Euro Area

[Idaho]

OK - who's up for a wager?

I bet that whatever happens, the general folk of Europe will be stitched up, and politicians and the rich will be largely unaffected (or will turn a decent profit).

Any of you right-wingers want a piece of the action?

[Fragony]

OK - who's up for a wager?

I bet that whatever happens, the general folk of Europe will be stitched up, and politicians and the rich will be largely unaffected (or will turn a decent profit).

Any of you right-wingers want a piece of the action?

Is this a different realm of reality where rightwingers are pro-europe? Must be but it's odd, I thought we were against the EU. I thought we were populists for not being 100% sure of Europe. So confusing...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

OK - who's up for a wager?

I bet that whatever happens, the general folk of Europe will be stitched up, and politicians and the rich will be largely unaffected (or will turn a decent profit).

Any of you right-wingers want a piece of the action?

I'm sorry?

How many decades have Conservative Eurosceptics been saying this?

Hell, Enoch Powell said this!

[Fragony]

Nigel Farrage (who isn't 100% sure of europe) explains something to a German booksalesman and his Portugese waiter http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven....html#comments

[Tellos Athenaios]

EU66, you know the one of the Bilderberg meeting. The one with crownjewels

Fun fact, out of all party's the voters of EU66 are the most opposed against a referendum on the greatest heist in human history that is the ESM

I'm afraid I don't follow. Anyway, it was a trick question but you know full well I am not a card carrying member of any party.

By the by, it is the "right" wing over here that is pro EU if we go by the old division along economic beliefs. Now of course if you equate "right wing" with authoritarian, then no clearly not as neither SP nor PVV are particularly pro EU.

[Kralizec]

Is this a different realm of reality where rightwingers are pro-europe? Must be but it's odd, I thought we were against the EU.

So now the PVV, which copied pretty much all of the Socialist Party's talking points over the years for electoral reasons, is suddenly the only right-wing party we have? And even the VVD is a leftist party? How odd.

[Fragony]

So now the PVV, which copied pretty much all of the Socialist Party's talking points over the years for electoral reasons, is suddenly the only right-wing party we have? And even the VVD is a leftist party? How odd.

PVV intends to make the cuts painfull for the government and NGO's, you are reading too much quality media. Welfare state is good, keep it. After cutting of the dead weight, never thought I would but Wilders has my vote.

[Kralizec]

PVV intends to make the cuts painfull for the government and NGO's, you are reading too much quality media. Welfare state is good, keep it. After cutting of the dead weight, never thought I would but Wilders has my vote.

You're reading to much bullshit media. Wilders doesn't care about the welfare state. In the early days after he left the VVD he said he wanted to get rid of collective bargaining and abolish the minimum wage. He has flip-flopped on every conceivable issue except islam and immigration.

The rest of his party does seem to genuinely care about health care (some catagories of patients excluded), animal welfare (commendable, but odd) and whatever. This is just speculation of course, but the only reasons I can think of at this point why he blew up his cooperation with the VVD and CDA are - A) he feared the voters would punish him for compromising or B) he feared that some of his party members might defect for making those same compromises.
And option A seems the least credible of the two, considering that he'll never be able to form a working coaltion with anyone again - so the extra seats he might win are cold comfort.

Cutting bureaucratic tape is something that every party supports, in theory. The PVV is however is implying that they're going to fire civil servants in droves and reap mountains of gold in the process, and that is nothing more than a pipe dream. Same with development aid - even if you get rid of it entirely it will only be a couple of "drops on a hot plate" as far as our economic problems are concerned. The real budget cuts are to be found on those issues which the PVV won't touch because they're nothing but a bunch of populists.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Wilders is simply not prepared to bite the bullet. He and the PVV are no more a credible alternative than the SP is.

[Fragony]

Wilders is simply not prepared to bite the bullet. He and the PVV are no more a credible alternative than the SP is.

I don't care, they are just as good in the opposition if they get enough seats. I want out of the EU before they can rob us with the ESM treaty and the PVV is the only party who simply wants out. I do not want to vote PVV but I am still going to, stakes are too high

[Beskar]

One thing I don't understand though, this is in regards to this..

The Bank of England's announcement of its plan, on Thursday, came in response to the worsening economic outlook, governor Sir Mervyn King said: "Together with the government, it will provide billions of pounds of cheap credit to banks to lend to companies."

In otherwords, the government gives a load of free money to banks to use, which then profit from this money as they lend it out to others on an interest.

Why won't the government just lend it out directly to the companies and just cut the greedy fatcat middle men out altogether?

[InsaneApache]

Why won't the government just lend it out directly to the companies and just cut the greedy fatcat middle men out altogether?

Because governments are rubbish at business. They literally couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Because governments are rubbish at business. They literally couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery.

Also - I'm pretty sure it contravenes several EU treaties on fair competition, otherwise I am quite sure they WOULD be doing it by now.

Government is quite capable of acting if it means not losing the election - and the current lot know they can't win with the economy tanked.

[Sarmatian]

OK - who's up for a wager?

I bet that whatever happens, the general folk of Europe will be stitched up, and politicians and the rich will be largely unaffected (or will turn a decent profit).

Any of you right-wingers want a piece of the action?

I have a better offer - I bet that whatever happens, in any country in the world, no exceptions whatsoever, the general folk of that country will be stitched up, and politicians and the rich will be largely unaffected (or will turn a decent profit).

[InsaneApache]

Red Ken and Nigel Farage agree shocker!

[Fragony]

Red Ken and Nigel Farage agree shocker!

Oh so the populist right who disagree with a Flemish ferret who looks like an owl who dropped from his three, a german bookesalesman and his Portugese waiter was right after all. Where to hang them for being way too stupid by considering that this mght just not work.

[Papewaio]

Because governments are rubbish at business. They literally couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery.

Who created the GFC? Government or Private Banks?

All I've seen so far is private companies over extend themselves leaving taxpayers to pick up the droppings of the banks risk taking.

Privatization of infrastructure does not always equal a better value proposition.

As seen with the too big to fail corporations. Inefficiencies scale regardless of the label being government or company. These problems get worse with burecracy and a lack of transparency & accountability.

How many of the decision makers in private industry caused this mess ended up with golden parachutes or are still in the game making bonuses on taxpayer insured decisions?

[Vladimir]

So you're saying that government intervention makes private sector failures worse.

To big to fail is an excuse.

[Kadagar_AV]

Government intervention has to be decisive. Either you really step in and fix the problem (which has not happened in any of the recent Bailouts, in Europe or the USA) or you leave well enough alone and let competition step in.

This half-assed bailout strategy that's become so common is just wasteful procrastination on a grand scale.

I am no financial expert by any means... But one thing I have learnt from life at large is that that the old saying "We don't solve today's problems with today's solutions" by and large holds true.

Tracy Chapman's "talkin' bout a revolution" comes to mind..

[InsaneApache]

It is one of the tragic delusions of the human race that we believe in the inevitability of progress. We look around us, and we seem to see a glorious affirmation that our ruthless species of homo is getting ever more sapiens. We see ice cream Snickers bars and in vitro babies and beautiful electronic pads on which you can paint with your fingertip and – by heaven – suitcases with wheels! Think of it: we managed to put a man on the moon about 35 years before we came up with wheelie-suitcases; and yet here they are. They have completely displaced the old type of suitcase, the ones with a handle that you used to lug puffing down platforms.

Aren’t they grand? Life seems impossible without them, and soon they will no doubt be joined by so many other improvements – acne cures, electric cars, electric suitcases – that we will be strengthened in our superstition that history is a one-way ratchet, an endless click click click forwards to a nirvana of liberal democratic free-market brotherhood of man. Isn’t that what history teaches us, that humanity is engaged in a remorseless ascent?

On the contrary: history teaches us that the tide can suddenly and inexplicably go out, and that things can lurch backwards into darkness and squalor and appalling violence. The Romans gave us roads and aqueducts and glass and sanitation and all the other benefits famously listed by Monty Python; indeed, they were probably on the verge of discovering the wheely-suitcase when they went into decline and fall in the fifth century AD.

Whichever way you look at it, this was a catastrophe for the human race. People in Britain could no longer read or write. Life-expectancy plummeted to about 32, and the population fell. The very cattle shrunk at the withers. The secret of the hypocaust was forgotten, and chilblain-ridden swineherds built sluttish huts in the ruins of the villas, driving their post-holes through the mosaics. In the once bustling Roman city of London (for instance) we find no trace of human habitation save for a mysterious black earth that may be a relic of a fire or some primitive system of agriculture.

It took hundreds of years before the population was restored to Roman levels. If we think that no such disaster could happen again, we are not just arrogant but forgetful of the lessons of the very recent past. Never mind the empty temples of the Aztecs or the Incas or the reproachful beehive structures of the lost civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. Look at our own era: the fate of European Jewry, massacred in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents, on the deranged orders of an elected government in what had been one of the most civilised countries on earth; or look at the skyline of modern German cities, and mourn those medieval buildings blown to smithereens in an uncontrollable cycle of revenge. Yes, when things go backwards, they can go backwards fast. Technology, liberty, democracy, comfort – they can all go out of the window. However complacent we may be, in the words of the poet Geoffrey Hill, “Tragedy has us under regard”. Nowhere is that clearer than in Greece today.

Every day we read of fresh horrors: of once proud bourgeois families queuing for bread, of people in agony because the government has run out of money to pay for cancer drugs. Pensions are being cut, living standards are falling, unemployment is rising, and the suicide rate is now the highest in the EU – having been one of the lowest.

By any standards we are seeing a whole nation undergo a protracted economic and political humiliation; and whatever the result of yesterday’s election, we seem determined to make matters worse. There is no plan for Greece to leave the euro, or none that I can discover. No European leader dares suggest that this might be possible, since that would be to profane the religion of Ever Closer Union. Instead we are all meant to be conniving in a plan to create a fiscal union which (if it were to mean anything) would mean undermining the fundamentals of Western democracy.

This forward-marching concept of history – the idea of inexorable political and economic progress – is really a modern one. In ancient times, it was common to speak of lost golden ages or forgotten republican virtues or prelapsarian idylls. It is only in the past few hundred years that people have switched to the “Whig” interpretation, and on the face of it one can forgive them for their optimism. We have seen the emancipation of women, the extension of the franchise to all adult human beings, the acceptance that there should be no taxation without representation and the general understanding that people should be democratically entitled to determine their own fates.

And now look at what is being proposed in Greece. For the sake of bubble-gumming the euro together, we are willing to slaughter democracy in the very place where it was born. What is the point of a Greek elector voting for an economic programme, if that programme is decided in Brussels or – in reality – in Germany? What is the meaning of Greek freedom, the freedom Byron fought for, if Greece is returned to a kind of Ottoman dependency, but with the Sublime Porte now based in Berlin?

It won’t work. If things go on as they are, we will see more misery, more resentment, and an ever greater chance that the whole damn kebab van will go up in flames. Greece will one day be free again – in the sense that I still think it marginally more likely than not that whoever takes charge in Athens will eventually find a way to restore competitiveness through devaluation and leaving the euro – for this simple reason: that market confidence in Greek membership is like a burst paper bag of rice – hard to restore.

Without a resolution, without clarity, I am afraid the suffering will go on. The best way forward would be an orderly bisection into an old eurozone and a New Eurozone for the periphery. With every month of dither, we delay the prospect of a global recovery; while the approved solution – fiscal and political union – will consign the continent to a democratic dark ages.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9...dark-ages.html

[Sarmatian]

What a piece of bull....

Boris Johnson really needs a piece of reality

[Furunculus]

i thought it was pretty incisive stuff myself.

[Greyblades]

...He's comparing the dark ages... to the remains of a destitute small country in the rear end of europe. I'm not a historian or a economist but that seems like a huge example of hyperbole .

[Vladimir]

Hate wheeled suitcases. It's one cubic foot! How heavy could it be?

Is Greece really like Alabama?

[Major Robert Dump]

So hypothetically, were one to have some excess currency available to him, one could travel to Greece with one's leveraged currency and possibly buy property for cheap, or possibly open a non profit for cheap, or possibly, were one so inclined, hire cheap Talent for one's amatuer "art" movies??

Oh wait, the Euro. Right. It has the same value/exchange rate to the dollar in all the member countries, right? Whose stupid idea was that?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

...He's comparing the dark ages... to the remains of a destitute small country in the rear end of europe. I'm not a historian or a economist but that seems like a huge example of hyperbole .

Right - you're not an historian.

He's saying that we can backslide - there's no garentee that Greece will remain a democracy, or that her economy will recover to pre-crisis levels.

Look at Zimbabwe, once capable of feeding all of Africa but in the space of the rule of one man it has become utterly destitute, the people starving and the economy useless and effectively shrinking as inflation rises. Or how about Iran - 60 years ago it was essentially a fully Westernised country until the Americans and British overthrew the elected government.

Hell, look at Somalia in 1982 and 1992.

You know what? just look at the Former Yugoslavia.

That CAN happen in Greece, that's the point.

[Brenus]

Well, the only point Boris forgot, like most, is THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY to quit the Euro. I am not a lawyer, but this treaty, imposed against the will of at least 3 countries that voted against, is signed between sovereign countries. There is no, I repeat, no, countries more equal than others. Perhaps the Conservative Boris has a problem with the concept of equality in front of the law, but as much I was and am against the Treaty of Lisbon Greece is still an equal partner. All the scaremongering and the fear factor can't g again the fact that if Greece doesn't want to go, nobody can decide for her. Even if the Greeks decide to not pay the debt to banks... I can't stop laughing and crying....

[Sarmatian]

Right - you're not an historian.

He's saying that we can backslide - there's no garentee that Greece will remain a democracy, or that her economy will recover to pre-crisis levels.

Look at Zimbabwe, once capable of feeding all of Africa but in the space of the rule of one man it has become utterly destitute, the people starving and the economy useless and effectively shrinking as inflation rises. Or how about Iran - 60 years ago it was essentially a fully Westernised country until the Americans and British overthrew the elected government.

Hell, look at Somalia in 1982 and 1992.

You know what? just look at the Former Yugoslavia.

That CAN happen in Greece, that's the point.

Yes, it can happen to Greece, it can happen to US, it can happen to Australia, it can happen to Brazil, it can happen to Monaco...

If that's all he wanted to say, he shouldn't have even opened his mouth. Yes, water is wet, two plus two is four, thank you very much, move along.

It comes to his reasoning. He's arguing how Greece is being forced to do something by outside influence and he use it as an argument against EU/euro. He conveniently forgets that's something all world/regional powers (Britain included) have been doing for ages and still are doing. Every election in Serbia, including the last one a few weeks ago, there's a ton of guys from US, Britain, France, Germany etc... saying which candidates are preferred by them.

That's a minor example, I don't need to mention cases of supporting political or even military groups, various (N)GO's, etc etc...

And he chose THIS as an example of big countries meddling in (un)democratic processes in other countries??? Thank you, Boris, it was a real eye opener...

[Kralizec]

Well, the only point Boris forgot, like most, is THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY to quit the Euro. I am not a lawyer, but this treaty, imposed against the will of at least 3 countries that voted against, is signed between sovereign countries. There is no, I repeat, no, countries more equal than others. Perhaps the Conservative Boris has a problem with the concept of equality in front of the law, but as much I was and am against the Treaty of Lisbon Greece is still an equal partner. All the scaremongering and the fear factor can't g again the fact that if Greece doesn't want to go, nobody can decide for her. Even if the Greeks decide to not pay the debt to banks... I can't stop laughing and crying....

At present there is no (legal) way for the others to force them to leave EMU, so yes, Greece could refuse to leave. However, they would have nowhere to turn for financing anything. They simply cannot pay for their own bills, even if you exclude interests on their current loans. They think that the current austerity measures are bad, but once they no longer receive EU/IMF aid their government would only be able to spend money that they collect in taxes first. And even that is purely theoretical, because it doesn't take a genius to realize that the entire economy will collapse almost immediately.

In such a case, the EU countries will ignore Greece and concentrate their efforts on keeping Italy, Spain and a legion of banks afloat. They might still agree to give Greece some aid under the condition that they'll leave the Eurozone voluntarily. If they're to be kept in the EU at all, that would presumably require a treaty change because the current one doesn't acknowledge the possibility of leaving only the EMU. Since this is not a hopeful situation for the rest of Europe either, we can be pretty sure that Greece will receive help as long as they keep their end of the agreements.

I'm happy with Greece's latest election results. I do think that New Democracy should stop calling themselves "the conservatives" though. That title now belongs to Syriza. Syriza ran on a platform of continuing Greece's policies of the last three decades: more government jobs, more social security and more deficit spending in general. As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly

For the record, assuming Greece does get a government that abides by the existing agreements, I do think that we should be more lenient towards them. That could be either by less austerity or more EU investments in Greece. I just think it's folly to promise further relief when it's still open to doubt wether they'll honour their promises.

[InsaneApache]

Yes, it can happen to Greece, it can happen to US, it can happen to Australia, it can happen to Brazil, it can happen to Monaco...

If that's all he wanted to say, he shouldn't have even opened his mouth. Yes, water is wet, two plus two is four, thank you very much, move along.

It comes to his reasoning. He's arguing how Greece is being forced to do something by outside influence and he use it as an argument against EU/euro. He conveniently forgets that's something all world/regional powers (Britain included) have been doing for ages and still are doing. Every election in Serbia, including the last one a few weeks ago, there's a ton of guys from US, Britain, France, Germany etc... saying which candidates are preferred by them.

That's a minor example, I don't need to mention cases of supporting political or even military groups, various (N)GO's, etc etc...

And he chose THIS as an example of big countries meddling in (un)democratic processes in other countries??? Thank you, Boris, it was a real eye opener...

Welcome to the Peoples Democratic Republic of the massive European Union, where all opinions are considered and ignored enmasse.