is first minister not President.

=][=

The EU is wobbling into a protectionist bracket.

I would as an EU citizen expect direct elections to the EU parliament. I would not expect that all of the highest tiers of state to be not directly elected. No representation with harsh economic reforms is a receipe for disaster. If the EU has been created to stop the next European war it's going about it the wrong way.

I'd much rather be in a poor econonmy with a bright future rather then a first world tinder box. Downhill is fine for skiing it ain't so great if it's your kids future.

rory_20_uk

12-11-2011, 22:22

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-11-2011, 23:04

Simply because I love this quote: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
Plus, your argument is false, there’s no binding legal argument to be brought forth.
If say, Nick Clegg was in power, it would’ve been signed, the Liberal Democrats made it pretty clear already – the whole coalition government is simmering because of the rift provoked by Cameron’s populism and corporate-servility: as the principal point of contention involved banking and financial regulations that Cameron felt would negatively affect the City.

One of the things Cameron wanted was for banks to be required to hold a higher percentage of capitol vs assetts, the other major thing he wanted was for trading in Euro's to not be restricted to the Eurozone (Sarko particularly objected to this) and for financial regulation (read Tobin Tax) to remain either a veto issue or the preserve of national parliaments. None of that is contentious, this was about the "Anglo-Saxon bankers" narrative which is being used to disguise systemic flaws in the Euro.

We've been here before, except then banking houses like Goldmen Sachs were called "Jewish" instead of "Anglo-Saxon".

The UK is being deliberately scapegoated.

As to Cameron's decision, given the domestic political situation, he really had no choice. Signing a deal would have resulted in a no-confidence vote and his replacement by a hardline Eurosceptic, fracturing the coalition and triggering a general election; calling a referendum on the issue would have fractured the coalition and triggered an election, and possibly have resulted in a "no" vote anyway. It's worth pointing out that both paths would probably have returned majority Conservative governments and completely wiped out the Lib-Dems, so Cameron had a limited amount to gain from this manuavere, except time for the Eurozone to find a solution, which should quiet the coalition if it leads to a pick up in the economy.

In a round about way, this move is really the best one for Nick Clegg, not David Cameron.

As to Clegg signing, who say's it's a good idea anyway? A new "stability pact" won't solve the problem, only Germany standing behind the PIGS and Italy will do that, because until it is seen that selling Italian bonds and buying German ones will result in German money flowing into Italy investors will continue to bet on an eventual breakup, and buy and sell accordingly.

Cameron would have to be the head of state first before he could sign away sovereignty. I presume the very fact that sovereignty was on the table would have automatically stopped him from signing. After all he is first minister not President.

=][=

The EU is wobbling into a protectionist bracket.

I would as an EU citizen expect direct elections to the EU parliament. I would not expect that all of the highest tiers of state to be not directly elected. No representation with harsh economic reforms is a receipe for disaster. If the EU has been created to stop the next European war it's going about it the wrong way.

I'd much rather be in a poor econonmy with a bright future rather then a first world tinder box. Downhill is fine for skiing it ain't so great if it's your kids future.

Quite so, and "protectionism" is the word, as is "populist" with all this talk of "Anglo-Saxons" The EU is now flirting with Facist ways of "managing" its electorate.

Beskar

12-11-2011, 23:05

For the British peeps, there is a series on the BBC at the moment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017znzt/The_Partys_Over_How_the_West_Went_Bust_Episode_1/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018jshh/The_Partys_Over_How_the_West_Went_Bust_Episode_2/

Nowake

12-11-2011, 23:07

Cameron would have to be the head of state first before he could sign away sovereignty. I presume the very fact that sovereignty was on the table would have automatically stopped him from signing. After all he is first minister not President.
Yes it was argued just above. Yet it is not true.

And the British did not even ask for an "emergency brake" clause or opt-out for financial regulation.

What they asked for was a protocol imposing decision-making by unanimity on a number of areas of regulation currently decided by majority voting. (If you want to be really technical, the choice is voting by unanimity or the special Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) used in the EU, which is a sort of super-majority system taking into account a certain number of countries and also their populations).

This amounted to a big winding-back of the clock for many EU leaders, setting a "horrendous precedent" that could unravel the single market. As they see it, common rules for the common market have been adopted (with few exceptions, such as tax) by QMV ever since the Single European Act approved by Margaret Thatcher in 1986.

The much-discussed Financial Transactions Tax issue already requires unanimity and therefore could never be imposed on the City of London without Britain's agreement. What is more, as was pointed out in Brussels with some vehemence, when it comes to financial services there have hardly ever been any cases of Britain being outvoted in the adoption of such legislation.

In simple terms, that means that Britain's request to move to unanimity was taken as a huge ask that had nothing to do with the subject at hand (saving the euro) or was a sign of bad faith (because it is driven by mistrust regarding future legislation).

It's easy to say what one would have done when in the luxury of not having to live with the consequences of it
True, proclaiming your europhilia is a campaign winning move in the UK /slap ~:pat:

Papewaio

12-12-2011, 00:05

But why should EU members who have a currency other then the Euro have to shore up the Euro? That and have the Euro not tradeable outside the zone ( if that is actually even the case... Given the amount of money involved a shell company would easily circumvent it).

Its essentially asking for EU members who are fiscally responsible to write a blank check for those who aren't. Something I for one would be loathe to do without direct representation.

=][=
As for being a pseudo- external observer IMDHO the EU had to be more transparent and accountable whilst being more open to trade with the rest of the world. No point making laws without the ability to enforce them. Also no laws should be morally binding without representation... Proxy and implicit is not good enough when talking of a first world meta-nation.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 00:06

I am English and I have always believed that it is in Britain's interests to remain a member of the EU (with all the benefits of being part of that 'liberalised' trading bloc and few of the costs thanks to Thatcher's hard line negotiations at the outset) and to stay outside of the Euro (to preserve the benefits of freedom of monetary and fiscal policy).

I don't think anything has radically changed in this analysis. Cameron could have signed the deal without over-stepping his powers - as Prime Minister he has the executive powers which are only nominally vested in the Queen and are in practice delegated to HMG. Instead he chose to hold out for concessions which never came and ended up with nothing. Time will tell whether or not this was a good move but as I alluded to above at least when Thatcher did the same she came home with a bag full of cash!

Also the contention that agreeing to this deal would have handed over sovereignty to Brussels is just plain wrong - it all comes down to whether or not it is enforceable and how. As someone said above if the fiscal rules are agreed to and then not followed what happens? If the answer is that the government has the option to leave the EU and break the treaty then it is still sovereign no matter what it has agreed to in the pact.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 00:39

Also the contention that agreeing to this deal would have handed over sovereignty to Brussels is just plain wrong - it all comes down to whether or not it is enforceable and how. As someone said above if the fiscal rules are agreed to and then not followed what happens? If the answer is that the government has the option to leave the EU and break the treaty then it is still sovereign no matter what it has agreed to in the pact.

You mean it's debatable. It would be enforcable if European institutions, such as the Commission or Court, were used and that would impact Britain because they are EU institutions.

How do you feel about my analysis of the political situation in Blighty? From where I'm sitting Cameron is in the opposite position to Thatcher because she was ousted for saying, "no".

Cecil XIX

12-12-2011, 01:14

As someone said above if the fiscal rules are agreed to and then not followed what happens? If the answer is that the government has the option to leave the EU and break the treaty then it is still sovereign no matter what it has agreed to in the pact.

If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that Britain would not be handing over it's sovereignty because it can just ignore the law. Is that really any better? If you sign something because you think it's unenforceable, what do you do if it becomes enforceable in the future? Or what if it's not clear if it's enforceable? In fact, this is the same logic that the south used to justify seceding from the US and which started the Civil War.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 01:40

If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that Britain would not be handing over it's sovereignty because it can just ignore the law. Is that really any better? If you sign something because you think it's unenforceable, what do you do if it becomes enforceable in the future? Or what if it's not clear if it's enforceable? In fact, this is the same logic that the south used to justify seceding from the US and which started the Civil War.

Cecil, I'm not saying they should have signed it because it wouldn't have been enforceable. I'm saying that even if they had decided to sign it, for whatever reason, that wouldn't have represented a handover of sovereignty because it's a treaty between nations which can be revoked by Parliament at any time.

Nation states enter into treaties all the time which impact on their sovereign powers (for example a mutual defence pact which 'compels' the nation to go to war under certain circumstances) without actually giving up sovereignty. As long as you can break a treaty you are still sovereign.

Interesting example of the US civil war. Under my analysis you could say the South was asserting its sovereignty and by winning the war the North asserted its own and removed the South's. In fact invasion (or surrender in the face of it) is really the only way to transfer or expunge a nations' sovereignty in the truest sense.

As it goes I'm not sure whether they should have signed it or not - a lot will depend on what position the UK is now able to occupy within the larger EU negotiating group and whether it can now secure outcomes in the UK interest. The cost to the UK of signing (tobin tax etc) might have been worth the benefit of being on the inside, might not - I don't feel able to take a position on that right now.

PVC, I'm not currently living in England and haven't for some years to I'm not best placed to comment on the party political situation, but it does appear that Cameron is being held hostage by the crazy right wing of his party (see John Redwood's leadership bid in 1995 and the living dead that supported it - these are the people currently in charge of Britain!) and that Clegg is better placed to put up and shut up...his protestations are merely grand standing for the benefit of his own party as he cannot afford to force an election and go to the polls.

tibilicus

12-12-2011, 01:45

Resurrecting our focus on the commonwealth would be a far better idea as if nothing else that would lead to diversified trade rather than all eggs in one basket.

~:smoking:

Isn't this what was going wrong in the 60s before we joined the single market? Commonwealth trade simply wasn't viable?

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 02:04

Isn't this what was going wrong in the 60s before we joined the single market? Commonwealth trade simply wasn't viable?

I don't know about that but I do know one thing. We joined a trading bloc. Confirmed by the referendum in 1975. We did not join a fledgling superstate.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 02:16

I don't know about that but I do know one thing. We joined a trading bloc. Confirmed by the referendum in 1975. We did not join a fledgling superstate.

Depends who you ask! Even among the Tory party there are those who believe in a federal europe. Arguably Ted Heath was one of them. (so was Winston Churchill by the way although I don't think he would have envisaged his 'United States of Europe' being quite so run by the Germans).

tibilicus - exactly, at that time the Commonwealth was not a fruitful ground for trade. However, with the rise of India, the coming emergence of Africa and the developing world more broadly and with the economic resilience of Australia, New Zealand and Canada in the face of this latest financial crisis, who's to say it couldn't be viable now? It's an interesting idea anyway. We should scrap the Commonwealth Games though...I mean, seriously who cares except the Aussies?!

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 02:22

Depends who you ask! Even among the Tory party there are those who believe in a federal europe. Arguably Ted Heath was one of them. (so was Winston Churchill by the way although I don't think he would have envisaged his 'United States of Europe' being quite so run by the Germans).

A better question would be, did Churchill invisage Britain being part of the USE, I think he believed the Empire would endure but that we needed an ally (the USE) to counter our natural enemies, the USA and USSR.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 02:24

Not that old chestnut about Winston Churchill again. He did not want the UK involved at all.

And Heath was a traitor who should have been sent to the Tower. Same with Hesletine and Clarke.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 02:32

Not that old chestnut about Winston Churchill again. He did not want the UK involved at all.

And Heath was a traitor who should have been sent to the Tower. Same with Hesletine and Clarke.

Now I didn't say he wanted us in it! But as PVC pointed out he believed the Empire would survive.

As to your comment about traitors, all I can say is 'blimey'. This must be the measured debate the backroom is famous for! :laugh4:

Beskar

12-12-2011, 02:59

'United States of Europe' would be a good thing. First would be the destruction of the nation state, dissolving everyone into regional bodies. The dissolution of all the states into regional bodies would quell regionalism feeling such as Scania, Scotland, Basque Country, Catalonia, and a great many of for like across Europe. Great thing about this also is that a great many nations already have regional bodies already existing! Britain, France, Spain, Germany... so it would simply be the total eradication of a tier of government across the board. Great savings too! No need for 26 identical governmental departments, simply one, the European one.

Now, we revamp European Parliament system to make it at least AV, if not STV voting system, electing representatives across Europe from the areas they reside in based on population, then with a second house 'Senate' based from the local regional parliaments which would be the counter balance with the Parliament. There would be a constitution safeguarding the rights of the citizens of Europe. The areas are mostly autonomous in nature anyway, the nation/European parliament would only deal with issues that affect everyone as a whole such as Defence (Armed Forces), Foreign Office, and those typical departments you would expect.

Ultimately, the system is built in a way that people can simply get on with their lives without having to worry too much about what happens in Brussels as nothing really that meaningful occurs, other than the odd speech saying dictator x should stop being a naughty boy.

As for "Economical Policy", I think it is safe to say that it should be copied more from Germany and China than Britain or the United States. (Especially not Italy or Greece)

Ultimately even if people are refusing to accept it, Britain isn't some great powerful mystical nation, it is a husk of its former self, a complete joke in many regards and in the next decade or so, I doubt it would even be Britain anymore, it would simply be "England" with Scotland seceding and rejoining the European Union and Northern Ireland re-uniting with it's Irish neighbours and the Falklands being sold off to Argentina for the fraction of the price in efforts to 'Fix the Debt'.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 03:15

As for "Economical Policy", I think it is safe to say that it should be copied more from Germany and China than Britain or the United States. (Especially not Italy or Greece)

This is definitely not safe to say!

Hundreds of millions still live in poverty in China and vast inequalities of income are being created at a frightening rate as the government struggles to keep a lid on the rapid urbanisation of their population while pumping massive sums into capital projects like high speed rail and filling the state-owned banking system with loans of dubious quality. As a very wise Chinese ruler once said when asked his views on the French revolution (some two hundred years later) "it's too early to tell'.

Also, while the growth figures coming out of China are phenomenal in both absolute and percentage terms, it must be remembered that this is a developing country. The political system and attendant repression do not have at this point the flexibility or freedom within them to support the necessary innovation and entrepreneurship to keep a developed economy growing once it has matured. So a direct comparison to the US or Britain is really misleading. More relevant (but still worth little due to the anachronism involved) would be to compare China now with the US or Britain at their equivalent stage of development, the Industrial Revolution, when growth rates in those economies were comparable to Chinese GDP growth now. Or, for a more regional comparison, Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. Look what happened there as that economy matured and was not liberalised...stagnation for decades.

As to Germany, while it's true that an intentionally solid manufacturing base has benefited that country well in comparison to the economies of the US and UK, it's quite arguable that the Euro itself and the resulting artificially low "deutschmark" is mostly responsible for German export strength over the past years. Without the PIIGS to keep the Euro low, Germany would have found its goods far less competitive in the global market. Which is an irony when you consider your point that we shouldn't copy Italy and Greece, for without them there would be no 'Germany' in the sense that you mean it.

Let's see what happens over the next five to ten years before we all start worshipping the Bundesbank and Chinese politburo.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 03:22

As to your comment about traitors, all I can say is 'blimey'. This must be the measured debate the backroom is famous for! :laugh4:

And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm. So help me God."

BILL OF RIGHTS [1689]

Still the law of the land even after 300 years. That's what makes them traitors.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 04:26

BILL OF RIGHTS [1689]

Still the law of the land even after 300 years. That's what makes them traitors.

That's just silly. An elected government has the power to enter into treaties with other nation states. Presumably along these lines you also think that the UN, World Bank, IMF and Interpol also represent treasonous endeavours? NATO?

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 04:42

So the law is an ass eh?

It's still the law though and it should be upheld or removed from the statute books. One of the funny things is that it was exactly this law that MPs used to try and get away with fiddling their expenses, citing Parliamentary privilege. Talk about picking and choosing.....

That's just silly. An elected government has the power to enter into treaties with other nation states. Presumably along these lines you also think that the UN, World Bank, IMF and Interpol also represent treasonous endeavours? NATO?

You'll have to remind me of the last time that the UN, World Bank, IMF, Interpol and Nato last set laws in the UK.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 04:49

You'll have to remind me of the last time that the UN, World Bank, IMF, Interpol and Nato last set laws in the UK.

We don't have to accept any EU laws, we can reject them by leaving the EU or renegotiating the terms of our treaties. So strictly it's still the UK parliament that passes those laws set by the EU bodies.

And all of those other bodies set policy which impinges on UK 'sovereignty' to a greater or a lesser extent. Interpol has 'jurisdiction', NATO has 'authority'.

It's absurd to talk of treason in the context of a representative government entering into entirely voluntary arrangements, by negotiated treaty, with its neighbours. That was what I was attempting to highlight.

As for MPs expenses, a lot of gumph was spouted by the pigs with their snouts in the trough, none of it sensible and most of it disingenuous.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 05:19

It is a slow day in a little Greek Village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 06:20

Nowake

12-12-2011, 10:14

Pff, this thread moved fast - of course, mainly because a stupid old chestnut full of antique British politics had to be brought forth ewww!

As for being a pseudo- external observer IMDHO the EU had to be more transparent and accountable (...) Also no laws should be morally binding without representation... Proxy and implicit is not good enough when talking of a first world meta-nation.
/theatrically pretends to faint My dear chap, where do you get these ideas?!
Europe is not ready for direct democracy. Petty nationalism would run rampant.
In general, the people are ignorant and misguided. Case in point: it is the people who elect the politicians you so despise in the first place.

A year may be a long time for in politics, yet a decade is a short time in government.

hidden reference The goal we should aim for in the next half a century is to run a civilised, technocratic government machine, only tempered by occasional general elections. Brussels is for the next few decades a supra-national organism. Therefore, it must seek to gradually exclude the voter from government, up to the point where it picks every few years whichever pack of incompetents will volunteer to interfere with European policy and send them to Brussels, where we will let them panic over this and that and the other. Politicians love to panic, they need activity, it’s their substitute for achievement.

We joined a trading bloc. Confirmed by the referendum in 1975. We did not join a fledgling superstate.
And this is why the public is ignorant and misguided.

You should have been cheering Germany’s initiatives.
Angela Merkel has not tired of repeating that member states’ budgetary policies should be placed under the authority of judges in Luxembourg with the power to sanction “fiscal sinners” - the compromise established on 5 December between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy has sidelined this solution.
This is a policy that is based on one of the most well-established schools of liberal thought, “ordoliberalism”, which emerged between the wars in Germany and was popularised in the postwar period as “the social market economy” by the influential Christian-Democrat Ludwig Erhard.
Michel Foucault identified the originality of this school of liberalism, which makes constitutional regulation and judges the levers and principle guarantors of the construction of a political order founded on a strict respect for economic freedom and free competition.
In the context of ‘a politics’ that is deemed incapable of creating a stable and predictable environment for economic operators, constitutional regulation (the much vaunted ‘golden rule’) is the sole instrument to combat the “temporal incoherences” of democratic governments. And it is in this context that the German proposal to place in the hands of judges budgetary power, which is a core competency of parliament, should be evaluated.

This school of thought is not new in Brussels. In the wake of several decades dominated by the ‘Monnet method’ which advocated entrusting the economic and political modernisation of the continent to an enlightened technocracy - that is not to say said technocracy cannot exist in the presence of ordoliberalism - it is easily forgotten that the European project also has roots in a judicial and economic ordoliberal credo that is still very much alive in Germany.
It is impossible to understand one of the pillars of European construction, which is the policy of free competition, without taking into account the close links maintained over many years with the milieu of German ordoliberalism. It should be said that these ideas provide the basis for a “strong Europe” and the reinforcement of supranational institutions: but only on the express condition that such institutions maintain an apolitical independence, along the lines the European Central Bank or the European Court of Justice.

In short, the German proposal is much more than an ephemeral solution to an emergency situation. It is based on an authentic European federalist doctrine that aims to call a halt to the slow deployment of a democratic logic in the heart of supranational institutions, whose initial goal was economic modernisation.
As such, it would definitively put an end to repeated attempts to create a European political constitution, and pave the way for construction of an economic constitution in its stead.

As to Germany, while it's true that an intentionally solid manufacturing base has benefited that country well in comparison to the economies of the US and UK, it's quite arguable that the Euro itself and the resulting artificially low "deutschmark" is mostly responsible for German export strength over the past years. Without the PIIGS to keep the Euro low, Germany would have found its goods far less competitive in the global market. Which is an irony when you consider your point that we shouldn't copy Italy and Greece, for without them there would be no 'Germany' in the sense that you mean it.
Correct. What’s more, I was reading a Der Spiegel article recently which made a lot more incisive assertions, especially documenting the way Germany is in fact one of the least fiscally disciplined members of the EU, below the level of Spain and demonstrating less repentance than Italy.

Financial market investors and German politicians don’t really have a lot in common. Normally, the former don’t understand why the latter need so much time to implement the decisions they reach at a crisis summit. Conversely, the investors serve the politicians as the scapegoat of choice when it comes to who caused the crisis of the day.
There is one point, however, where both are unusually united: in their view of Germany’s fiscal policy, regarded as solid and a role model for all the southern countries in debt. Even when the facts look very different, it’s a boat no one really wants to rock.And so the Christian Democratic Union’s chief whip, Volker Kauder, recently got away with declaring at the CDU convention that “Europe is speaking German now“. With this bit of chauvinist swagger, Kauder neatly summed up the politics of his Chancellor. Since the euro crisis broke out early in 2010, Angela Merkel’s mantra has been that if everyone could just save like the Germans, there wouldn’t be any problems.You have to grant it to Merkel: apparently, she’s been rather convincing. In any case, the investors in the financial markets seem to believe the Federal Chancellor. While they’re demanding higher interest rates to buy government bonds from almost all the other eurozone countries, they’re giving their money to the German finance minister virtually at zero cost.

Germany is not saving

It’s hard to explain this rationally. Anyone who looks just a little deeper, of course, will naturally observe that countries like Spain or Italy are not nearly as badly off as the high interest rate spreads suggest. But he will certainly also discover that Germany is not the savings poster boy it claims to be.In its latest 2011 forecast for Germany, the European Commission estimates a debt ratio of 81.7 percent of gross domestic product. That’s significantly more than the 60 percent the European stability pact sets out as the debt ceiling – that pact that the federal government regularly uses to beat the southern European countries about the ears with, and that it wants to swing even harder. A country that wants to bring in other tough rules would do well to stick to them itself first. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker is therefore right to get worked up about German domineering. Spain, for example, with a debt ratio of 69.6 percent, is considerably closer to complying with the Stability Pact than Germany is. Even the Dutch (64.2 percent) and the Finns (49.1 percent) have more right to put themselves forward as European disciplinarian than the Germans do.The only thing that currently justifies trust in Germany’s public finances is the relatively low budget deficit ratio, i.e. the new borrowing relative to economic output. That the ratio is significantly less than it is in the southern states has many causes – but none of them has anything to do with the image of the “iron-willed savers” that the federal government loves to play up to.

Arrogant hymns to the discipline of the German state

On the contrary, Germany is not saving. Federal budget spending has gone up recently and, according to the financing plans, will stay relatively steady in the coming years at around 300 billion euros. The austerity package that’s part of it, and which was adopted last autumn with great deal of fuss, has changed as little as the “debt brake” that the Germans love to hawk around Europe.The fact that the deficit ratio is nonetheless dwindling is due solely to the strong economy of the past year and a half, which has given the federal government unexpectedly high tax revenues and also driven GDP strongly upwards. Since the deficit ratio is calculated as the ratio of debt to GDP, it’s therefore falling. That has very little to do with saving.Even the good economic situation has, so far, not been a result of Teutonic asceticism – at least not by the state. The high demand for German goods abroad is mainly due to the firms that make good products at relatively low cost.The current government, however, with their arrogant hymns to the discipline of the German state, are bringing down much of Europe. In Greece, Spain or Italy – where the Germans were once valued for their virtues, at least – they are now seen primarily as arrogant taskmasters who want to tell the people on the rest of the continent how to live and how to work. That can’t bode well for the future.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 11:09

Blimey you don't like freedom much do you?

Furunculus

12-12-2011, 11:28

True. More to the point though, all this talk of "punishment" and "marginalisation" is foolish.

agreed, there is more to it than just mere treaties, there is the simple fact they want our £50b/year:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/charlescrawford/100117022/when-to-demand-far-reaching-eu-treaty-changes-and-when-not-to/

PVC, I'm not currently living in England and haven't for some years to I'm not best placed to comment on the party political situation, but it does appear that Cameron is being held hostage by the crazy right wing of his party (see John Redwood's leadership bid in 1995 and the living dead that supported it - these are the people currently in charge of Britain!) and that Clegg is better placed to put up and shut up...his protestations are merely grand standing for the benefit of his own party as he cannot afford to force an election and go to the polls.

see any opinion polls lately from the times and the mirror?

Depends who you ask! Even among the Tory party there are those who believe in a federal europe. .......... (so was Winston Churchill by the way although I don't think he would have envisaged his 'United States of Europe' being quite so run by the Germans).

sure he was, but he didn't envisage britain being part of it.

'United States of Europe' would be a good thing. First would be the destruction of the nation state, dissolving everyone into regional bodies. ..........
Now, we revamp European Parliament system to make it at least AV, if not STV voting system, electing representatives across Europe from the areas they reside in........
As for "Economical Policy", I think it is safe to say that it should be copied more from Germany and China than Britain or the United States. (Especially not Italy or Greece)..............
I doubt it would even be Britain anymore, it would simply be "England" with Scotland seceding and rejoining the European Union and Northern Ireland re-uniting with it's Irish neighbours......

Only if people want that................. Wait, do they want that, or should we just impose those choices upon them?

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 11:41

I see we have an arguement over Blighty and it's position again hmm anyone notice the Banksters aint taking a blind bit of notice of the new Treaty Intergovermental Agreement crackpot plan.

Yes lets save the burning house by putting in place a plan to buy a new fire engine next year to give people "Confidence"

This new plan does nothing to fix a banking problem which has now become the problem for the whole Euro both North and South.

There plan of course to avoid referendum is doomed in Ireland as we cannot change our constition without one.

Is Mise Gaelic Cowboy, beidh mé ag vótáil

Níl

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 13:12

Well, if I ever needed proof Nowarke was an elitist with no connection to the general population, I have it now in sapdes. I know you're ignoring me Nowarke, but you might like to consider how close your rhetoric is to classical political facism, particularly the bit about the ignorant plebs.

'United States of Europe' would be a good thing. First would be the destruction of the nation state, dissolving everyone into regional bodies. The dissolution of all the states into regional bodies would quell regionalism feeling such as Scania, Scotland, Basque Country, Catalonia, and a great many of for like across Europe. Great thing about this also is that a great many nations already have regional bodies already existing! Britain, France, Spain, Germany... so it would simply be the total eradication of a tier of government across the board. Great savings too! No need for 26 identical governmental departments, simply one, the European one.

Now, we revamp European Parliament system to make it at least AV, if not STV voting system, electing representatives across Europe from the areas they reside in based on population, then with a second house 'Senate' based from the local regional parliaments which would be the counter balance with the Parliament. There would be a constitution safeguarding the rights of the citizens of Europe. The areas are mostly autonomous in nature anyway, the nation/European parliament would only deal with issues that affect everyone as a whole such as Defence (Armed Forces), Foreign Office, and those typical departments you would expect.

Ultimately, the system is built in a way that people can simply get on with their lives without having to worry too much about what happens in Brussels as nothing really that meaningful occurs, other than the odd speech saying dictator x should stop being a naughty boy.

As for "Economical Policy", I think it is safe to say that it should be copied more from Germany and China than Britain or the United States. (Especially not Italy or Greece)

Ultimately even if people are refusing to accept it, Britain isn't some great powerful mystical nation, it is a husk of its former self, a complete joke in many regards and in the next decade or so, I doubt it would even be Britain anymore, it would simply be "England" with Scotland seceding and rejoining the European Union and Northern Ireland re-uniting with it's Irish neighbours and the Falklands being sold off to Argentina for the fraction of the price in efforts to 'Fix the Debt'.

So, really you invisage a herd of 50 to 100 cats instead of 27, and you assume that this new "national" EU government will keep itself nice and unobtrusive. That didn't work in the US, the Federal Government is one of the post powerful and controlling regimes in the world. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not your objective.

As to economics, the economics of Northern and Southern Italy aren't even harmonised, good luck imposing a one size model on the whole of Europe.

Another thing, while we're here: Are you going to ask before "destroying" these nation states, or are you going to do it with tanks?

I see we have an arguement over Blighty and it's position again hmm anyone notice the Banksters aint taking a blind bit of notice of the new Treaty Intergovermental Agreement crackpot plan.

Yes lets save the burning house by putting in place a plan to buy a new fire engine next year to give people "Confidence"

This new plan does nothing to fix a banking problem which has now become the problem for the whole Euro both North and South.

There plan of course to avoid referendum is doomed in Ireland as we cannot change our constition without one.

Is Mise Gaelic Cowboy, beidh mé ag vótáil

Níl

Well said, stick it to them again Ireland.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 13:19

see any opinion polls lately from the times and the mirror?

You must be joking, I don't read either of those rags! I gets me left wing from the grauniad and me right wing from the economist...

gaelic cowboy is (as quite often in this thread) entirely correct - this will do nothing to solve the actual problem, but what it will do is provide a figleaf which will finally allow the ECB to step in.

With Merkozy having chastised the naughty children and laid down the 'rules' by which they must now all behave, they should now be free to print money with wild abandon without fear of moral hazard.

Furunculus

12-12-2011, 13:39

You must be joking, I don't read either of those rags! I gets me left wing from the grauniad and me right wing from the economist...

gaelic cowboy is (as quite often in this thread) entirely correct - this will do nothing to solve the actual problem, but what it will do is provide a figleaf which will finally allow the ECB to step in.

With Merkozy having chastised the naughty children and laid down the 'rules' by which they must now all behave, they should now be free to print money with wild abandon without fear of moral hazard.
nor do I, but being a willing recipient of news i have at least become aware of the polls conducted by those papers. you should try it. *

gaelic cowboy is often right, but if he said that in the post just above i have failed to see it, and that fig-leaf is limited to bank support.

lol, that is not what i am hearing from Draghi and Merkel!

*

A Populus poll for the Times showed support for Cameron's position. The survey showed 57% felt he was right to use the veto while only 14% disagreed with the move. While 56% of voters felt the UK would lose influence in the EU, only 24% felt that it would weaken the prospect of economic recovery in Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/12/eu-veto-no-threat-coalition

So just over 80% of those who fell one way or another approved.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 14:05

You must be joking, I don't read either of those rags! I gets me left wing from the grauniad and me right wing from the economist...

gaelic cowboy is (as quite often in this thread) entirely correct - this will do nothing to solve the actual problem, but what it will do is provide a figleaf which will finally allow the ECB to step in.

With Merkozy having chastised the naughty children and laid down the 'rules' by which they must now all behave, they should now be free to print money with wild abandon without fear of moral hazard.

Try the Telegraph. Really. I read the Telegraph and the Guardian daily, I find that to be the most economical balance, as the only remaining mainstream broadsheets both strive for respectability, and that means they print the facts and figures. The Telegraph is the only place where you will see it in print that Clegg was "bitterly disapointed" with the "result" and not "the Prime Minister".

Regardless, Britain is more Eurosceptic than when you last lived here, and Cameron's move will (at least) play to the public almost as well as a referendum would have.

Beskar

12-12-2011, 14:13

As to economics, the economics of Northern and Southern Italy aren't even harmonised, good luck imposing a one size model on the whole of Europe.

General guideline. The idea is to produce and sell more than you import and to shore up a surplus for rainy days. This is what countries like Germany and China do, and then they even lend some of that surplus away to other Local regions are responsible for their own areas bur as there is a fiscal union, it isn't so bad compared to the status quo.

Only if people want that................. Wait, do they want that, or should we just impose those choices upon them?

Another thing, while we're here: Are you going to ask before "destroying" these nation states, or are you going to do it with tanks?

"With tanks" is silly and completely infeasible. Main aim is to hope enough people are convinced and see the merits of the grand plan and wilfully sign up for them.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 14:25

Beskar

12-12-2011, 15:24

Outside the intelligencia there's no support for your ideas. What you are asking is for people to change their identities, people don't do that willingly. Just look at the Welsh, the Scots, or even the Cornish with relation to "Great Britain".

Actually, my plan would give more credit to those regional identities and give those regions greater influence over themselves and in their greater autonomy. Europe is simply a knitting net which holds the collective will of the 'West/Europe' in terms of foreign policy in regards to powers who are not part of Europe. Whilst I do believe in that we should be "united", I don't think we should sign up for a very centralised government, system or federation.

Though ideologically speaking, it isn't 'simply that', it is only a stepping stone to further changes, this is model replicated in other large geographical areas, such as North America, South America, Africa, Asia, etc. Then ultimately once they harmonised to a sufficient degree. These large areas end up merging into a Global Federation based on this model. Once this is in place, the Federation government is weakened furthermore (due to lack of there being anything 'Foreign', unless Aliens come randomly.)

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 15:26

gaelic cowboy is (as quite often in this thread) entirely correct - this will do nothing to solve the actual problem, but what it will do is provide a figleaf which will finally allow the ECB to step in.

gaelic cowboy is often right, but if he said that in the post just above i have failed to see it, and that fig-leaf is limited to bank support.

lol, that is not what i am hearing from Draghi and Merkel!

Regardless if they had a whole Fig tree forest to hide behind I do not see the ECB acting as lender of last resort.

I get the sense that were probably past the whole lender of last resort arguement the ECB could buy all the bonds it wants now all that will happen is people will sell to it then refuse to buy new ones. This is like announcing to the whole village you will buy all there cattle at the mart in the back end and that you will be back to sell the same ones in the spring, your price per kilo next Janurary baring a massive move in beef prices globaly would tank.

So in a strange way Germany has a point but for the wrong reason inflation will not be the problem, the problem will be the price offered next spring if the taps are opened now.

The problem as we can all see is that with Britains veto they cant change the Lisbon Treaty but they also couldnt finish the meeting without having something to show the Bankster for todays bond auction, hence the intergovernmental agreement there flashing around like a voodoo doll at the bond markets.

We know the European banks are exposed to private losses so they have bought sovereign bonds (encouraged to do so by there governments and the ECB) as a way to offsset potential future losses by having supposed secure government assets on there books.

Now it looks like governments and banks all over the place may get downgraded which leads to more capital requirements for banks which could mean more government bailouts.

Except the governments may get downgraded leading to the banks supposedly secure government assets being worth less meaning more bailouts.

Basically we are a hairsbreath away from a systemic debt/death spiral and they are they are still talking up the Austerity Confidence Fairy it's like the bulldozer is outside and were arguing over what colour paint should be in the sitting room.

Keep this in your mind at all time about this crazy situation if Italy goes the Euro is over therefore if we keep on the present course expect to see Greece, Ireland and Portugal peeled off to appease the Banksters.
It has it's appeal as a solution and it might just work IF the countries stayed on the path to reform of there respective economies at there own pace. (it also might just save Italy)

Furunculus

12-12-2011, 15:48

bagehot (the old europhile charlamagne) has just come out with this corker:

"I think that a big part of the problem of Britain's relationship with Europe is that we genuinely are different. To simplify, as I said on the BBC this morning, I think that to some extent what happened on Thursday night was the logical end-point of a relationship based on distrust. Successive British governments have believed that on balance membership of the EU is in their interests (or is worse than non-membership). But because we are different (and because we take a common law as opposed to Napoleonic view of regulation, favouring a world in which everything is allowed unless it is expressly prohibited), we seek at every turn to pin down every detail of new rules or schemes being proposed, in case some of it turns out to be harmful. What was on the table on Thursday night was not clear in all its details when it came to the implications for the single market, so it was genuinely a tricky document for Mr Cameron."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/12/britain-and-eu-2

and remember, he's a europhile!

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 16:02

bagehot (the old europhile charlamagne) has just come out with this corker:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/12/britain-and-eu-2

and remember, he's a europhile!

Excellant observation and entirely correct in my view, all the news media want to know is the nitty gritty of the deal which apparently does not exist yet so we have apparent;ly agreed to something but we dont know or are not allowed to know yet what it is.

Unfortunately they can agree among themselves all they want they still have to get it past the voter here so it's all academic really.

I still for the life of me cannot figure out why they wont just accept the need take losses or failing that to extend the terms of the loans etc etc.

How can these people think that the voter will accept this stupid plan with no detail and no apparent real need for it either.

rory_20_uk

12-12-2011, 16:11

Furunculus

12-12-2011, 16:22

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 16:31

General guideline. The idea is to produce and sell more than you import and to shore up a surplus for rainy days. This is what countries like Germany and China do, and then they even lend some of that surplus away to other Local regions are responsible for their own areas bur as there is a fiscal union, it isn't so bad compared to the status quo.

Germany's much vaunted debt brake is anything but a stop on borrowing, apparently the legislation is full of loopholes etc etc they just havent needed to use it lately due to a weak Euro driving there exports.

Unfortunately were all ignoring the reality of the fact were in a balance sheet recession.

on one side we have assets that have devalued and on the other we have some government debt.

The solution they have picked is to drive down spending to engender confidence in the consumer, except the consumer is weighed down with debt and the government is hammering him for taxes to pay it's own debt.

So for a while back there the savings rate increased and the export rate shot up leading to a trade surplus so far so Austerity Confidence Fairy unfortunately now the savings rate has started to go down as people are litteraly paying the gas bill with there savings.

These by the way are the savings the government keeps telling us we will need to regain market confidence except there not being lent productively or spent in the wider economiy cos there servicing ever increasing debts.

It's easy talk about producing more than you buy when some people are buying from you, lets see the same chat next januray if a failed Italian bond auction sinks the Euro.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 16:50

Oh dear, those dastardly ratings agencies just won't play ball. Le Bastards.

The communiqué issued by European policymakers after the recent euro area summit offers few new measures and therefore does not change our analysis of the rising threat to the cohesion of the euro area and the further shocks to which it and the wider EU remain prone. As we announced in November, unless credit market conditions stabilise in the near future, our ratings of all EU sovereigns will need to be revisited. The communiqué does not change that view, and we continue to expect to complete such a repositioning during the first quarter of 2012.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/moodys-unhappy-friday-euro-summit-review-ratings-warns-multiple-defaults-and-exits-euro-area-co

rory_20_uk

12-12-2011, 17:07

"Germany keeps its currency artificially low by being in the Euro - if it were the DM it would have shot up,"

Perhaps not by as much as sometimes assumed, i have seen estimates as little as 7% up for germany, and 25% down for spain.
If those who are purchasing one's goods - such as other nations in the Euro - are looking at a "saving" of 32% that is going to make a massive difference to where the goods are bought.

~:smoking:

Furunculus

12-12-2011, 17:12

If those who are purchasing one's goods - such as other nations in the Euro - are looking at a "saving" of 32% that is going to make a massive difference to where the goods are bought.

~:smoking:

granted, but those purchasing nations are locked in debt-deflation because the euro/ECB prevents them clawing back productivity, then they won't be buying anyway.

and the difference is less extreme in many cases, far less.

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 17:22

granted, but those purchasing nations are locked in debt-deflation because the euro/ECB prevents them clawing back productivity, then they won't be buying anyway.

and the difference is less extreme in many cases, far less.

plus the single market allows you to open a bank account anywhere in the EU which negates capital controls.

Hence the massive capital flight by both ordinary individuals and industry at large in Ireland and I imagine the same is true of the rest of the PIIGS.
Clearly people are voting with there feet and current account even though only one bank has actually failed in Ireland and even that one has been bailed out in order to pay huge promisary notes to speculators in the unsubordinated debt market.

Apparently this will show the markets were serious about paying our way or some such god awful rubbish like that, thanks a bunch you clowns in the ECB thanks a hundred billion indeed.

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 18:00

Kenny: No referendum decision before March (http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1212/eurozone.html)

The Taoiseach has said no decision will be made before next March on whether or not a referendum will be needed in relation to EU Treaty changes.

Speaking in Westport, Co Mayo, Enda Kenny said if a referendum was necessary it would be held. "Between now and then a great deal of technical work, of legal work and wording to be gone through."

Referring to Britain's Veto to Treaty changes Mr Kenny said he would have preferred that all 27 EU member states continue to be involved in the discussions.

"Ireland is very interested in seeing that the Prime Minister retains a deep interest in expanding the single market."

Mr Kenny said he was not suggesting a situation where Ireland would set up a conduit for back channel discussions between Britain and the other EU member states, but he said: "We are anxious that every country be involved in the process because of its importance to the 500 million people who live in the EU member states."

European Economics Commissioner Olli Rehn earlier said he "very much regrets" Britain's decision not to sign-up to the deal.

Mr Rehn said Britain's decision would not prevent the City of London's bankers and financial corporations from being regulated.

The new measures, known as the six-pack, will come into force tomorrow. They are aimed at tightening the economic governance of the eurozone.

Mr Rehn described the deal as bold and effective and dismissed media speculation over the legality of the plan as unfounded.

He said Brussels wants a strong and constructive Britain in Europe, for Britain to be at the centre of Europe and not on the sidelines.

British Prime Minister defends decision

British Prime Minister David Cameron has defended his decision to break with European partners by vetoing a change to the EU treaty, insisting that remaining a member of the 27-nation bloc was in Britain's national interest.

Cameron's decision not to take part in an EU treaty change aimed at tightening fiscal rules for countries using the euro has isolated Britain in the 27-nation bloc and created the biggest rift in his coalition since he took power in May 2010.

The prime minister's ambiguous answers last Friday to questions over Britain's future membership of the EU sparked speculation that the UK may now be contemplating a future outside the EU, although analysts say that would damage Britain's economy.

Cameron said the choice he had faced was a treaty without proper safeguards for Britain's important financial services industry or no treaty. "The right answer was no treaty," he said. "It was not an easy thing to do but it was the right thing to do."

Yesterday, Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, said he was "bitterly disappointed" with the outcome of the summit, which he said was "bad for Britain."

Credit rating review

Meanwhile, credit rating agency Moody's has said it will review the credit ratings of all EU countries in the first quarter of next year after last week's summit of European leaders failed to deliver what it called "decisive policy measures".

"The absence of measures to stabilise credit markets over the short term means that the euro area, and the wider EU, remain prone to further shocks and the cohesion of the euro area under continued threat," the ratings agency said in a statement.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's last week warned the eurozone of a downgrade if the EU summit did not come up with a viable plan.

Moody's said last week's announcement by EU policymakers offered "few new measures".

It said what was announced did not change its previously expressed view that the eurozone crisis was "in a critical and volatile stage".

Europe's main stock markets dropped in opening deals today, with London's FTSE 100 index down 0.38% to 5,508.20 points.

Frankfurt's DAX 30 slid 0.69% to 5,945.19 points and in Paris the CAC 40 shed 0.67% to 3,150.84.

translation "obviously if it got around too much that Ireland needs a referendum this deal would be busted before it started so we will pretend till march and hope something turns up"

Notice how most the article is about Britain in relation to Ireland and it's place in the EU, basically if the UK pulls plant we will have to do the same we cant afford not too.

InsaneApache

12-12-2011, 18:34

basically if the UK pulls plant we will have to do the same we cant afford not too.

All your base now belong to us.

hehe.

gaelic cowboy

12-12-2011, 18:40

All your base now belong to us.

hehe.

Well there is the matter of you lot hanging on to the backgarden for some reason????

:sneaky:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-12-2011, 22:29

Actually, my plan would give more credit to those regional identities and give those regions greater influence over themselves and in their greater autonomy. Europe is simply a knitting net which holds the collective will of the 'West/Europe' in terms of foreign policy in regards to powers who are not part of Europe. Whilst I do believe in that we should be "united", I don't think we should sign up for a very centralised government, system or federation.

Though ideologically speaking, it isn't 'simply that', it is only a stepping stone to further changes, this is model replicated in other large geographical areas, such as North America, South America, Africa, Asia, etc. Then ultimately once they harmonised to a sufficient degree. These large areas end up merging into a Global Federation based on this model. Once this is in place, the Federation government is weakened furthermore (due to lack of there being anything 'Foreign', unless Aliens come randomly.)

A world without conflict?

Unlikely, you'd just get Civil War, unless Aliens landed. I think you're massively underestimating how much people invest in their national identities, especially the bits they claim not to like.

phonicsmonkey

12-12-2011, 23:39

I do not see the ECB acting as lender of last resort.

Why not? That is one of the primary purposes of a central bank after all.

I get the sense that were probably past the whole lender of last resort arguement the ECB could buy all the bonds it wants now all that will happen is people will sell to it then refuse to buy new ones. This is like announcing to the whole village you will buy all there cattle at the mart in the back end and that you will be back to sell the same ones in the spring, your price per kilo next Janurary baring a massive move in beef prices globaly would tank.

If the ECB says it will stand behind all euro-zone issued debt it will not have to outright buy many bonds anyway, at least nothing like the amount on issue. Confidence will be restored and the markets will normalize with the backstop of the strong central bank. All bondholders want to know is that they will get their money back as planned. Italy is solvent, it's just illiquid in the near term. The ECB can provide the support it needs to carry it through until it is liquid once more.

But even if it did massive bond purchases and took all this debt on its balance sheet, so what? It can just create euros out of thin air to use to repay or cancel the loans! It can do that because it is a central bank and has the ability literally to print money.

The reason it has not done so? Fear of inflation and fear of moral hazard.

Inflation is not the eurozone's problem right now. Output is so far below potential capacity that it can surely be dismissed as a serious issue for at least the coming years. And once we're through this, if we want to rein in inflation the good old ECB can just raise interest rates!

Moral hazard? Well I think to some extent that issue has been dealt with by the hard line taken by Merkel and Sarkozy so far. Governments have fallen rather than been allowed to get away wtih fiscal profligacy.

The ECB should act like a proper central bank. Look at the Fed. There's a reason that every time bad news comes out about the US economy there is a flight to US treasuries. It's because the markets have faith in the Fed to set policy.

Is any of this desirable? No, of course not, it would be far preferable not to be in this position in the first place.

Have there been massive errors in political leadership in Europe which have led us to this point? Yes, the eurozone is now clearly structurally unsound and needs serious reform to avoid more issues like these in the future.

None of this changes the fact that the right thing to do, right now, is for the ECB to announce it will provide unlimited support to otherwise solvent eurozone governments with liquidity issues. Like Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

Countries that are clearly insolvent should be allowed to default in a controlled manner - Greece, Portugal.

sorry gaelic, I'm not clear on the position of Ireland in this analysis but it would probably now fall into the first group wouldn't it?

InsaneApache

12-13-2011, 02:52

Utter fantasy.

phonicsmonkey

12-13-2011, 04:35

Utter fantasy.

How so old chap?

Papewaio

12-13-2011, 08:46

phonicsmonkey

12-13-2011, 09:27

What is being touted is the government read taxpayer covering all the risks of the brokers.

So the multi billion banks can play high risk high yield. Payout the shareholders, execs and brokers get massive pay for performance but if they collapse they don't cover the costs... The middle class gets to cover the costs in taxes to the central bank which is doing the bailing out.

Great plan!

Erm...a central bank doesn't levy taxes and no-one has to pay for its balance sheet if it is in "deficit". It literally creates money from nothing. That is exactly what the Fed has been doing these past three years (you can see it charted here (http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm), just push the start date back to 07 sometime) and do you see inflation rampant in the US? Nope! Because without the monetary stimulus there would be a massive recession and probably deflation - like the one which Europe is heading for if it doesn't wise up.

EDIT: just to clarify it's not the case that nobody pays for this largesse. The effects of QE2 in the US have been to flood emerging market currencies (including the AUD Pape!) with capital chasing yield and no doubt inflate asset bubbles which will later have to be dealt with. This is not an ideal situation to be sure but I think the collapse of the US under a staggering debt burden and a freeze of the financial system would have worse effects for everybody. Add Europe into the mix and you have a massive turd sandwich that we all have to take a bite out of.

There is also of course the risk of hyperinflation but as I've pointed it this has not happened so far and I don't think it's a risk in the near or even medium term in the US or Europe.

Papewaio

12-13-2011, 10:43

phonicsmonkey

12-13-2011, 10:52

Germany post WW I, South America twenty years ago, Zimbabwee now.

If you don't have something to back up the printed money i.e. loans or taxpayer money you will have to devalue the EU... and the confidence hit in the markets tends to be far worse if they don't think you can repay it. No such thing as a free lunch, and printing off more money for some without taking it out in other places will lead to devaluing the EU, rapidly.

Investors will flee in general, contrarians will find bargins here and there but even they may be scared off by the potential economic landslide and wait until they think it bottoms out.

End of the day the EU as a whole has to pull its finger out and be more productive be it smarter, longer hours or over a longer life time with more of the people contributing to allow for welfare states (people and corporate welfare). Something has to give, not all can take.

Where is the hyperinflation in the US? It's not a short term risk there or in Europe.

And I totally agree with everything you say about reform and restructuring but that can only be achieved once a degree of stability can be found.

There is genuinely no reason why there should be a risk of Italy defaulting. It has a positive primary surplus, plenty of assets it can sell to raise funds like it did in the early 90s and it's debt load is not even that historically high. It's only the absurd handcuffs placed on the ECB that is causing this market turbulence and vicious circle of higher financing costs.

If the ECB committed to stand behind euro zone debt these problems would immediately cease and we could get on with paying down debt, growing the economies and restructuring the euro zone so this never happens again.

And by the way I actually think devaluing the Euro would be a good thing for Europe - exporters would benefit greatly and increased tax receipts would help the fiscal position.

gaelic cowboy

12-13-2011, 12:02

Why not? That is one of the primary purposes of a central bank after all.

Indeed it is and it is one of the drivers of the instability.

However being lender of last resort without a fully fledged transfer union will merely result in it being slightly easier for the banks to accquire funding but the sovereigns will still be banjaxed.

If the ECB says it will stand behind all euro-zone issued debt it will not have to outright buy many bonds anyway, at least nothing like the amount on issue. Confidence will be restored and the markets will normalize with the backstop of the strong central bank. All bondholders want to know is that they will get their money back as planned. Italy is solvent, it's just illiquid in the near term. The ECB can provide the support it needs to carry it through until it is liquid once more.

What the ECB would most likely end up doing is buying on the secondary market especially for countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal because there not in the bond market at the minute. This would as I said only send a signal to sellers to get out now with full pay and then they would then scatter to the four winds.

Countries that are clearly insolvent should be allowed to default in a controlled manner - Greece, Portugal.

sorry gaelic, I'm not clear on the position of Ireland in this analysis but it would probably now fall into the first group wouldn't it?

Unfortunately this will not be allowed as the ECB owns all the paper and it appears to want every penny back.

For example Anglo Irish Bank no longer exists as a proper bank and has no deposits, it exists only to resolve it's debts now. Usually this would involve debtor and creditor sitting down and hammering out a plan of payment or default say paying 30cent in the Euro, however the ECB demands that all it's promissary notes be paid in full even the unsuborinated unsecured debt.

Paying unsubordinated debt is quite frankly almost an immorral action on the part of the ECB and they will fall due next March again as they will every year.

This forces our sovereign to hammer the public with austerity to pay something that does not benefit the public and requires more cutting every year which drives up the debt to GDP ratio which means we need more bailout money meaning more austerity.

Papewaio

12-13-2011, 12:33

Where is the hyperinflation in the US? It's not a short term risk there or in Europe.

How is unemployment going? Something gives out. Be if inflation, stagnation, high unemployment or lower quality of living.

Market wise you see fleeing from unsafe havens, credit freezing up and banks having to find funds from savers if possible or worse a Reserve Bank.

And I totally agree with everything you say about reform and restructuring but that can only be achieved once a degree of stability can be found.

Wrong way round. You have to do the hard work to get the stability... no washboard stomach without doing the core workout... no stability in the economy without the reforms. Anything else is delaying tactics and throwing more money at the problem. Money needs to be thrown at solutions not problems. Reform first and the market confidence will rise.

There is genuinely no reason why there should be a risk of Italy defaulting. It has a positive primary surplus, plenty of assets it can sell to raise funds like it did in the early 90s and it's debt load is not even that historically high. It's only the absurd handcuffs placed on the ECB that is causing this market turbulence and vicious circle of higher financing costs.

Selling off assests is a short term breather if no long term changes are enacted.

If the ECB committed to stand behind euro zone debt these problems would immediately cease and we could get on with paying down debt, growing the economies and restructuring the euro zone so this never happens again.

And by the way I actually think devaluing the Euro would be a good thing for Europe - exporters would benefit greatly and increased tax receipts would help the fiscal position.

Again throwing money without structural reforms isn't great. Also a devalued Euro will make it hard to buy things like food (coffee), electronics etc

gaelic cowboy

12-13-2011, 13:41

Wrong way round. You have to do the hard work to get the stability... no washboard stomach without doing the core workout... no stability in the economy without the reforms. Anything else is delaying tactics and throwing more money at the problem. Money needs to be thrown at solutions not problems. Reform first and the market confidence will rise.

Except the market expects two things that the ECB will be a lender of last resort and they expect haircuts on unsustainable bond prices for Ireland Greece and Portugal.

In effect this "Market Confidence" is supposed to be engendered in countries where there debt to GDP ratio will incresase during said reform period that is pretty much a non starter.

Basically how can we keep increasing debt to GDP because of the reform process and still expect people to change there mind about possible haircuts tomorrow.

Effectively the ECB wants everyone to get up earlier in the morning and pretend it's the same time we always got up when they could just write down unsustainable loans.

The loans will have to be wrote down or else they can extend the maturity, naturally the countries involved would be bared from the market due to default but then were bared anyway due to bailouts so what does it matter.

The reform process would still go on anyway in order to get the government deficits down it's just the unsustainable bank debt will be lifted from the sovereign.

Whats the point in saving a zombie bank when it only deflates your economy causing the banks to require more money meaning more deflation

Kralizec

12-13-2011, 14:54

Germany post WW I, South America twenty years ago, Zimbabwee now.

Inflation is caused by to much liquidity; i.e. too much money is being spent in too short a time. It's highly unlikely that pumping out money by the ECB at this point would result in inflation. It may cause more inflation in the long run, when the economy starts lifting up again, but that could be rectified by government asuterity to reduce the amount of "liquid" money in circulation; and there would be more breathing room to do so at that point.

Or at least, that's the general idea - I'm not sure wether I agree with it.

Papewaio

12-13-2011, 21:46

Inflation would be more likely if there was no one buying European goods and services. The shorter term reaction is likely to devalue the EU. Good for exports, bad for imports.

But markets are emotional and tend to over react. So they will need to see improvements or the money will flow East.

Papewaio

12-13-2011, 21:46

Inflation double post.

Cecil XIX

12-14-2011, 06:36

The goal we should aim for in the next half a century is to run a civilised, technocratic government machine, only tempered by occasional general elections. Brussels is for the next few decades a supra-national organism. Therefore, it must seek to gradually exclude the voter from government, up to the point where it picks every few years whichever pack of incompetents will volunteer to interfere with European policy and send them to Brussels, where we will let them panic over this and that and the other. Politicians love to panic, they need activity, it’s their substitute for achievement.

My god, I've gone through a time warp! Quick, is this 1917, 1922 or 1933?

phonicsmonkey

12-14-2011, 07:08

Inflation double post.

Hyper-post-inflation! Quick, turn off the printing presses! :laugh4:

gaelic cowboy

12-14-2011, 11:02

Hyper-post-inflation! Quick, turn off the printing presses! :laugh4:

Hmm we may have to bail your post count out for the foreseeable future as you reduce your internet usage

Nowake

12-14-2011, 16:24

Not catching up on .Org threads because my forum time is spent on reading your Quicksilver. Damn you GC /shakes fist in anger :yes:

Well, if I ever needed proof Nowarke was an elitist with no connection to the general population, I have it now in sapdes. I know you're ignoring me Nowarke, but you might like to consider how close your rhetoric is to classical political facism, particularly the bit about the ignorant plebs.
Oh dear, I’m not ignoring you Philipvs, not as a person, I simply do not care to devolve into your type of arguments, where the main focus is, in my opinion of course, not clarifying viewpoints, but rather the raising of easily disproved yet very, very obsessive objections in desperate bids to avoid making any concession to the logic or facts.

As to your allegations, it speaks to the state of the general political debate today that your average public has such a limited horizon of interpretation that it can only place a benign assertion as being pro or against fascism.

On that note, I keep saying that we really, really have to create an 26ptBoldIronicFont, else wit is totally wasted on you lot.

I posted the remarks to which you so object in the hope that someone in this thread crawling with Brits will recognize the paraphrasing and cheer up on being reminded of the amazingly good, most widely known British television political satire of all time and Thatcher’s declared favourite, Yes Minister, the two paragraphs being some of the program’s most infamous quips.
Hell, I even placed a wink before the first one by writing: /theatrically pretends to faint
Just to make sure no freak could miss the irony, I placed before the second the caveat: hidden reference.

And here are the actual quotes – providing larger quotes from the original, since they are so hilarious.

Yes Minister
*The discussion takes place between two Civil Servants*
Bernard Woolley: I don't know if I want power.
Sir Humphrey: If the right people don't have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it! Politicians, councillors, ordinary voters!
Bernard Woolley: But aren't they supposed to in a democracy?
Sir Humphrey: This is a British democracy, Bernard!
Bernard Woolley: How do you mean?
Sir Humphrey: British democracy recognises that you need a system to protect the important things of life and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians! Things like the Opera, Radio 3, the countryside, the law, the universities... BOTH of them. And we are that system!
Bernard Woolley: Gosh!
Sir Humphrey: We run a civilised, aristocratic government machine tempered by occasional general elections. Since 1832, we have been gradually excluding the voter from government. Now we've got them to a point where they just vote once every five years for which buffoons will try to interfere with OUR policies and you are happy to see all that thrown away?
Bernard Woolley: Well, no, no, I didn't mean...
Sir Humphrey: Bernard, do you want the Lake District turned into a gigantic caravan site? The Royal Opera House into a bingo hall? The National Theatre into a carpet sale warehouse? Do you want Radio 3 to broadcast pop music 24 hours a day? How would you feel if they took all the culture programmes off television?
Bernard Woolley: I never watch them.
Sir Humphrey: Well, neither do I, but it's vital to know that they're there!
My paraphrase
hidden reference The goal we should aim for in the next half a century is to run a civilised, technocratic government machine, only tempered by occasional general elections. Brussels is for the next few decades a supra-national organism. Therefore, it must seek to gradually exclude the voter from government, up to the point where it picks every few years whichever pack of incompetents will volunteer to interfere with European policy and send them to Brussels.

Yes Minister
Jim Hacker: It’s the public will. This is a democracy. And the people don’t like it.
Sir Humphrey: The people are ignorant and misguided.
Jim Hacker: Humphrey, it was the people who elected me.
*Sir Humphrey smiles suggestively*
My paraphrase
/theatrically pretends to faint My dear chap, where do you get these ideas?!
Europe is not ready for direct democracy. Petty nationalism would run rampant.
The people are ignorant and misguided. Case in point: it is the people who elect the politicians you so despise in the first place.

Of course, I had to run into the one Brit whose beliefs and sense of humour are, I suppose, the exceptions which prove the positive stereotype regarding British wit.
No worries, I know your Christian humility does not allow you to apologize.
By the by, for one turning so red-faced in a previous debate that he couldn’t help himself from correcting me:

It's Wyclif with one "F", not two. If you want to be anachronistic you could go with Wycliffe.
Your posts are generally perplexing – the latest:

Well, if I ever needed proof NowaRke was an elitist with no connection to the general population, I have it now in sapdes. I know you're ignoring me NowaRke, but you might like to consider how close your rhetoric is to classical political facism, particularly the bit about the ignorant plebs.
Not to put too fine a point on it, yet while I am not sure my English is good enough for me to pass for a Brit, yours would easily allow you to pass for a Romanian :2thumbsup:

Through this response I hope to reply to Apache and Cecil as well.
The second part of my post simply addressed the lack of information many of the ones frothing at the mouth against the German golden rule seem to suffer from. And I re-quote, as it remains salient and your misinterpretations buried it with no cause:

You should have been cheering Germany’s initiatives.
Angela Merkel has not tired of repeating that member states’ budgetary policies should be placed under the authority of judges in Luxembourg with the power to sanction “fiscal sinners” - the compromise established on 5 December between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy has sidelined this solution.
This is a policy that is based on one of the most well-established schools of liberal thought, “ordoliberalism”, which emerged between the wars in Germany and was popularised in the postwar period as “the social market economy” by the influential Christian-Democrat Ludwig Erhard.
Michel Foucault identified the originality of this school of liberalism, which makes constitutional regulation and judges the levers and principle guarantors of the construction of a political order founded on a strict respect for economic freedom and free competition.
In the context of ‘a politics’ that is deemed incapable of creating a stable and predictable environment for economic operators, constitutional regulation (the much vaunted ‘golden rule’) is the sole instrument to combat the “temporal incoherences” of democratic governments. And it is in this context that the German proposal to place in the hands of judges budgetary power, which is a core competency of parliament, should be evaluated.

This school of thought is not new in Brussels. In the wake of several decades dominated by the ‘Monnet method’ which advocated entrusting the economic and political modernisation of the continent to an enlightened technocracy - that is not to say said technocracy cannot exist in the presence of ordoliberalism - it is easily forgotten that the European project also has roots in a judicial and economic ordoliberal credo that is still very much alive in Germany.
It is impossible to understand one of the pillars of European construction, which is the policy of free competition, without taking into account the close links maintained over many years with the milieu of German ordoliberalism. It should be said that these ideas provide the basis for a “strong Europe” and the reinforcement of supranational institutions: butonly on the express condition that such institutions maintain an apolitical independence, along the lines the European Central Bank or the European Court of Justice.

In short, the German proposal is much more than an ephemeral solution to an emergency situation. It is based on an authentic European federalist doctrine that aims to call a halt to the slow deployment of a democratic logic in the heart of supranational institutions, whose initial goal was economic modernisation.
As such, it would definitively put an end to repeated attempts to create a European political constitution, and pave the way for construction of an economic constitution in its stead.

:bow:

Furunculus

12-14-2011, 17:03

This is a policy that is based on one of the most well-established schools of liberal thought, “ordoliberalism”, which emerged between the wars in Germany and was popularised in the postwar period as “the social market economy” by the influential Christian-Democrat Ludwig Erhard.
Michel Foucault identified the originality of this school of liberalism, which makes constitutional regulation and judges the levers and principle guarantors of the construction of a political order founded on a strict respect for economic freedom and free competition.
In the context of ‘a politics’ that is deemed incapable of creating a stable and predictable environment for economic operators, constitutional regulation (the much vaunted ‘golden rule’) is the sole instrument to combat the “temporal incoherences” of democratic governments. And it is in this context that the German proposal to place in the hands of judges budgetary power, which is a core competency of parliament, should be evaluated.

This school of thought is not new in Brussels. In the wake of several decades dominated by the ‘Monnet method’ which advocated entrusting the economic and political modernisation of the continent to an enlightened technocracy - that is not to say said technocracy cannot exist in the presence of ordoliberalism - it is easily forgotten that the European project also has roots in a judicial and economic ordoliberal credo that is still very much alive in Germany.
It is impossible to understand one of the pillars of European construction, which is the policy of free competition, without taking into account the close links maintained over many years with the milieu of German ordoliberalism. It should be said that these ideas provide the basis for a “strong Europe” and the reinforcement of supranational institutions: butonly on the express condition that such institutions maintain an apolitical independence, along the lines the European Central Bank or the European Court of Justice.

Interesting post Nowake,

Your description of Ordoliberalism is almost exactly what Merkel means when she says Fiskal Union, which of course isn't a Fiscal Union by any stretch of the imagination, but it also makes it possible to understand exactly how serious the Germans are about not allowing the ECB to let-rip with stimulus as you have at that point created a political tool which will forever afterwards be subject to a ratchet-like desire to tinker at the behest of political masters.

I have never had much sympathy with creeds of the likes of Ordoliberalism, because I am fully okay with the idea letting a polity sink or swim by the quality of its decision making, on the principle that if you give people no responsibility they have no inclination to act responsibly.
It is why I was a little bit sad when Broon made the BoE independent, for it was a very clever move for a social democrat to make, on the presumption that the temptation to spend would always cause them to screw things up and thus ensure long-periods of Tory governance.

Sure, its an unstable way to exist, but it is also why i don't support proportional and consensual government, i believe it is a battle for ideas that should encourage new ideas and but viscously punish poor ones. Creative destruction writ-large.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-14-2011, 17:45

Oh dear, I’m not ignoring you Philipvs, not as a person, I simply do not care to devolve into your type of arguments, where the main focus is, in my opinion of course, not clarifying viewpoints, but rather the raising of easily disproved yet very, very obsessive objections in desperate bids to avoid making any concession to the logic or facts.

You seem to read in short sentences, and never pay much attention to the nuance in another's argument. Your first interpretation of someone's post is the one you cleave to even if they develop their position. Beginning your address with "Oh dear" just comes accross as more condensension and is likely to raise the blood pressure of your interlocutor further.

As to your allegations, it speaks to the state of the general political debate today that your average public has such a limited horizon of interpretation that it can only place a benign assertion as being pro or against fascism.

Not really, one of the hallmarks of Facism is oppressing the people for their own good, and that is essentially what is being imposed however benign the rhetoric.

On that note, I keep saying that we really, really have to create an 26ptBoldIronicFont, else wit is totally wasted on you lot.

I posted the remarks to which you so object in the hope that someone in this thread crawling with Brits will recognize the paraphrasing and cheer up on being reminded of the amazingly good, most widely known British television political satire of all time and Thatcher’s declared favourite, Yes Minister, the two paragraphs being some of the program’s most infamous quips.
Hell, I even placed a wink before the first one by writing: /theatrically pretends to faint
Just to make sure no freak could miss the irony, I placed before the second the caveat: hidden reference.

And here are the actual quotes – providing larger quotes from the original, since they are so hilarious.

Yes Minister
*The discussion takes place between two Civil Servants*
Bernard Woolley: I don't know if I want power.
Sir Humphrey: If the right people don't have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it! Politicians, councillors, ordinary voters!
Bernard Woolley: But aren't they supposed to in a democracy?
Sir Humphrey: This is a British democracy, Bernard!
Bernard Woolley: How do you mean?
Sir Humphrey: British democracy recognises that you need a system to protect the important things of life and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians! Things like the Opera, Radio 3, the countryside, the law, the universities... BOTH of them. And we are that system!
Bernard Woolley: Gosh!
Sir Humphrey: We run a civilised, aristocratic government machine tempered by occasional general elections. Since 1832, we have been gradually excluding the voter from government. Now we've got them to a point where they just vote once every five years for which buffoons will try to interfere with OUR policies and you are happy to see all that thrown away?
Bernard Woolley: Well, no, no, I didn't mean...
Sir Humphrey: Bernard, do you want the Lake District turned into a gigantic caravan site? The Royal Opera House into a bingo hall? The National Theatre into a carpet sale warehouse? Do you want Radio 3 to broadcast pop music 24 hours a day? How would you feel if they took all the culture programmes off television?
Bernard Woolley: I never watch them.
Sir Humphrey: Well, neither do I, but it's vital to know that they're there!
My paraphrase
hidden reference The goal we should aim for in the next half a century is to run a civilised, technocratic government machine, only tempered by occasional general elections. Brussels is for the next few decades a supra-national organism. Therefore, it must seek to gradually exclude the voter from government, up to the point where it picks every few years whichever pack of incompetents will volunteer to interfere with European policy and send them to Brussels.

Yes Minister
Jim Hacker: It’s the public will. This is a democracy. And the people don’t like it.
Sir Humphrey: The people are ignorant and misguided.
Jim Hacker: Humphrey, it was the people who elected me.
*Sir Humphrey smiles suggestively*
My paraphrase
/theatrically pretends to faint My dear chap, where do you get these ideas?!
Europe is not ready for direct democracy. Petty nationalism would run rampant.
The people are ignorant and misguided. Case in point: it is the people who elect the politicians you so despise in the first place.

Congratulations, you're so far from the original quote that no one who saw the sketch recognised it. I suppose that makes your allusion clever, but it's not really witty if no one got it, and no one did. Things have also moved on from the time of Yes, Minister, and parody has become tragedy.

Of course, I had to run into the one Brit whose beliefs and sense of humour are, I suppose, the exceptions which prove the positive stereotype regarding British wit.

Plus all the other Englishmen who didn't get it. Beskar might class himself as a "Brit" but there aren't any othere here.

No worries, I know your Christian humility does not allow you to apologize.

Don't blame my religion for the faults of me Ego, it's offensive to all the humble christians out there.

By the by, for one turning so red-faced in a previous debate that he couldn’t help himself from correcting me:

Your posts are generally perplexing – the latest:

I'm sorry, I'm dislexic and I adopt spelling that make sense with the phonetic pronunciantion I have of your name in my head. I'm been reading a lot of medieval English, and there long "A" goes ar, hence the confusion in my spelling of your name.

Through this response I hope to reply to Apache and Cecil as well.
The second part of my post simply addressed the lack of information many of the ones frothing at the mouth against the German golden rule seem to suffer from. And I re-quote, as it remains salient and your misinterpretations buried it with no cause:

:bow:

It's all we're talking about, and the consensus is that it is not acceptable to vest bugitary power in unelected technocrats, which includes judges.

Furunculus

12-14-2011, 18:12

Plus all the other Englishmen who didn't get it. Beskar might class himself as a "Brit" but there aren't any othere here.

Hey! :x

gaelic cowboy

12-15-2011, 10:36

Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big :daisy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIYP1ibYdZI

Great show in it's day

phonicsmonkey

12-15-2011, 11:03

God I love that show.

While we're doing it, and with a sly aside to Furunculus' post above about the Times poll, here's Yes Prime Minister on the subject of single issue polling:

Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."

Sorry, I don't think it's on you tube.

Tellos Athenaios

12-15-2011, 22:05

Hey! :x

Clearly, you must live over “the wrong hill”.

Furunculus

12-15-2011, 23:44

the wrong hill? :(

Tellos Athenaios

12-16-2011, 01:31

the wrong hill? :(

Something to do with a penchant for good natured rivalry between communities... often involving sports (teams), accents and occasionally smashing up property in inner cities... typically demarcated by geographical barriers such as river or a hill.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-16-2011, 01:52

the wrong hill? :(

No, you're just misguided in your support for the Celts and Gaels.

Hah, was that a real interview? I liked that.

Sorry, it's satire, the Hon. Jim Hacker M.P.

Nowake

12-16-2011, 02:14

Hah, was that a real interview? I liked that.
No, the quality of the sitcom is simply as nothing you’ve seen since.
I especially love the cases of articulated sesquipedalian loquaciousness such as the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8keZbZL2ero&feature=related

Beskar

12-16-2011, 03:52

I got the box set, it is a great series.

Also:

Plus all the other Englishmen who didn't get it. Beskar might class himself as a "Brit" but there aren't any othere here.

I was thinking that when you said about how people will complain about losing their national identities (Britain) then you cited Scotland and Wales as examples (which would be enchanted under my system). I was amused.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-16-2011, 17:42

I was thinking that when you said about how people will complain about losing their national identities (Britain) then you cited Scotland and Wales as examples (which would be enchanted under my system). I was amused.

I don't quite get it, or maybe you don't. I'm not sure.

Part of Welsh national identity is being oppressed by the English (not the British) and surviving, it is what has allowed such a small country to stay so, well, Welsh.

Tellos Athenaios

12-16-2011, 18:33

Part of Welsh national identity is being oppressed by the English (not the British) and surviving, it is what has allowed such a small country to stay so, well, Welsh.

I thought it was leek, complaining and the weather. Mostly the weather. Or as a Welsh comedian once said IIRC: “And God made it rain for forty days and forty nights... that's still the best summer we ever had!”.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

12-17-2011, 01:55

I thought it was leek, complaining and the weather. Mostly the weather. Or as a Welsh comedian once said IIRC: “And God made it rain for forty days and forty nights... that's still the best summer we ever had!”.

It's all about complaining about the whether, which is the fault of the English, because the Welsh would be living in England otherwise - and leeks are the only things that grow in the sodden clay.

Welsh national anthem, no seriously: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Functions/anthem.html

See, even the Welsh think hating the English makes you Welsh.

Vladimir

01-04-2012, 13:58

BBCA has pretty much decided that Europe is falling back into another recession and that America is experiencing an economic resurgence. Has anyone seen anything on the national level to confirm this?

gaelic cowboy

01-04-2012, 14:36

The eurostat figures for Irelands export trade into the continent are going down which suggests falling demand in Europe.

If the figures come back soon for increased US/UK/BRIC trade then we can guess your previous assertion is correct.

Vladimir

01-04-2012, 16:58

Interesting.

I don't remember what sources the cheerful and enthusiastic business correspondent used but he delivered the bad news in an optimistic tone. He always seems happy and it lessens the impact of the bad news he delivers.

gaelic cowboy

01-04-2012, 17:12

Vladimir

01-04-2012, 18:40

One major canary in the coal mine is the continual parking of funds with the ECB overnight by banks, in effect the interbank lending market in the Eurozone has stopped.

Last time we had something like that we got a new breakfast cereal called credit crunch and it killed Lehmans

Banks' deposits at ECB hit another record high (http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0104/ecb-business.html)

Not to take away from what you said but when I read your post I thought of leprechauns (Lehmans) Lucky Charms (http://www.luckycharms.com/).

I'm sorry, that's horrible. :blush:

gaelic cowboy

01-05-2012, 10:51

Not to take away from what you said but when I read your post I thought of leprechauns (Lehmans) Lucky Charms (http://www.luckycharms.com/).

I'm sorry, that's horrible. :blush:

We could do with a pot of gold round here

a completely inoffensive name

01-05-2012, 11:05

We could do with a pot of gold round here

Maybe you should write in for Ron Paul your next election......

gaelic cowboy

01-05-2012, 11:07

There’s a Hole in my Euro

There’s a hole in my euro, dear Angie, dear Angie,
There’s a hole in my euro, dear Angie, a hole.
Then fix it, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Then fix it, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, fix it.
With what shall I fix it, dear Angie, dear Angie?
With what shall I fix it, dear Angie, with what?
With EFSF, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
With EFSF, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, EFSF.
EFSF is too small, dear Angie, dear Angie,
EFSF is too small, dear Angie, too small.
Then lever it, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Then lever it, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, lever.
Will ECB help lever, dear Angie, dear Angie?
Will ECB help lever, dear Angie, will it?
Nein nein shall it lever, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Nein nein shall it lever, dear Nicky, nein nein.
Then how shall we lever, dear Angie, dear Angie?
Then how shall we lever, dear Angie, just how?
Sell insurance, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Sell insurance, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, insurance.
Investors won’t buy it, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Investors won’t buy it, dear Angie, won’t buy.
Then call IMF, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Call IMF, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, IMF.
But Chrissy’ll need funding, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Chrissy’ll need funding, dear Angie, funding.
Try G20, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Try G20, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, G20.
EU must give first, dear Angie, dear Angie,
EU must give first, dear Angie, EU.
E200bn tops, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
E200bn tops, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, E200bn.
We’ll still need more, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Still need more, dear Angie, need more.
ESM so, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
ESM so, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, ESM.
With EFSF alongside, dear Angie, dear Angie?
EFSF alongside, dear Angie, alongside?
The same cash ceiling, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Same cash ceiling, dear Nicky, the same.
Then kill PSI, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Then kill PSI, dear Angie, kill it!
Need fiscal compact, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Need fiscal compact, dear Nicky, then yes!
Can’t lose my sovereignty, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Just can’t lose my sovereignty, dear Angie, I can’t!
Will save you the allusion, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Will save you the allusion, dear Nicky, allusion.
Johnny Bull won’t wear it, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Johnny Bull won’t wear it, dear Angie, won’t wear.
Don’t need him, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
Don’t need him, dear Nicky, dear Nicky, just don’t.
Will “other elements follow”, dear Angie, dear Angie?
Will “other elements follow”, dear Angie, will they?
May Draghi their feet, dear Nicky, dear Nicky,
May Draghi their feet, dear Nicky, Draghi.
Then still a hole in my euro, dear Angie, dear Angie,
Still a hole in my euro, dear Angie, a hole.

Furunculus

01-05-2012, 12:44

french 10 year debt starting to lose its shine:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8994327/Demand-halves-at-crucial-French-bond-auction.html

Vladimir

01-05-2012, 14:15

There’s a Hole in my Euro

I'm using this as my next marching cadence. "There's a hole, there's a hole...There's a hole in the bottom of my Euro."

Fragony

01-07-2012, 10:16

olol little Napoleon screams that PEACE is in DANGER if we don't have the euro. What is it with europhiles, how many times is DEATH going to KILL us? Reminds me of the Lissabon-treaty which was NECESSARY because PEACE is in DANGER if we don't let post-democratic Brussels decide just about everything

Kagemusha

01-08-2012, 09:18

I am actually starting to grow very suspicious about the current "crisis". Half an year has passed and Greece is still standing. Italy and Spain have not fallen and the the debt reserves have not been used.
I am starting to think this whole crisis is nothing but an attack from the market against a currency that is very hard to unbalance, thus is problematic for them.
Still i am not in any way saying that everything is fine and dandy. Southern Europe must have their public spending inside some sensible limits. EU needs some serious amount of democracy added or it will not live long and the policy of EU cannot be run by Germany and France alone.
And most of all the economical system needs an overhaul, when the most profitable business is FX market dealing only with speculative investments. Something is seriously broken with the system.

Furunculus

01-09-2012, 10:51

kaga, it is time for you to don your tin foil hat.

that the euro persists in surviving is no more than an expression of the extreme political will that it should survive, regardless of the impact on the various electorates.

still, we may see the end game shortly given that there is about $1t in sovereign and bank debt in need of rolling over before the end of march.

Kagemusha

01-09-2012, 16:31

Furunculus

01-10-2012, 20:07

by end game i mean the new stable state: the principle of an optional eurozone once greece creates precedent by leaving, rather than a disorderly collapse.

Antioch

01-16-2012, 22:04

I can't understand why you find a part of funny things in the European money union troubles . The occidental civilisation is in danger because every thing is connected (economy , religion , philosophy .. etc..) If one of us is weak the chain could break !
Your own lifes will be inpacted if we fall ! Anyways

P.S. Excuse my french :yes:

Tellos Athenaios

01-16-2012, 22:43

A told you so moment. Even if the long promised Armageddon never quite materialised so far.

P.S. Excuse my french :yes:

NP. A little heads up: in English the expression “Excuse my French” (or more commonly “Pardon my French”) probably doesn't mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_my_French) what you intended there.

Papewaio

01-16-2012, 22:55

I think it is more telling that the economy is more sta le when the markets and politicians are on holidays...

Antioch

01-17-2012, 11:34

I'm sorry Tellos Athenaios , but i know exactly what "excuse my french" means , that's why i add a smiley !
About Armaggedon , I don't think the end of the human population will ended by economic troubles and when i said "we fall" it's to show how we are dependent from each others countries .
I read in some post a touch of irony about the difficulties of the european union ; and i would like if you can think "Global" before to write , the subject is too complex and the impact for the poor people is dramatically wrong if we can't find a positive issue . I'm 64 y.o. and i ran around the world , i seen the real life and i can tell to you :learn and learn again and think before to post an advice .
One example : the China is the major owner of the US bonds , imagine if they ask for moneyback ....................
That's all folk ! (I know what it means too)

InsaneApache

01-17-2012, 12:04

The Euro debacle is what you get when politicians govern for politicians and not the people.

gaelic cowboy

01-17-2012, 12:46

Yes indeed the world is safe when Big Endians and Little Endians argue over the topping of an egg

rory_20_uk

01-17-2012, 13:19

The Euro debacle is what you get when politicians govern for politicians and not the people.

The unions are even worse. Stating that Labour's backing of a freeze on salary increases disenfranchises voters... I thought politicians were there to do what was right for the country!

~:smoking:

Furunculus

01-17-2012, 14:19

I can't understand why you find a part of funny things in the European money union troubles .

P.S. Excuse my french :yes:

not through any malice I assure you, merely that some stupid ideas are in fact dangerous, and that the best way to mitigate that danger is to mock the proponents of such ideas when their flaws are exposed, doing so in the hope that these ideas die as possibilities for public policy before that danger comes to pass.

excused. :)

-------------------

greece has forty six days to escape default:

http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2012/01/16/46-days-to-avoid-greek-default/

gaelic cowboy

01-17-2012, 18:16

The banks sense weakness on the part of the EU they are probably confident that the politicians will cave in the end instead of going for a good size default.

The EU/ECB along with Merkozy should be trying to force the banks to accept haircuts, against the wishes of the IMF they have decided to let Greece try to get the cut on its own.(the politicians will cave as this is naturally the way of all political classes)

Probably cos they would be effectively asking there own countries banks to accept a default on Greeces debt, wouldnt do to be seen causing a few jobs losses in there own banking industry.

Article from David MCWilliams on what we all should be doing but wont.

Irish banks will shrink and shrink
January 16, 2012

Posted in Articles | Debt | Irish Economy | Sunday Business Post by David McWilliams

The European debt crisis is moving swiftly to the next phase following the downgrade of France and the collapse of the Greek negotiations with its creditors last Friday night.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there will be no deal in Greece. This is good news because it means the end of the pass-the-parcel-ponzi-scheme, whereby the bill for more and more institutional debt was passed on to more and more innocent people who had nothing to do with the debt in the first place.
Greece will default – as it should. The bondholders will get roasted – as they should – for making bad investments. The laws of capitalism will be allowed to do their thing. Debtors and creditors will pay – as they both should – with both parties sharing the cost.

Whether this leads to Greece being pushed out of the euro remains to be seen. An opportunistic play by a desperate Greek government might be a total default, followed by the reintroduction of a new currency and then the restart button is hit. Initially, it would be an international pariah, but over time it would recover.

You might think it sounds radical, but it is straight from the IMF’s own adjustment handbook. In fact, the favoured IMF remedy to debt crises is partial/agreed default, followed by a rapid devaluation of the currency, which is then fixed at a new, much lower level.

The more aggressive approach is simply an amplified version of what is likely to happen anyway. The present policy calls for an internal devaluation plus some default. Why not an explicit external devaluation with total default, which gets you to the same place but a lot more quickly?

One of the reasons why there will be huge opposition in Europe to the Greeks going down this road is because it means the banks that lent money to Greece would get nothing or very little.

On the other hand, internal devaluation would mean that they would take a haircut and then slowly bleed Greece dry for the rest of the money. But when you think about Greece’s position, this makes no sense. Greece has a current account deficit of ten per cent of GDP. This means it must borrow an amount equal to nearly ten per cent of its GDP to pay for its current level of imports. If yet more money goes abroad to feed interest payments for foreign banks, it will have to borrow yet more just to make its current account balance. This is why getting the biggest default now must look attractive from Athens.

The realisation of this Greek position has led to the downgrading of France because the French banks are more exposed to Greece than any other foreign banks. All this news is simply the latest phase in Europe’s ongoing debt crisis. It is clear that, however it ends, the credit/banking industry will never be the same again.

We are moving from the great age of borrowing to the great age of saving. The great age of borrowing from 1990-2008 saw people, firms and countries borrow and borrow as much as they could to buy goodies today which they could only pay for tomorrow. Now the opposite is the case. We are in the great era of saving and this will mean, among other things, that the established banks in Ireland will shrink and shrink and shrink. They will sell everything and lay off staff.

In terms of job opportunities, the age of deleveraging means that the notion of safe jobs in the banking industry is over. Thinking back to only a few years ago, it was so different. When I got a job as an economist in the European economics section of the Central Bank, my mother rejoiced at the fact that the young lad had finally secured a “good” job in the bank. Second only to a “big” job in the bank, a “good” job in the bank was good because you couldn’t get fired. No one lost a job in the bank. Like the civil service, the bank had “P and P’ – permanent and pensionable – written all over it.

That age is over for good. Ulster Bank’s announcement that it is to cut jobs is only the first. Indeed, what tends to happen in these cases when there are layoffs of such magnitude, which can’t be avoided, is that the banks have been watching each other, waiting for one of them to move on redundancies first. The announcement from one is like a starter gun being fired. It gives ‘permission’ for the others to announce similar layoffs.

Up to now, bank officials have fared rather better than the people they financed in the construction sector. Relative to the building industry, the banking industry has fared reasonably well in the downturn. Layoffs in the building industry were swift and ruthless – while, in the banks, things have been much less dramatic. However, now this will change and what happened in building will happen in banking. The two industries are inextricably linked.

The Ulster Bank layoffs amount to just 0.9 per cent of the total number of people working in bank and finance. In terms of the total number of people working in Ulster Bank, the redundancies amount to close to 10 per cent of the workforce. If that were to be repeated across the industry – even exempting the growing IFSC – the impact would be devastating. We are talking about huge numbers of formerly “good” jobs gone.

The only light at the end of the tunnel would be for new banks to come in. One of the problems with the banks is that they are bust, they are carrying too much debt and they are not in a position to act as the engine for the recovery, lending to companies that are brave enough to invest.

But ultimately this recession will end. All recessions do. One of the ways to accelerate this is for new banking licences for banks with new capital to come in and start again.

Unless the state actively embraces and encourages new players – and there are some out there – the crisis will continue.

What we are seeing in Greece and France this weekend is only another phase in a banking crisis. Greece will default, taking some of the European banking industry with it.

We are witnessing the slow death of a certain form of the banking industry, but the need for banking remains. We are looking at the death of a certain type of banking – the type of banking which destroyed itself in the age of leverage. As night follows day, a new, very different banking industry will emerge. People will always want to save and others will always want to invest. The best hope for those who have lost their jobs is that the state embraces newcomers who could come in and we start again.

A Greek default would accelerate this process of creating a new banking all over Europe. Bring it on.

Furunculus

01-17-2012, 19:59

interesting article, cheers.

tend to agree it would benefit all for greece to default and depart.

gaelic cowboy

01-18-2012, 10:23

The so called new fiscal pact is a paper tiger lads apparently in order to avoid referendum in Ireland they will NOT write this deficit rule into our constitution.

Hmm now where did I hear of that before?????

Furunculus

01-20-2012, 12:35

gaelic cowboy

01-20-2012, 12:53

Ireland in the firing line of the new draft treaty - behave or be damned:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9026408/IMF-slashes-global-forecast-on-eurozone-crisis-with-drastic-falls-in-Italy-and-Spain.html

Good they should go do it so if there so confident it can work, fire away then throw us out.

I dont want bailout bailin knockout money for our banks at all at all.

They keep using the word "Sovereign Debt Crisis" and yet I keep seeing this cod money being used to help banks pay promissary notes.

Then in order to pay back the money that literally comes in the front door and goes out the back we have to strangle our domestic economy.

All the while this raises the debt to gdp as the economy gets smaller, there talking about a second bailout when the current one ends in 2013.

Naturally the EU/ECB keep raising shrill voices about how Ireland is the poster child for Austerity Confidence( while they know full well a second tranche will be required)

Also I have yet too read of or meet a person who invests because they believes the domestic economy will get smaller.

The Teutonic belief in an Austerity Confidence Fairy is becoming wearying hence the S & P downgrades.

InsaneApache

01-28-2012, 16:46

It looks like Greek democracy has gone kaput. With a little help from Germany.

Cripes!

Furunculus

01-29-2012, 23:20

I am constantly amazed at the determination to keep the ever-closer-union project alive, even to the point of instituting utterly undemocratic governance in member states, I thought they would have walked long since.

As Hannan terms it; the EU's "hideous strength".

Welcome to the Sanjaks 2.0.

Or should that be Satrapy 3.0.

Either way, it's just another word for a subservient possession of empire.

Beskar

01-30-2012, 02:24

I am sure it was on the Guardian but I cannot find it now which spoke about how the treaty was originally torn up by France and Germany which imposed the 3% limit, and it was one of those cases where the technocrats in Europe were overruled by the member states in punishing them, which lead to other countries simply not giving a care in the world and going over it.

I did find a similar one on the BBC though, saying about the new compact is the same as the one from 1997 along with a time-line of what occured.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290598

Furunculus

01-30-2012, 10:57

yeah, i read something similar on zee torygraph.

gaelic cowboy

01-30-2012, 11:14

Furunculus

01-30-2012, 11:50

It is the same useless treaty we had, and the big laugh is that it still mentions nothing about the interbank arena where this bloody problem came from and were it still resides.

We dont even have to put the debt brake in our constitution now cos there so afraid of Irish voters rejecting it.

We can be certain there storing up a new round of brittleness for the Euro.

agreed, if germany wants the euro to survive in order that its exchange rate value can be artificially depressed to boost exports then it needs to accept the principle of a transfer-union...................... in perpetuity, to assist those nations who are seeing their exchange rate artificially raised thus crushing their exports.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9048411/Its-too-late-for-other-Europeans-to-be-as-efficient-as-Germans.html

-----------------------------------------

adrian, tell me more about this report:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-report-that-will-blow-up-the-eurozone-2012-1

InsaneApache

01-30-2012, 17:43

I think we'll give it a miss this time. Round I lost us a generation and round II an Empire.

Kralizec

01-30-2012, 18:06

I'm not Adrian, but take a look at this:
http://nos.nl/video/313424-pvvonderzoek-onderleiding-van-fervent-euroscepticus.html

Most of it is in Dutch, but it starts with an English statement from the chairman taken from an interview.

The rest of the video can be summarized as: "It's an institute with multiple, genuinely respected economists but it pretty much had its mind made up before the PVV even asked them to do research on a transition away from the Euro; and it's probably no coincidence that the PVV asked this particular institute to do this report."

It's not difficult to guess what the report's conclusion will be, and it's unlikely to reveal anything we don't already know.

Furunculus

01-30-2012, 18:08

many thanks krazliec, i shall have a look.

if an english translation surfaces........... ;)

Fragony

01-31-2012, 10:50

Why the Netherlands and Germany will (hopefully) leave the EU

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com:80/2012/01/report-that-will-blow-up-eurozone.html#ixzz1kqmFkg6E

gaelic cowboy

01-31-2012, 11:28

Why the Netherlands and Germany will (hopefully) leave the EU

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com:80/2012/01/report-that-will-blow-up-eurozone.html#ixzz1kqmFkg6E

something wrong with the link doesnt open

Fragony

01-31-2012, 12:21

something wrong with the link doesnt open

Does here

gaelic cowboy

01-31-2012, 12:26

Fragony

01-31-2012, 13:14

PVV just ordered it, but it can be conclusion on demand of course, it's known to be an eurosceptic institution

Furunculus

01-31-2012, 13:14

yes indeed.

Vladimir

01-31-2012, 14:04

anyway it's about that PVV crowd and there report yes/no

Reality has never mattered much before tothe top boys no reason to suspect it will be different now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oAR0VRLRGHE

Idiots. Sorry. :shrug:

The government is "allied" with the banks because they need to provide for massive social spending to keep their peasants in line. Any idea where the government should get money from other than banks? The punk economy doesn't generate high enough tax revenue.

gaelic cowboy

01-31-2012, 15:20

Idiots. Sorry. :shrug:

The government is "allied" with the banks because they need to provide for massive social spending to keep their peasants in line. Any idea where the government should get money from other than banks? The punk economy doesn't generate high enough tax revenue.

Sorry Vlad but you failed to take the central point here that the banking debt has to be reneged on, the debt is not only too large it's also getting bigger due to austerity deflating the economy.

Also as stated the banks took a no exchange rate risk as equal to a no sovereign bond risk, why should this risktaking be rewarded with a sovereign commitment.

More sovereign borrowing to clear a banking insolvency will not remove the underlying problem, efectively it's not about tax at all it's about realising there is no more money and then thrashing out a deal and moving on.

Oh and the governments will get there money from the same place they always got it ie the bond markets, the reason is the markets have no memory they just see a return and move on it.

All that will really happen is that sovereign debt will have a higher risk from now on due to risk of default.(which it always should have had)

rory_20_uk

01-31-2012, 15:42

gaelic cowboy

01-31-2012, 16:05

Banks do seem to wish to have their cake and eat it. By propping up Greece they are having their exposure massively reduced. They should be directly recapitalised in the manner of RBS in the UK where the existing shareholders and bondholders are wiped out (and as a shareholder that wasn't pleasant). With senior managers getting most of their bonuses in shares this would give them more pause for thought.

Excellant idea there link there pay and perks to not just short term profit but long term growth potential also.

Twould foce em to be a bit more prudent if there bonuses were up and down every few years.

Would this be nasty for Greece? Yup. Did Greece as a country cause this themselves over a number of years? Yep. I am not aware that anyone in Europe voted to pay others to enjoy themselves - if any people did then good for them.

Indeed Greece has indulges in terrible management of it's finances, and yet it is a tiny or as we say here a biteen of the Eurozone. Were talking all in less than an couple of percent if even that. The crisis of the Eurozone has at it's heart been a banking insolvency which was exacerbated by early ECB policy.
(it reamins to be seen if the present policy of QE by stealth will work).

But governments need the banks to purchase their debt. Might they be concerned that if they were to go down this road banks might not purchase debt in the same quantities in the future?

Exactly look at how the IIF is playing hardball with Greece, they must be laughing all the way back to there hotels every evening as the EU argues over appointing commisars etc instead of just gutting there bonds.

Greece needs to devalue to a point where it can provide a service at a pricepoint that someone is willing to pay. The UK is no paradigm of virtue, but we are slightly further away from oblivion at the moment.

The only player who can do this is the ECB, it will have to accept either a haircut on Greek debt (it currently is exempt from haircuts )or bundle all present Greek debt into somekind of new bond probably from the ESM. Greece would essentially get longer terms at rates they can afford while removing the onerous payouts every couple of months.

These payouts are what is driving the default fears as Greece deflates it's economy it will miss targets increasing the need for a new bailout.

However Germany is refusing to give a new one which means default at the end of the scheme.

Kralizec

01-31-2012, 16:39

Does this mean that Fragony has Lemur's disease?

Vladimir

01-31-2012, 17:19

Does this mean that Fragony has Lemur's disease?

We all do my friend. We all do.

Untreated and enjoying it!

Fragony

02-01-2012, 07:39

My forum-fu is FAILING me, wtque is Lemur's disease and can it be cured, I don't want to end up happily married with a pretty wife

Vladimir

02-01-2012, 14:04

My forum-fu is FAILING me, wtque is Lemur's disease and can it be cured, I don't want to end up happily married with a pretty wife

And healthy family.

gaelic cowboy

02-03-2012, 13:40

Permanency of debt brake 'may not be constitutional' (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0203/1224311177012.html)

Uh oh seems it may not be possible to avoid referendum in Ireland which means they risk a NO vote.
Since Germany has demanded that ratification of the treaty is a requirement of ESM funding we could be back in contagion central by the end of the year.

The AG will give a decision soon on a referndum but the treaty is going to be challenged in the supreme court anyway, if it plays out we dont ratify the treaty then the Bank Debt here would have to be reneged on (which would have serious consequences for European banks)

Lemur

02-11-2012, 04:24

Lemur's disease and can it be cured, I don't want to end up happily married with a pretty wife
In fairness, wife #1 went off the rails, and I'll be marrying beautiful wife #2 in a couple of weeks. The little lemurs still live with me, naturally. I blame the gays.

And now, a fairly good explanation of the Greek debt negotiations using rubber ducks and a pirate ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmhVGzgunY

a completely inoffensive name

02-13-2012, 10:02

Greece is burning....again. :(

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/12/us-greece-idUSTRE8120HI20120212

Vladimir

02-13-2012, 14:22

[video]
Wow. Speaking of gays...

I got seasick watching that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw

InsaneApache

02-16-2012, 03:06

For all of my adult life, support for the European Union has been seen as the mark of a civilised, reasonable and above all compassionate politician. It has guaranteed him or her access to leader columns, TV studios, lavish expense accounts and overseas trips.

The reason for this special treatment is that the British establishment has tended to view the EU as perhaps a little incompetent and corrupt, but certainly benign and generally a force for good in a troubled world. This attitude is becoming harder and harder to sustain, as this partnership of nations is suddenly starting to look very nasty indeed: a brutal oppressor that is scornful of democracy, national identity and the livelihoods of ordinary people.

The turning point may have come this week with the latest intervention by Brussels: bureaucrats are threatening to bankrupt an entire country unless opposition parties promise to support the EU-backed austerity plan.

Let’s put the Greek problem in its proper perspective. Britain’s Great Depression in the Thirties has become part of our national myth. It was the era of soup kitchens, mass unemployment and the Jarrow March, immortalised in George Orwell’s wonderful novels and still remembered in Labour Party rhetoric.

Yet the fall in national output during the Depression – from peak to trough – was never more than 10 per cent. In Greece, gross domestic product is already down about 13 per cent since 2008, and according to experts is likely to fall a further 7 per cent by the end of this year. In other words, by this Christmas, Greece’s depression will have been twice as deep as the infamous economic catastrophe that struck Britain 80 years ago.

Yet all the evidence suggests that the European elite could not give a damn. Earlier this week Olli Rehn, the EU’s top economist, warned of “devastating consequences” if Greece defaults. The context of his comments suggests, however, that he was thinking just as much of the devastating consequences that would flow for the rest of Europe, rather than for the Greeks themselves.

Another official was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that Germany, Finland and the Netherlands are “losing patience” with Greece, with apparently not even a passing thought for the real victims of this increasingly horrific saga. Though the euro-elite seems not to care, life in Greece, the home of European civilisation, has become unbearable.

Perhaps 100,000 businesses have folded, and many more are collapsing. Suicides are sharply up, homicides have reportedly doubled, with tens of thousands being made homeless. Life in the rural areas, which are returning to barter, is bearable. In the towns it is harsh and for minorities – above all the Albanians, who have no rights and have long taken the jobs Greeks did not want – it is terrifying.

This is only the start, however. Matters will get much worse over the coming months, and this social and moral disaster has already started to spread to other southern European countries such as Italy, Portugal and Spain. It is not just families that are suffering – Greek institutions are being torn to shreds. Unlike Britain amid the economic devastation of the Thirties, Greece cannot look back towards centuries of more or less stable parliamentary democracy. It is scarcely a generation since the country emerged from a military dictatorship and, with parts of the country now lawless, sinister forces are once again on the rise. Only last autumn, extremist parties accounted for about 30 per cent of the popular vote. Now the hard Left and hard Right stand at about 50 per cent and surging. It must be said that this disenchantment with democracy has been fanned by the EU’s own meddling, and in particular its imposition of Lucas Papademos as a puppet prime minister.

Late last year I was sharply criticised, and indeed removed from a Newsnight studio by a very chilly producer, after I called Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, a European Union spokesman, “that idiot from Brussels”. Well-intentioned intermediaries have since gone out of their way to assure me that Mr Altafaj-Tardio is an intelligent and also a charming man. I have no powerful reason to doubt this, and it should furthermore be borne in mind that he is simply the mouthpiece and paid hireling for Mr Rehn, the Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner I mentioned earlier.

But looking back at that Newsnight appearance, it is clear that my remarks were far too generous, and I would like to explain myself more fully, and with greater force. Idiocy is, of course, an important part of the problem in Brussels, explaining many of the errors of judgment and basic competence over the past few years. But what is more striking by far is the sheer callousness and inhumanity of EU commissioners such as Mr Rehn, as they preside over a Brussels regime that is in the course of destroying what used to be a proud, famous and reasonably well-functioning country.

In these terrible circumstances, how can the British liberal Left, which claims to place such value on compassion and decency, continue to support the EU? I am old enough to recall their rhetoric when Margaret Thatcher was driving through her monetarist policies as a response to the recession of the early Eighties. Many of the attacks were incredibly personal and vicious. The British prime minister (who, of course, was later to warn so presciently against monetary union) was accused of lacking any kind of compassion or humanity. Yet the loss of economic output during the 1979-82 recession was scarcely 6 per cent, less than a third of the scale of the depression now being suffered by the unfortunate Greeks. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 per cent, just over half of where Greece is now.

The reality is that Margaret Thatcher was an infinitely more compassionate and pragmatic figure than Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio’s boss Olli Rehn and his appalling associates. She would never have destroyed an entire nation on the back of an economic dogma.

One of the basic truths of politics is that the Left is far more oblivious to human suffering than the Right. The Left always speaks the language of compassion, but rarely means it. It favours ends over means. The crushing of Greece, and the bankruptcy of her citizens, is of little consequence if it serves the greater good of monetary union.

Nevertheless, for more than a generation, politicians such as Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and David Miliband have used their sympathy for the aims and aspirations of the European Union as a badge of decency. Now it ties them to a bankruptcy machine that is wiping out jobs, wealth and – potentially – democracy itself.

The presence of the Lib Dems, fervent euro supporters, as part of the Coalition, has become a problem. It can no longer be morally right for Britain to support the European single currency, a catastrophic experiment that is inflicting human devastation on such a scale. Britain has historically stood up for the underdog, but shamefully, George Osborne has steadily lent his support to the eurozone.

Thus far only one British political leader, Ukip’s Nigel Farrage, has had the clarity of purpose to state the obvious – that Greece must be allowed to default and devalue. Leaving all other considerations to one side, humanity alone should press David Cameron into splitting with Brussels and belatedly coming to the rescue of Greece.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9084305/The-callous-cruelty-of-the-EU-is-destroying-Greece-a-once-proud-country.html

Kagemusha

02-16-2012, 09:25

What is that talk about "left" and Olli Rehn. He is as right wing economically liberal nutter as they come.

Furunculus

02-16-2012, 10:36

well, it's all relative, he is a liberal group MEP which practically makes him a communist in british terms! ;)

Fragony

02-17-2012, 17:09

What is that talk about "left" and Olli Rehn. He is as right wing economically liberal nutter as they come.

Quite impossible to support more EU if you aren't an international socialist at heart

Kagemusha

02-17-2012, 18:58

Quite impossible to support more EU if you aren't an international socialist at heart

No its the right wing nutcake´s like Merkozy that are behind it. :P

rory_20_uk

02-27-2012, 12:18

What a shock - Greece sank the last Unified curency by having an economy that was too weak and devaluing against the rules... Link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17140379)

Those who ignore history...

~:smoking:

Antioch

02-28-2012, 09:50

Your looking out need to use a telescope if you want to understand what EU is . You are so far from the reality .............. I'm afraid it's impossible to explain the concept , you are so confident to have all the solutions . I'm despite when I read that poor ideas of the unique chance for us to live in a peacefull Europe in the future . The way is not easy and that not a politician word , but a fact , helping the european countries in bad position could be a positive invest with intersting return if we think in long term .

rory_20_uk

02-28-2012, 10:25

...Although that has not been the case for the entire time Greece has existed. Unless "interesting return" means "no return". Greece wants others money, but no oversight. It expects promises to be taken at face value and everyone to have group post-traumatic amnesia.

I agree that it is impossible to explain the concept of the EU. No one has ever really bothered to try, merely growing it larger like a cancer. I am not confident I have all the solutions - but then to know when something is very, very wrong is a lot easier than to know how to square a circle.

Providing European stability was a good goal. Ensuring harmony between Germany and France was sensible. Adding in other stable, relatively corruption-free countries would have been again sensible. This would have probably ended up including most of the Nordic countries.

The further East and the further south one goes the quality falls off the scale. This is not a new or unknown concept. Any company before a merger will undertake a vast amount of due diligence before taking over, lest they are faced with massive debts (or end up like RBS and Lloyd's). Here is when sense was thrown out, and countries which will not add anything to stability but be a constant source of frustration and a drain for resources.

~:smoking:

Fragony

02-28-2012, 11:13

Furunculus

02-28-2012, 17:09

ireland announces referendum on bailouts and euro drops off a cliff:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9110027/Debt-crisis-live.html

gaelic cowboy

02-28-2012, 17:45

ireland announces referendum on bailouts and euro drops off a cliff:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9110027/Debt-crisis-live.html

German politicians admitted point blank that the treaty was wattered down on purpose to avoid referendum in Ireland.

Unfortunately they failed to take account of the fact that it is not possible under our laws to make a law that is irreversible in parlimentary legislation(a legacy of the British thankfully)

If the treaty is not passed then the next big crisis after Greece is the fact that there will be no plan to solve the Irish bailout unless it is passed.

The Germans were too clever by half linking the treaty to the ESM, Ireland cannot access ESM funds if we dont pass the treaty(however since were bailed out already all we have to do is stick to the terms of the aggrement)

Since we know Ireland will need a second bailout too eventually(unless the ECB cancels the bank bonds of course) and since it will have to come from the ESM it will be impossible to bail us out and not possible to get us to accept it either.

This means a deal will have to be done on the Irish bank debt which is private debt anyway possibly by linking that to ratification the Eurocrats might get what they want (but there not interested in taking hits on those private debts)

Let the propaganda begin Lisbon 3 is here

Government gives green flag to summer poll on EU treaty
(http://www.independent.ie/national-news/government-gives-green-flag-to-summer-poll-on-eu-treaty-3034256.html)

Furunculus

02-28-2012, 18:31

"it is not possible under our laws to make a law that is irreversible in parlimentary legislation"

parliamentary sovereignty FTW!

gaelic cowboy

02-28-2012, 18:45

I can admit there is a chance it could be passed but I wouldnt hold my breath.

The Government was given out to by the troika last year for not being harsher in the last budget despite the fact all conditions were met. Lucky for the Eurocrats they didnt imagine trying to pass the referendum after a Greek style austerity budget.

The referendum will prob be june or july I reckon whiole the next austerity budget will be after it and it will be held up as a threat to people.

Vote NO and the next budget will be worse vote Yes and the Troika will give us sweeties.

Effectively this has now become a referendum on the bailout and not the treaty, my view is that it's toast.

gaelic cowboy

02-28-2012, 18:50

"it is not possible under our laws to make a law that is irreversible in parlimentary legislation"

parliamentary sovereignty FTW!

It also helps that the government was afraid that ratification might be held up by an appeal to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court ruled against the government it would have dragged markets down for as long as the case went on.

It is the best solution for the government has ,they take there chance and hope it works out.

if they properly explain and actually campaign for it they might win even win it.

Reality is they most of them wont campaign for it instead they will leave it to the media and "Serious People"

gaelic cowboy

02-29-2012, 10:57

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5z0rQRdsiE&feature=player_embedded

Furunculus

03-06-2012, 10:39

the euro is not in the interests of the dutch people:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9124815/Dutch-Freedom-Party-pushes-euro-exit-as-2.4-trillion-rescue-bill-looms.html

Fragony

03-06-2012, 16:09

Do keep in mind who ordered it though, but it's kinda funny how it was instantly disregarded by europhiles. Sometimes even prior to it's release.

gaelic cowboy

03-06-2012, 16:29

Do keep in mind who ordered it though, but it's kinda funny how it was instantly disregarded by europhiles. Sometimes even prior to it's release.

When you think about it Europhiles are now so afraid of reality they wont even craft an EU treaty it's all intergovernmental aggreements and the like. It's like they were afraid that EU referendums might upend this farce or summit so they bypass it(so veto's and Irish votes cant stop us enforcing our EU eejitery)

Mark my words the seeds of the next crisis are in this current treaty(if it has not started to flower already)

Beskar

03-06-2012, 16:42

I think the conclusions of the paper are correct, Wilders is a big opportunist popularist, he will actually say things if he knows it will get people on side and will galvanise support for his party. So the fact he has taken this stance does present there are some underlying concerns within Dutch discourse which he can put his support behind. As the expression goes with him "No smoke without some sparks of a fire".

There needs to be some serious structural reform, but it will boil down to one of these two routes:
Massive funding and spending in countries to fix the Euro 1.0 or cover it in enough stickytape to hold it together.
Euro 2.0 whilst leaving many euronomies out to rot in their debt ridden holes.

I could actually foresee them in the planning of creating a new Euro, then Germany, French, Netherlands, etc, all leave the current Euro into that one, Then leave the old Euro in hyperinflation as the economies involved simply get left to annihilation within the Markets creating massive unrest and resentment for years to come. Ireland would probably even petition Britain to be allowed to rejoin the union if they got left in such a state.

InsaneApache

03-06-2012, 17:04

I see that the Spanish Prime Minister has given Herr Merkel the finger.

gaelic cowboy

03-06-2012, 17:28

I could actually foresee them in the planning of creating a new Euro, then Germany, French, Netherlands, etc, all leave the current Euro into that one,

A highly likely senario

Then leave the old Euro in hyperinflation as the economies involved simply get left to annihilation within the Markets creating massive unrest and resentment for years to come.

Unlikely in the extreme what society would have hyperinflation where it has massive unemployment and a floating currency. German is obssesed with there hyperinflation which was casued by factors nearly the same as now. A credit expansion, a strong currency, an external financial shock a debt that needs paying.

They fixed it by essentially not paying the debts but tell themselves everyday it was cos they made a new currency that was gold backed. Seeing as having a gold currency was part of the of the initial problem ie it would not devalue relative to the debts it annoys me more and more this harping on about inflation.

PIIGS economies have gone down in terms of GDP and employment fear of inflation is there last concern, naturally all bankers detest inflation as it eats money debt is it any wonder the ECB tells us to worry about inflation.

Ireland would probably even petition Britain to be allowed to rejoin the union if they got left in such a state.

:stare:

Unlikely in the extreme cos it would add around 4.5 million labour inclined voters giving maybe 70 seats of which there would be zero chance of Tory alliance as centre right parties here would naturally support Labour :clown:

Far more likely is we do what we did before we peg to just under the UK currency to help our exporters and ensure our importers are not strangled too much or vice versa whichever is better for the economy.

Interesting thing is how were in a common currency with the UK even after independence and somehow we were able to muddle through to create a new currency of our own. Yet were supposed to believe somehow this time it's different that currency union is forever when history is full of currency unions being dismantled.

gaelic cowboy

03-06-2012, 18:03

I see that the Spanish Prime Minister has given Herr Merkel the finger.

Probably cos there figuring out that the Greek 120% mark the new treaty is about is where they will be or are at now. If they swallow the lie that 120% must be brought down to 60% as they are being told they should want, then they are dooming themselves to eternal austerity and eventually spectacular crash of the Euro.

To contract an economy at 120% is madness or worse you either refinance it or you dont pay it at all, shrinking your economy wont help to pay it off.

Ads are always telling me prices rise as well as fall except for debt apparently, but ECB bondfondler debts are only allowed to increase even during a deficit reduction programme.:thinking:

Fragony

03-07-2012, 16:55

Mark my words the seeds of the next crisis are in this current treaty(if it has not started to flower already)

Could you do me a favour and take a look at the report, it's in English. Economy isn't really my thing as reality shows me 12 times a year (at least hi mom)

gaelic cowboy

03-07-2012, 17:11

Could you do me a favour and take a look at the report, it's in English. Economy isn't really my thing as reality shows me 12 times a year (at least hi mom)

do you have a link for it yes/no

Fragony

03-07-2012, 17:25

do you have a link for it yes/no

I'm typing this with a playstation opening a pdf would kill it. It isn't hard to find it's fully public

Furunculus

03-08-2012, 13:02

i'd like a link to an enlish version of the report if someone can find it.

gaelic cowboy

03-08-2012, 13:43

i'd like a link to an enlish version of the report if someone can find it.

The summary is available from the companies website but my rubbish version of adobe wont open it at work.

Fragony

03-08-2012, 23:51

PVV site probably has it. But everything considered, the Netherlands returning to the guilder, we don't have a magic drink Obelix and Asterix, we will just have to deal with it I guess, we are too small. May all your sons be donkeys, rest of Europe I am talking to you. What nobody ever managed to do you did congrats, you got us. So sickening really how the EU can tell us what to do, sure more Somalian refugees we got plenty of space, and why kick extremists out when you can live the dream instead. EU &pawns screw you I'll have your eyes for this one day

Kralizec

03-09-2012, 00:42

the euro is not in the interests of the dutch people:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9124815/Dutch-Freedom-Party-pushes-euro-exit-as-2.4-trillion-rescue-bill-looms.html

The report has been heavily criticized, even by other euro-sceptic economists. In short:

- the comparison of the Netherlands on the one hand, and Sweden and Switzerland on the otherhand, is selective
- and even with this selective comparison, they resorted to further cherry picking when picking the timeframe
- some of the numbers are questionable

Will post more tomorrow.

Furunculus

03-09-2012, 11:19

cheers, looking forward to it.

Kagemusha

03-09-2012, 13:06

Vladimir

03-09-2012, 15:03

Heard about the latest debt dump this morning. Was it 100 billion Euros?

This can't be good for the rest of Europe as Greece's creditors will try to make up the losses elsewhere.

gaelic cowboy

03-09-2012, 16:03

I promised to get back at this issue at March, when the last time in January "all the evidence" was pointing at a situation that Greece would default in less then two months. Two months have passed and yesterday other European Nations practically bought one third of Greek foreign debt. Because the independent collectors agreed on yesterdays pact, EU will in short time own one third of Greek debt.

The question is now, what should we do to Greece as it has great deal of debt towards EU? This is not unique situation as for example China owns 26% of US debt. To me personally those leeching Euro and breaking EMU deal, should have been kicked out from Euro at the second it became evident that they were not upholding the limits set on EMU, but while EU critics celebrate here the future fall of Euro. It could be very well that countries like Greece and Ireland will be practically owned by EU in future, thus the federalist´s will be the ones laughing at the end.

basically what needs to happen is for the ECB to man up and take the hit on this debt that they are owed from Greece, the LTRO programme they have been running as a steath QE means the banks will have access to liquidity should banks be owed greek debt. The ECB's insistence it be paid above other creditors caused many problems during the talks on the haircut as senior bondholders found there was differing levels of seniority in these senior bonds.

It was a disaster all round and nearly crashed the whole thing as creditors near refused to take the offer on the table thereby triggering CDO's instead.

Greek debt lets just get this straight for once it's never ever ever ever getting paid back........................let me just reiterate it will be impossible for Greece to pay back what it owes even now with the haircut it got. Greeces burden was and it still is too large, the bailouts were merely designed to facilitate the muddle through plan that has worked sooooooo well til now.

You know something is wrong when a governments central bank refuses to take a hit on debt owed to it from a bank that actually no longer exists. (http://www.ibrc.ie/)

The IBRC is a busted bank with no deposits and no loans outstanding everything was transferred to other banks or NAMA (http://www.nama.ie/). This is not government debt there would be no consequences to not paying this money back due to the LTRO programme and the earlier recapitalisation of EURO banks last year.

Therefore the only logical conlclusion is that either the ECB is bonkers or people are using this crisis to push certain agendas in the ECB.

gaelic cowboy

03-09-2012, 16:18

To me personally those leeching Euro and breaking EMU deal, should have been kicked out from Euro at the second it became evident that they were not upholding the limits set on EMU,

Unfortunately this would not have solved the interbank lending problem, or have prevented Irish banks going bust as the Irish government did not overborrow.

but while EU critics celebrate here the future fall of Euro. It could be very well that countries like Greece and Ireland will be practically owned by EU in future, thus the federalist´s will be the ones laughing at the end.

Never happen the ECB is only concerned with getting paid back it couldnt care less about federalism.

And no matter what the federalists do they cant get around Irelands referendum clause(even when they try to by using intergovernmental agreements)

The EURO integration dream is over period who in either Finland, Ireland or anywhere else you care to mention will vote for it.

Kagemusha

03-09-2012, 16:47

The thing is.Everything is connected to everything. Anyone with half of brain knows that Greece cant and wont pay its debt, nor will for example US ever. The current economical model would probably crash in such case. Investment banking in not these days based on idea of lending money and making long term interest out from it, but short term speculations. The money simply cant rest. For modern economist that is simply not productive enough. The system is sick in itself, but it would be foolish to think that the large EU nations driving deeper integration aka "Merkozy" are driving towards buying that debt because of the kindness of their hearts.

If the market can pretty much today control public spending policies, it is not a big leap for it to be used on other things as well. For the federalist in EU,it has become already quite obvious that democracy in its direct forms are not going to give instruments for deeper integration. Mark my words. EU will continue buying Greek debt until a point. It is going to try and take control of Greek policies.

Furunculus

03-09-2012, 18:34

Mark my words. EU will continue buying Greek debt until a point. It is going to try and take control of Greek policies.

then it will, eventually, sow the seeds of a civil war.......................... across europe.

in which case we shall all be rather cross with europhiles.

------------------------------------------------------------

dutch report released, judge for yourselves:

www.pvv.nl/images/stories/Netherlands_and_the_Euro_-_Full_Report_Final.pdf

gaelic cowboy

03-13-2012, 15:27

Debt crisis: Leaders back second Greek bailout amid warnings that third might be needed (http://www.independent.ie/business/european/debt-crisis-leaders-back-second-greek-bailout-amid-warnings-that-third-might-be-needed-3047520.html)

By Louise Armitstead and independent.ie reporters

Tuesday March 13 2012

EUROPEAN finance ministers gave their final approval in Brussels today to the release of a €130bn bail-out for Greece - amid growing warnings that the rescue package is already inadequate.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's finance minister, admitted "nobody can rule out" that Athens would need yet another rescue fund while economists warned that the terms of the current bail-out would crush growth in Greece.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank said: "The debt-swap deal does not solve the problems of Greece at all. Of course, without it, Greece would be in huge trouble. But Greece's problem is that it has to return to growth. Otherwise, no debt burden is sustainable."

Michael Hewson of CMC Markets: "There is widespread acknowledgment that even after last weeks debt swap that the country will in all probability need a third bailout, after economic data Friday showed that the economy shrank even more than first thought in fourth quarter, by 7.5pc."

In Germany lawyers said they were preparing a class action on behalf of 110 investors who want to sue banks for advising them to buy Greek debt.

Bondmarket investors ignored political claims that the Greek crisis was solved: new Greek government bonds remained the highest yielding debt in the eurozone.

There were mounting fears over debt levels in Spain and Portugal yet finance ministers indicated they would not use the summit to boost the eurozone's bail-out mechanisms.

Germany has firmly resisted calls to combine the €250bn left in the Europenan Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) with €500bn in the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to create a "super-fund".

But world leaders have warned they will not approve of extra funding until stronger eurozone countries stump up more cash themselves. The board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is due to meet in Washington tomorrow to decide its contribution to the second Greek bail-out - previously the IMF has contributed a third of the funds but this time it is expected to be lower. The IMF confirmed Christine Lagarde's intention to extend a €28bn loan to Greece under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) but said its unpaid quota from the 2010 bail-out - about €10bn - would be cancelled.

- Louise Armitstead and independent.ie reporters

Sarmatian

03-14-2012, 09:46

Mark my words. EU will continue buying Greek debt until a point. It is going to try and take control of Greek policies.

EU countries and US already had control of Greek policies, even before Greece joined EU. Let's face it, there are only two independent countries in the full sense of the word: That's US and China. Even big European countries have refused to do anything until they got a what-to-do from the Daddy in Washington. UK can't launch it's own nuclear missiles without a go-ahead from Washington.

It's been happening and will continue to happen. EU is just the newest boogeyman, one to end all boogeymen.

Furunculus

03-15-2012, 16:01

UK can't launch it's own nuclear missiles without a go-ahead from Washington.

totally, and utterly, incorrect!

PanzerJaeger

03-15-2012, 16:16

Let's face it, there are only two independent countries in the full sense of the word: That's US and China. Even big European countries have refused to do anything until they got a what-to-do from the Daddy in Washington. UK can't launch it's own nuclear missiles without a go-ahead from Washington.

In which sphere do you see Russia? The country certainly doesn't tow the US line, but the current diplomatic cooperation with China seems to be based more in common interest than any sort of dependence.

Papewaio

03-16-2012, 03:33

I don't think there is a single independent economy in the world. Even North Korea relies on Chinese Grain.

China owns a lot of US bonds. China exports to the world, but even China needs to import the raw materials.

Intra dependence makes for stronger and safer economies.

However contracting first world populations is making it difficult for economists of the forever growth mentality to easily adapt to.

Sarmatian

03-16-2012, 09:49

In which sphere do you see Russia? The country certainly doesn't tow the US line, but the current diplomatic cooperation with China seems to be based more in common interest than any sort of dependence.

Well, Russia is probably the most independent country after those two, so it's isn't really "in a sphere". It's on the cusp at the moment - culturally, religiously and ethnically it's a western nation but because of economy and political reality it's slowly drifting more and more to the east.

Beskar

05-06-2012, 19:30

Francois Hollande is elected as France's new president

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-06-2012, 22:46

This comes as no surprise to me, since i've been following this on my BBC News app on my phone. As soon as Hollande looked like he had a real chance, the entire left united behind him.U

Unspirprising, but not a forgone conclusion.

Now Watch as the markets gobble up France and spit her out a decrepit shell.

There goes the Euro.

So now it's time for the Royal Armouries to start manufacturing ammunition for the Callie 2's main gun again.

Greyblades

05-07-2012, 02:19

I'm curious, what is it about Hollande that makes him worse than Sarkozi?

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-07-2012, 02:46

I'm curious, what is it about Hollande that makes him worse than Sarkozi?

In normal circumstance, nothing. At the moment? He believes in spending when countries that spend are not lent money in the markets.

Greyblades

05-07-2012, 03:08

Great, and here was me hoping the germans wouldn't be the only Euro country not collapsing.

a completely inoffensive name

05-07-2012, 03:45

Now I really wish Louis was here to provide commentary.

Fragony

05-07-2012, 06:45

Higher taxes, earlier retirement, great. And when they run out of money the ESM will steal it from Germany and the Netherlands

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 10:28

From 62 to 60 - when other countries are increasing to 67. And to be paid by taxing those rich and stupid enough to stay put in the country.

If growth was so easy, why wasn't everyone doing it all the time? After putting in place measures to make things less productive this makes it less easy. What, exactly, is France going to create that the rest of the world wants at a reasonable price? The only thing that comes to mind is selling weaponry, which would require doing so to those that actively use them'

~:smoking:

Fragony

05-07-2012, 10:52

They create debts, lots of them. It's quite telling Merkel has yet to congratulate him. France will soon join the ranks of the other mediteranian countries, where it belongs really

Kralizec

05-07-2012, 12:04

From 62 to 60 - when other countries are increasing to 67. And to be paid by taxing those rich and stupid enough to stay put in the country.

I saw a former news anchor who lives in France explain a bit about the French retirement age on telly the other day. Apparently Hollande's plan is to make it possible for people to get a full pension at 60, provided that they've worked continuosly since their 18th.
Taxing the wealthy at 75% is definitely overboard; of course he'll have to get that plan through parliament first. In fact, I'm not a fan of Hollande in general; but if I were French I wouldn't vote to keep him out of office at any cost. Sarkozy's pandering to the Front National was a disgrace (and doesn't seem to have worked anyway), which cost him whatever chance he had of attracting the middle vote (those which went to Bayrou and some others in the first round)

It's quite telling Merkel has yet to congratulate him.

Eh, yes she has.

InsaneApache

05-07-2012, 12:10

....and the Greeks managed to vote no one in.

This is where democracy reveals it's flaws. The people just arn't going to vote to starve to death. Although that's what may happen anyway.

Fragony

05-07-2012, 12:23

Eh, yes she has.

I stand corrected

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 13:04

I saw a former news anchor who lives in France explain a bit about the French retirement age on telly the other day. Apparently Hollande's plan is to make it possible for people to get a full pension at 60, provided that they've worked continuosly since their 18th.

Private pension - OK, if that's in the pension rules.

A state pension is supposed to help those who are inform at the end of life. These days one isn't at 60.

~:smoking:

Vladimir

05-07-2012, 13:05

Why are so many commentators downplaying the differences between Sarkozy and Hollande? I saw one say this morning that Hollande was more similar to Merkel. Are they trying to forestall a panic? Are we going to have pictures of Hollande checking out fine French women? Is Hollande gay? That's what the world wants to know.

Brenus

05-07-2012, 13:13

Vladimir

05-07-2012, 13:21

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 13:48

Where did these massive debts come from, if spending money works so well? The UK economy should be doing great, as we had a decade of increasing spending. You seem to want to focus on measures to rectify the deficits without acknowledging how they got there. The UK has a AAA rating mainly as it is managing to show it can repay debts. Greece spent its way into its current situation.

I'm not interested in ideologies, making announcements that in principle make things better but in practice worse, such as increasing taxes just because.

~:smoking:

gaelic cowboy

05-07-2012, 15:20

I'm curious, what is it about Hollande that makes him worse than Sarkozi?

the last time France voted for a Socialist Prez he near broke the country.

Vladimir

05-07-2012, 15:24

the last time France voted for a Socialist Prez he near broke the country.

Aren't they already broke? What then?

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-07-2012, 15:25

What is so working so well with the cuts? Tell me people… More cut, less money in taxes, more money to spend on benefit, more difficulties to pay the debts, so worst conditions to borrow money… Did it work in Greece? No. In UK? No. In Argentina? No. Where did it work? Tell me…
But you guys think that one individual can get 16 million Euro when other cannot live on a salary… Fine. Not the world I want for my grand-kids…

What Holland can do worst than Sarkoleon? You mean, apart receiving money from dictators, destroying businesses and putting his cronies at strategic points in media and high positions? Or perhaps following orders from Merkel? What can be worst? This guy dug the debt more than nobody else in French Fifth Republic history and he wanted to give lessons?
He is one of the most corrupted politician we had, and the most hypocritical b*****d ever elected. Playing good catholic (divorced twice), betrayed everybody he could (Chirac), destroying the French Nation and its valour by discriminating people by colour, religion and even food…
Laic with the Muslim but being the Chanoine of Latran, he deeply disgusts me. If France would applied what he wanted to do few year ago, he wouldn’t be there as his father would have deported back to the Hungarian Communist Dictatorship.
I didn’t vote Hollande at the first turn, and he is not my choice. But, by the gods I don’t believe in, the crook is gone and hopefully will go to jail.

It's simply arithmatic - you cannot spend more than you make if you cannot borrow. Hollande can only raise spending if he can convince the markets to lend, and that is unlikely at the moment.

As you say - Greece, they spent so much on propping up industries that when they began to cut government expenditure the economy collapsed because it couldn't function without high public spending. Sooner or later governments with bloated budgets must cut spending or go broke. In France already over 55% of your GDP goes in taxes, which means that the public sector is powering more of the economy that the private sector and that is a problem because the public sector cannot make enough money to pay its bills.

In the UK we have had what amount to quite modest cuts in services, given that public spending was above 50% of GDP and once all the cuts have been made wwe will have cut less than Labour expected to AND spending will still be higher than 6 years ago, sitting around 2207-8 levels. More to the point, the cuts in services and budgets have not led to a fall in government expenditure, because the money saved is used to service the debt, i.e. close the budget defecit.

France is currently losing money to the markets, if you do not enact cuts you will simple become even poorer. Hollande must deal the hand he was dealt, not try to turn a pair of twos into a straight flush.

gaelic cowboy

05-07-2012, 15:28

@ Brenus well we could always cut less instead of spendin more while still keep a path of cuts just taking longer to get there so as not to poison the economy. The stability/austerity pact needs scraping as the targets are unsustainable and merely encourage deep deep cuts which the markets are not asking for now.

Also most the debts should either be renegotiated or cancelled the ECB is effectively burning money to balance a book that could easy be tossed out. Greece's debts should just be totally forgotten no one is ever getting paid there and everyone knows it but the Troika.

Countries could decide themselves if they wanted later to pay back extra debts after when they are on a sound footing.

Fragony

05-07-2012, 16:32

Furunculus

05-07-2012, 16:34

french gov't already cosumes 55% of gdp, hollande wants it to devour even more!

Vladimir

05-07-2012, 17:08

french gov't already cosumes 55% of gdp, hollande wants it to devour even more!

I really want to know how they do that. Like was said previously they could do it through arms sales but they're having problems finding customers. They sell to the Russians but unlike Russia they don't have huge fossil fuel reserves.

Do you mean consume or does government spending comprise 55% of the economy?

Brenus

05-07-2012, 18:04

“french gov't already consumes 55% of gdp, hollande wants it to devour even more!” Yeah, that is how they made the fear factor. The French Debts title is about 7 years. In order to bow the population to the banksters they built this legend. It is like to compare the price of your mortgage of your house (paid on 25 years period) with one year of your income.
THIS IS A LIE.
And this was for all countries.
If you compare the France Income during 7 years and the duration of the titles of the debt, you reach around 12 % debt. I give you that not so frightening, so the crooks at the head of the European Central Bank prefers the Fear Factor One.
Concerning France, the 5th or 6th World most powerful economic power, 2nd on the European Continent: once upon a time, a colleague (successful businessman) told me this: If you owe 100 French Francs to a bank, it your problem. If you owe 100 million, it is its problem.
So solution is multiple: You say to the banskters: We don’t pay. Or we renegotiate, or we pay only what is legitimate.
You may have as well the US solution: Print money and makes your Central Bank buying your debts with your money.

“Kidding me, why don't you google the ESM.” Yeah. This one Sarkozy and Holland did keep it quiet.

“It's simply arithmatic - you cannot spend more than you make if you cannot borrow”.
Again that is ideology. There is not a thing such the economic law. Not for a State. You do, because you can’t increase your income or cancelled your debt. Well, you can if you are rich enough. It is political, that is why we all bailed out our banks. Look at history, at the chapter how England won over Napoleon, or how Lenin didn’t pay, or Hitler and the list is quite long. You may disagree with the process but it exists. Again, the Banks were quite happy each time to have at least a little bit back, knowing they never lost money anyway. Just the profits were not as juicy as initially thought.
Or again, look at the USA today. If all the dollars owners decided to use their dollars there are not enough goods on Earth… But having the 1st army of the world and spending 50% of all military expenditure helps to keep the dollar as money of reference…
You do know that the money you borrow to a bank doesn’t exist and you will create it do you? So you spend more than you have…

“France is currently losing money to the markets, if you do not enact cuts you will simple become even poorer.” Ideology: Greece did what you are saying and the result is the debt is even bigger than when it started.
And who made this debt? The Conservative Government help by Fitch, Moody’s & Poors in fiddling the figures. And who was at the head of this agency: the actual President of the European central bank. What a chance! They ruined a country and now are making money on it. And they implement the same plan on Italy, Portugal and Spain. And they were ready to do the same on France thanks to the Thief in Chief Sarkozy. This one failed, just. They hope Hollande will surrender as fast as Sarkozy and he will probably.
The fact that a country can borrow money only on the Market was a political decision as the ECB could if politically instructed give directly to the States at the same rate it give to the "Market", so 0.5%. I do remid you the the Greek Debt is 4 % of the EU GDP. But doing this would cut the Banksters and their Political friends massive profit.

The only hope is to put back the ECB under the political control of elected Parliaments. But first, it is urgent to put more democracy in EU (I know, hard)and fear in the Banksters (quite easy).

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-07-2012, 18:21

“french gov't already consumes 55% of gdp, hollande wants it to devour even more!” Yeah, that is how they made the fear factor. The French Debts title is about 7 years. In order to bow the population to the banksters they built this legend. It is like to compare the price of your mortgage of your house (paid on 25 years period) with one year of your income.
THIS IS A LIE.
And this was for all countries.
If you compare the France Income during 7 years and the duration of the titles of the debt, you reach around 12 % debt. I give you that not so frightening, so the crooks at the head of the European Central Bank prefers the Fear Factor One.
Concerning France, the 5th or 6th World most powerful economic power, 2nd on the European Continent: once upon a time, a colleague (successful businessman) told me this: If you owe 100 French Francs to a bank, it your problem. If you owe 100 million, it is its problem.
So solution is multiple: You say to the banskters: We don’t pay. Or we renegotiate, or we pay only what is legitimate.
You may have as well the US solution: Print money and makes your Central Bank buying your debts with your money.

Not the debt, government expenditure. For every Euro the French economy generates, around 55-56 cents go to the State in taxes, which are then used to pay for the wages of government employies and government projects. The net result of this is that a 10% cut in state spending accounts for over 5% of GDP, the French economy is unbalenced and the over-large state is losing money every year.

That's a problem, because the state can't go bust, and if it did 55% of the French economy would simply cease to exist - that's the problem.

“France is currently losing money to the markets, if you do not enact cuts you will simple become even poorer.” Ideology: Greece did what you are saying and the result is the debt is even bigger than when it started.
And who made this debt? The Conservative Government help by Fitch, Moody’s & Poors in fiddling the figures. And who was at the head of this agency: the actual President of the European central bank. What a chance! They ruined a country and now are making money on it. And they implement the same plan on Italy, Portugal and Spain. And they were ready to do the same on France thanks to the Thief in Chief Sarkozy. This one failed, just. They hope Hollande will surrender as fast as Sarkozy and he will probably.
The fact that a country can borrow money only on the Market was a political decision as the ECB could if politically instructed give directly to the States at the same rate it give to the "Market", so 0.5%. I do remid you the the Greek Debt is 4 % of the EU GDP. But doing this would cut the Banksters and their Political friends massive profit.

The only hope is to put back the ECB under the political control of elected Parliaments. But first, it is urgent to put more democracy in EU (I know, hard)and fear in the Banksters (quite easy).

Greece has no access to funding, so they have to cut spending or they simply default on payments (which they are already doing, they can't pay state employees). The size of the Greek State means that even small cuts causes great ructions - so they have the same problem as France but much more so. The State is so large it is impossible to restrain spending, which in turn makes it impossible to balance the books.

Brenus

05-07-2012, 18:58

That is the proof of what I said: The over spending is due to the taxes' cut thanks to the conservatives and Sarkozy. He was so keen to pay them back than he crated more taxes exemption than he could. Then, having cut the State's income, he blamed on the Social Service. The massive Conservative propaganda Machine then started to convince that the State was failing in order to realise the privatisation of big national Companies as EDF ot SNCF. The funny thing is they took the trick from the Communist Countries when they "liberalised" the market. In UK, Cameron is doing it for NHS. You cut the staff, then the system can't work, so you claim that privatisation is the only solution... Clever...
About Greece, create more taxes, obliged the Church to pay taxes, and the Rich to do so as well. The poor pay their like in UK, when they are paid. In fact, Greece is the exemple of the Liberal?Conservative economic model failure. They didn't paid taxes, the system collapse.

Kagemusha

05-07-2012, 19:05

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 19:25

In UK, Cameron is doing it for NHS. You cut the staff, then the system can't work, so you claim that privatisation is the only solution... Clever...
About Greece, create more taxes, obliged the Church to pay taxes, and the Rich to do so as well. The poor pay their like in UK, when they are paid. In fact, Greece is the exemple of the Liberal?Conservative economic model failure. They didn't paid taxes, the system collapse.

I hate to provide evidence, but... Link (http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/010_Workforce/nhsstaff0010/Census_Bulletin_March_2011_Final.pdf) Annualised increase in NHS work force of 2.9% over the course of a decade. Cutting staff? Don't let facts slow you down. The numbers in the Civil Service increased over the time Thatcher was in office.

Labour managed to waste vast sums of money by dear old PFI which managed to get the worst of both worlds - saddling trusts with debts for decades in agreements that can not be broken. If that was clever it was so clever I can't even see the plan. I have interviewed the boards of directors of several Foundation trusts and there was no correlation between service provision and staff numbers. Some of the best trusts had cut staff numbers in a given patient pathway yet improved performance. I am not claiming privatisation is the only answer as all the Foundation Trusts were not privatised.

The poor in Greece get paid off the books in cash, as they will do everywhere else. Only those in jobs where you can't get paid in this method will people undertake work where they can't hide earnings, or the risks of hiding earnings is too great.

Kagemusha, I am impressed that you are so knowledgeable about all European countries services. That you have generalised to such an extent rather makes me think otherwise.

~:smoking:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-07-2012, 19:43

I have to say that sometimes i dont get you Brits, to be more precise the conservative ones. How can you even compare French public spending or in matter of fact any spending on the continent to British spending? What does your government give back in return to the tax payer compared to any of the continental European governments?
While continental tax payers pay taxes to get free education, decent welfare and pensions. All i hear from you is howling of Thatcherism: Privatize everything!Run taxes to the ground!Anything for the market! Anything!:on_redcard:

NHS: Check

Welfare: Check

Pension: Check (tamage done here by removal of tax relief and Brown's pension raids to fund spending).

Free Education: Check (just because you pay a higher rate of tax after you graduate doesn't make it not "Free" to actually get).

All in all, we have a fairly progressive state and a very progressive tax system, something like 10% of all tax is payed by the richest 300 people in the country.

What this is about is balancing the budget - goverment outgoings being less than tax reciepts, not cutting spending to nothing

Of course, people look at the headlines like "cut in top rate of tax" and ignore the fact that this Conservative Government is the first to secure a return of lost taxes from places like Switzerland.

I mean, it'snot like our incomes taxes are as low as Norway, or our VAT as high, is it?

Kagemusha

05-07-2012, 19:54

NHS: Check

Welfare: Check

Pension: Check (tamage done here by removal of tax relief and Brown's pension raids to fund spending).

Free Education: Check (just because you pay a higher rate of tax after you graduate doesn't make it not "Free" to actually get).

All in all, we have a fairly progressive state and a very progressive tax system, something like 10% of all tax is payed by the richest 300 people in the country.

What this is about is balancing the budget - goverment outgoings being less than tax reciepts, not cutting spending to nothing

Of course, people look at the headlines like "cut in top rate of tax" and ignore the fact that this Conservative Government is the first to secure a return of lost taxes from places like Switzerland.

I mean, it'snot like our incomes taxes are as low as Norway, or our VAT as high, is it?

Now there is a slight difference if an institution exists and if it is actually covering something. For example how are your university studies? Free for everyone? Can you show me some statistics?

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 20:02

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-07-2012, 20:03

Now there is a slight difference if an institution exists and if it is actually covering something. For example how are your university studies? Free for everyone? Can you show me some statistics?

Fees are free for 100% of students studying at undergraduate level, then they get a non-means tested grant and a top up depending on parent's income.

You have to pay for your Master's degree, PhD students have to bid for funding, or self-fund.

Brenus

05-07-2012, 22:45

“Don't let facts slow you down. The numbers in the Civil Service increased over the time Thatcher was in office.” I won’t. 2.9 %. In a decade. Wow. Impressive!
I don’t know if the facts reported by the BBC are wrong (or ITV) but I was watching a lot of news about how bad the Pensioners are treated, or how some patients in hospitals were left with even water. Was it last week? Or perhaps two weeks ago? The claim was they had shortage of staff. But don’t let talks from the staff to slow your reading of official papers as a good URSS officials would have said.
Hum, let me think about my own experience. Ah, yes, when my step-daughter (15 years old) had to wait 4 hours to get a 2 months old baby with fever to be seen. Or perhaps when few years after the same daughter fall on a piece of glass and had a cut on neck. Hum, how long it took? Oh, wait 3 hours… Well, it was an improvement.

“I have interviewed the boards of directors of several Foundation trusts and there was no correlation between service provision and staff numbers”: And all the targets of the fifth Plan were reached.
I have interviewed a lot of people: There are the one who told what you want to eard or ready to listen, and the ones who told you what they want you to know/believe. What categories were yours? The Foundations want to cut the staff. So they will find no correlation what so ever between the number of staff and service.
It defies logic. And Math. But not finances where work is considered as a cost instead of an input.
My experience in the field of emergency tends to prove that there is a correlation. I just organised the logistic of 2 vaccination campaigns and few convoys for the UNHCR, UNICEF and UNWFP. Not enough people, you failed. Too much can harm an operation in slowing it down, but it more due to a bad planning than to an excess of personnel. To have 3 drivers for two lorries is better than 1 driver for two lorries. As simple. Nyap! (err, for the noise see the advert with the meerkats).

rory_20_uk

05-07-2012, 22:53

“Don't let facts slow you down. The numbers in the Civil Service increased over the time Thatcher was in office.” I won’t. 2.9 %. In a decade. Wow. Impressive!
I don’t know if the facts reported by the BBC are wrong (or ITV) but I was watching a lot of news about how bad the Pensioners are treated, or how some patients in hospitals were left with even water. Was it last week? Or perhaps two weeks ago? The claim was they had shortage of staff. But don’t let talks from the staff to slow your reading of official papers as a good URSS officials would have said.
Hum, let me think about my own experience. Ah, yes, when my step-daughter (15 years old) had to wait 4 hours to get a 2 months old baby with fever to be seen. Or perhaps when few years after the same daughter fall on a piece of glass and had a cut on neck. Hum, how long it took? Oh, wait 3 hours… Well, it was an improvement.

“I have interviewed the boards of directors of several Foundation trusts and there was no correlation between service provision and staff numbers”: And all the targets of the fifth Plan were reached.
I have interviewed a lot of people: There are the one who told what you want to eard or ready to listen, and the ones who told you what they want you to know/believe. What categories were yours? The Foundations want to cut the staff. So they will find no correlation what so ever between the number of staff and service.
It defies logic. And Math. But not finances were work is considered as a cost instead of an input.
My experience in the field of emergency tends to prove that there is a correlation. I just organised the logistic of 2 vaccination campaigns and few convoys for the UNHCR, UNICEF and UNWFP. Not enough people, you failed. Too much can harm an operation in slowing it down, but it more due to a bad planning than to an excess of personnel. To have 3 drivers for two lorries is better than 1 driver for two lorries. As simple. Nyap! (err, for the noise see the advert with the meerkats).

Oh good a case study. Why don't we base all policies on case studies... Because they are statistically worthless. Foundations want to increase their funds and reduce costs. Patient bed days is a far greater determinant of both of these than staff numbers.

Your experience in the field... Again boils down to limited experience in a completely different field.

As you said simple... So simplistic to be irrelevant. Clearly nothing as base as facts are going to alter you. Best you stick to what you've heard in the Mail and a mate at the pub said. Everything that doesn't agree with you is clearly wrong.

~:smoking:

Fragony

05-08-2012, 02:04

Someone googled the ESM yet. Gentlemem it's unacountable

Kagemusha

05-08-2012, 04:01

Would you do the same? Or are you alone in being able to make unsubstantiated claims?

~:smoking:

I am not quite sure what are you asking, but if it is about university education.Yes it is free. Any education over here is. What i am trying to say that Britain is not exactly offering similar welfare state services, like for example Scandinavian countries,Germany,Benelux countries and France are. Or are you trying to argue that it is?

I think your universal healthcare and basic education is comparable and that´s about it.

Papewaio

05-08-2012, 09:51

That universal care has to be sustainable. Otherwise you are creating massive debts for future generations... I don't think stealing from ones kids or grand kids is a great social model.

InsaneApache

05-08-2012, 10:04

That universal care has to be sustainable. Otherwise you are creating massive debts for future generations... I don't think stealing from ones kids or grand kids is a great social model.

But....but...it's 'progressive' politics to loot from our grandchildren. Doncha know? :wink:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-08-2012, 12:32

I am not quite sure what are you asking, but if it is about university education.Yes it is free. Any education over here is. What i am trying to say that Britain is not exactly offering similar welfare state services, like for example Scandinavian countries,Germany,Benelux countries and France are. Or are you trying to argue that it is?

I think your universal healthcare and basic education is comparable and that´s about it.

Scandanavia also has a less "progressive" tax system, higher VAT and lower income taxes, over here incomes taxes have (mostly) risen whilst other taxes have been kept down and provision has been rolled back.

We also have large areas of the country that are "sick", lacking productive private employment large numbers of people are employed by the state in jobs which, frankly, we don't need and this leeches money from social services etc.

Fragony

05-08-2012, 12:46

Scandanavia also has a less "progressive" tax system, higher VAT and lower income taxes, over here incomes taxes have (mostly) risen whilst other taxes have been kept down and provision has been rolled back.

We also have large areas of the country that are "sick", lacking productive private employment large numbers of people are employed by the state in jobs which, frankly, we don't need and this leeches money from social services etc.

Finland isn't Scandinavia. What you have is exactly what Hollande has in mind by the way, over 60.000 people to do cool stuff with brooms on the red square to hide the real unemployment. Socialism is parasitism, always has and always will be.

Sir Moody

05-08-2012, 13:06

Fees are free for 100% of students studying at undergraduate level, then they get a non-means tested grant and a top up depending on parent's income.

You have to pay for your Master's degree, PhD students have to bid for funding, or self-fund.

sorry are you living in the UK?

Grants haven't existed since the first Labour term - we have LOANS now which you pay back once you start earning over £15,000 a year

all degrees come with a fee attached and loans are available to all applicants

After a 4 year degree back in the early Labour days I had ~£15,000 in student loans to pay back - thankfully the degree paid off and I have paid back a few K

My Brother (9 years younger than me) is just finishing his first year of a University by our estimate he will be in excess of £20,000 in debt once he is done

luckily he's of the last "group" to pay the Labour Fee's - the first thing the Conservatives did was raise the fees and the interest on the student loans

our University system is anything but Free... unless your a Scott - they get Free Universities paid for by the English tax payers...

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-08-2012, 13:54

sorry are you living in the UK?

Grants haven't existed since the first Labour term - we have LOANS now which you pay back once you start earning over £15,000 a year

all degrees come with a fee attached and loans are available to all applicants

After a 4 year degree back in the early Labour days I had ~£15,000 in student loans to pay back - thankfully the degree paid off and I have paid back a few K

My Brother (9 years younger than me) is just finishing his first year of a University by our estimate he will be in excess of £20,000 in debt once he is done

luckily he's of the last "group" to pay the Labour Fee's - the first thing the Conservatives did was raise the fees and the interest on the student loans

our University system is anything but Free... unless your a Scott - they get Free Universities paid for by the English tax payers...

No, there are still means-tested grants and the "loans" are nothing of the sort, because there is not collateral, and you only may it back once you are earning over a certain threshold, which will be 21,000 for your brother.

The government underwrites the loan, and they don't take away your degree if you default. The current student-loans system is a mathematical trick which shifts more of the burdan from general taxpayers to graduates, nothing more and nothing less.

Vladimir

05-08-2012, 14:18

Is this a competition about how much you can get other people to pay for your education?

Sir Moody

05-08-2012, 14:18

Sir Moody

05-08-2012, 14:21

Is this a competition about how much you can get other people to pay for your education?

no I am just taking offence to his claim our Higher Education is free - it isn't

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-08-2012, 14:32

maybe so but it isn't Free and claiming so is simply muddying the water - you pay your fees with a loan and then you pay back the loan - my Fathers University days were free - ours are not

and as to grants - its ~£2000 and only for the poorest of students - they will still need the loan to pay the fees themselves since the grant is just maintenance (i.e. living costs) and I don't know if you noticed £2000 doesn't go far these days - that would probably pay my Brothers rent for a year leaving him the maintenance loan to "live" off

one side note - how are you expected to default on the loan? the only way that could happen is if you never earn over the threshold - the loan doesn't go anywhere - if you don't earn over the threshold it simply gets bigger every year thanks to the interest - I know some countries with student loans have an end date (any remaining debts after that date are cancelled) but im pretty sure ours don't

Just declare bankruptcy - no loan, or wait 25 years to earn actual money. That's not so hard in this degree-drenched economy.

Sure, you're bankrupt but most graduates have abysmal credit histories anyway.

Lets be clear about this, nothing is "free", the NHS is paid for by taxes.

The only question is how you are taxed - the UK system offsets the cost and you pay it back to the government after you are earning.

I am insulted by your fixation of the arithmatic - your parents had to pay a larger proportion of your education than they will your brother's because he will pay back more of what he is given.