Europe

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Cooperation should be achieved through free trade, a network of military alliances, and perhaps free borders. Anything much more than that is fundamentally dangerous to the national sovereignty of the nations in Europe.

[Beskar]

Cooperation should be achieved through free trade, a network of military alliances, and perhaps free borders. Anything much more than that is fundamentally dangerous to the national sovereignty of the nations in Europe.

Like national sovereignty actually means anything more than petty people drawing lines in the sand.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Like national sovereignty actually means anything more than petty people drawing lines in the sand.

It means that and so much more, though a determined internationalist will always be one regardless of how you rationalize to him.

[Furunculus]

the perils of federalisation when one country operates a financial model in which other 'brother' countries cannot compete:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance...-economic-war/

Germany declares economic war

If there are any German readers of this blog, I would like to know what they think of the latest breath-taking provocations of German finance minister Peer Steinbrück.

Remember that Herr Steinbrück is not a journalist, pundit, or back-bench maverick. He speaks officially for the German government and for the German nation on the international stage.

Every assertion that he made about Britain in his interview with Stern is either factually wrong, or such a serious distortion of events that it amounts to a smear. Furthermore, it was quite threatening.

What he said, in effect, is that Germany will marshal its forces to ensure that a chunk of the British economy is shut down - whatever the social consequences. This is the closest thing I have seen to a declaration of economic warfare in Western Europe in my lifetime.

“There is clearly a lobby in London that wants to defend its competitive advantage tooth and nail.”

Stern said that he sees “dark powers at work” in Britain. He accused the UK government of “doing its best” to sabotage stricter financial regulation at the G20 in Pittsburg.

This resistance will be crushed. “We WILL effectively change the rules on the financial markets. Politics is sometimes like a locomotive which comes slowly up to full speed.”

“The British financial industry gains 15 per cent of the gross domestic product, in Germany is it six per cent.”

Britain is out of step with the rest of Europe in trying to keep this “advantage going.” It must “share the burden” of the financial crisis in the form of a tax on exchanges.

“The central question is who pays the bill? It cannot be that the citizens of Europe should carry the whole cost.”

Britain was having “an especially hard time, to put it politely”, agreeing to tougher regulation of hedge funds.

Now, I understand that this Westphalian bully is fighting an election on Sunday, and may well be forced out of government. But let me state a few points.

1) Britain is not blocking the G20 deal on bonus caps for bankers. It broadly supports the idea. It backs the push for greater transparency.

2) Hedge funds had almost nothing to do with crisis as agreed by the Turner Report and the EU’s Larosiere Report. They are already well regulated by the FSA in London (unlike New York, where they are not regulated). The FSA’s hedge fund code is generally viewed as a model for others.

3) UK financial services are 7.8pc of GDP, not 15pc.

4) German Landesbanken and mortgage lenders got into trouble on their global ventures because they tried to extract extra profit and were badly regulated by BaFin, the Bundesbank, and Mr Steinbrück himself. Their use of Irish SIVs, etc, to conduct off-balance-sheet speculation is the direct result of bad rules (Basel etc) drawn up after earlier crisis - a perfect example of how knee-jerk regulation by ignorant populists backfires.

5) Mr Steinbrück is the arch-cover-up artist himself. He has been resisting - “tooth and nail” - a transparent stress test of the German banks. This comes despite a string of criticisms from the IMF, OECD, and European Commission. It is blindingly obvious that he has swept the problems under the rug until after the election.

6) Britain is in considerable trouble right now - entirely of our own making, and caused by a decade of inept government, fiscal incontinence, and excess debt. Is that a moment to kick us in the teeth? One reason why the budget deficit has exploded to 13pc of GDP is that the collapse of City profits has cut a huge hole in government revenues. There is already a brutal adjustment underway. What is the benefit of further contracting credit in the middle of severe downturn. The man is mad.

7) In terms of morality, I don’t see much to choose between Germany’s car industry (with its stress on high-powered engines that consume scarce resources, and pollute) and the City of London. They are both core national industries, pillars of our respective economies.

8) Angela Merkel shares the British view that “binding powers” for the EU’s new trio of super-regulators is a step too far, and a breach of Germany’s constitution.

If a British Chancellor gave an interview on behalf of the British nation saying the German car industry should be shrunk massively, it would be viewed as a gross and gratuitous attack on Germany.

Need I add, yet again, that the banks did not cause this global crisis. Governments around the world caused the crisis by forcing down the price of credit (Greenspan, Bank of Japan, and ECB on short rates: China et al on long rates, by flooding the global bond market) far too low for many years, encouraging debt. Banks were the instruments, not the cause. That is an elementary point that many people - including Mr Steinbrück, obviously - still fail to understand.

The Westphalian bully likes taunting Britain. He made waves earlier this year mocking the “crass Keynesianism” of Gordon Brown at the most dangerous moment of the crisis. This prompted a formal protest by the British ambassdor in Berlin.

Mr Steinbrück subsequently engaged in a great deal of crass Keynesianism himself, as well as outright protectionism through the Deutschland Fund. If he remains in office, he will soon have to deal with the second leg of the German banking crisis that he has so artfully dodged until now .

We must resist Schadenfreude when that moment comes.

do i want EU to hold financial regulation as one of its 'competences'?

not on your nelly!

[LittleGrizzly]

It means that and so much more, though a determined internationalist will always be one regardless of how you rationalize to him.

I concur

[Beskar]

I concur

It's kind of sad in a way, it is like that.

Having "nations" is only a short-term solution, even I can understand that, you can't just suddenly combine everyone together into one massive melting pot or things would go horribly wrong. You have to do it graduately from the bottom, working itself upwards so the conditions are right. A combined Europe is only a step along a long road to the removal of irrational prolonging of national boundaries and a federal government would also play a part in bringing different aspects from others onto the same wavelength as it works upwards.

In the future, once the Europe has been established as a state for a long time, there would be EMFM's then going "Joining together with the likes of Russia/Africa/etc ?!" steadfast against change and progression.

[Furunculus]

In the future, once the Europe has been established as a state for a long time, there would be EMFM's then going "Joining together with the likes of Russia/Africa/etc ?!" steadfast against change and progression.

from the EFFM's the answer would be no, because the damage is already done by that point and we don't believe there to be any european identity that we care to relate too, so nothing to lose.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

It's kind of sad in a way, it is like that.

Having "nations" is only a short-term solution, even I can understand that, you can't just suddenly combine everyone together into one massive melting pot or things would go horribly wrong. You have to do it graduately from the bottom, working itself upwards so the conditions are right. A combined Europe is only a step along a long road to the removal of irrational prolonging of national boundaries and a federal government would also play a part in bringing different aspects from others onto the same wavelength as it works upwards.

For the security of the individual, which you profess to love, it is better to have more than one nation.
Nations are a natural entity. Simply unifying a continent is completely artificial, an exercise in control. It is wrong. Nationalism and internationalism are fundamentally different in this respect.

In the future, once the Europe has been established as a state for a long time, there would be EMFM's then going "Joining together with the likes of Russia/Africa/etc ?!" steadfast against change and progression.

If we get to that stage we're already , so what's the point? You say that I'm against progress for the sake of being against it, and you're wrong. This isn't progress. It isn't really regression, but it certainly isn't bringing anything good to us.

[Beskar]

For the security of the individual, which you profess to love, it is better to have more than one nation.
Nations are a natural entity. Simply unifying a continent is completely artificial, an exercise in control. It is wrong. Nationalism and internationalism are fundamentally different in this respect.

Nationalism is artifical in itself. Before nationalism was regionalism, taking Italy for example: there were papal states, tuscany, sardinia, kingdom of the two scilies, etc. After the great unification, as famously said "Now we made Italy, now we make Italians." and over the years they did just that.

Germany is another example, it used to be Saxony, Balavia, Prussia, Hanover, etc, then they were unified and they became Germans. These were only done in the last 100+ years or so.

What makes it so different that it can't go larger? Why are you stuck on this level and why not advocate a return to the old system of Hanover/Prussia/Saxony/etc ?

Why is this level so special compared to the previous and the afters?

Is the Federation of Germany or the Federation of the United States, evil? If not, why would Europe be?

If we get to that stage we're already , so what's the point? You say that I'm against progress for the sake of being against it, and you're wrong. This isn't progress. It isn't really regression, but it certainly isn't bringing anything good to us.

How so? You don't qualify your point at all. Tie it into previous question I asked if you like. If I am being honest, many arguments seems just to want status quo and against change/advancement.

[Meneldil]

Nations are a natural entity.

Where did you get this weird idea? Nations are a quite recent form of political organization. They're built through a long, and often violent process. There's no such thing as a natural nation. The same can be said about states.