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If I dare.
Has our younger folk become dependant on the so called "nanny state" and the extended version via Europe and therefore possibly too scared to venture away from its perceived blanket of protection.
Billy's Outback Shack
I do not think that the younger generation has any trust in the government. The media has exposed them to the blatant truth that the corridors of power are merely somewhere that people go to feather their own nest.
The apathy is sadly understandable.Mind it is very easy to tell when a politician is lying; You can see their lips move.
Well no doubt the flag wavers will be all over this supreme act of "Britishness" by Cameron. In reality its nothing more than a veto to allow his masters at the worlds capital of financial engineering and infinite leverage (The City) to go about their business unfettered. The very engineering that has brought the worlds economies, Britain included to its knees in the first place. You gotta love it when these blokes develop "clear conscience" when it comes to protecting the UK’s gangster financial industry.
On a GDP level the UK is most levered nation on earth if you take all outstanding debt into account, a fact well known to the ratings agencies. So where’s the downgrade?
I work with Germans and travel to Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin regularly. I like them, ordinary Germans are not to blame. The most responsible large country in Western Europe, and one of the few that gives me any hope the West has a future as good as the last 50 years.
I don’t want to see the banana-land I come from ruled by an outside power ever again and it wont happen if the people don’t let it happen. Unfortunately the X-Factor and Sky Sports are higher on too many people’s priorities these days. Will that change in time?
Not if Cameron has his say.
Cav
Cameron and the markets are not about what he inherited but where he’s going with it.
Somewhere has to be the financial centre tomorrow in the European time-zone and the UK’s best bet to be that, is if it restores integrity and the application of the rule of law to the financial sector and to the public sector (government borrowing) that is its major client.
No accident I suggest that the FSA report on RBS came out yesterday. Cameron knows there can be no return to Labour’s blind-eye, no enforcement regime which was the corollary of Labour getting its vote-buying budgets funded .
For sure Cameron’s got an uphill battle against umpteen years of unsustainable "profit from big government" practices getting embedded, but the good news is that neither New York nor Paris nor Frankfurt have any better a track record on integrity or rule of law, nor too now a seemingly easily-pushed-around Switzerland.
All the UK has to do is to win a least-ugly contest in the European time-zone.
Cameron also knows that you can’t treat with contempt a populace of whom you have no alternative but to demand austerity until growth re-emerges.
Good news there again for the UK in that the other EU states maintain their contempt for electorates, and for all their demonstrated ineptitude continue in denial along their one-trick unsustainable path.
Amused and saddened in equal measure to see that Clegg was not challenged when he came out on the BBC with "we shouldn’t do what’s popular, we should do what’s right". Now there’s a man still wedded to the Euro, the EU and political elitism regardless of democracy – today’s leader of liberals and democrats.
As Merkel will expect fiscal compliance also from Sarko / his successor once FrAAAnce becomes FrBBBnce, so will Cameron I think do what is possible and necessary to bring to account those who were allowed under Labour to profit from fraud, be it financiers or the politicos and bureaucrats interfacing with them.
It will be far from comprehensive though I fear – he has to be careful that retrospective action does not impact the predictability essential to confidence by future users that they know what they’re getting into when operating in a financial centre.
Perhaps a chance to rid ouselves of so many petty laws introduced by Eurp MP’s
Out of interest Bill can you give us say five examples of ‘petty laws introducted by Euro MP’s’….
Thanks
I wouldn’t politicize regulation in The City at all, Wit. Take a look at where the Conservatives get their money. David is their man, he works for them.
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 … r-cameron/
No surprise the trail of the recent MF Global collapse is leading back to London, the same jurisdiction that let AIG and Lehman Brothers leverage synthetic assets to infinity and collapse the global economy in the process. Was perfectly legal to that under UK law in 2008
just as it is now
.
The more I think about Cameron, with his puffed out cheeks and school boy bluster last week…….
…pass me the sick bucket please.
The more I think about Cameron, with his puffed out cheeks and school boy bluster last week…….
…pass me the sick bucket please.
I agree with Cavs
What a world we live in….those with less to gain (not Wit, I think he has made a few quid) are the most vocal….amazing…
Perhaps a chance to rid ouselves of so many petty laws introduced by Eurp MP’s
Out of interest Bill can you give us say five examples of ‘petty laws introducted by Euro MP’s’….
Thanks
1 – forced privatisation and sale of the Tote by the government, monopolies commission
2 – Introduction of the disasterous ERM in the 90;s, the fore-runner to the EU
3 – european workingtime directive
4 – privatisation of the post office (all public sector works)
5 – VATI admit that none of those are petty but they are all a direct result of euro treaties etc.
For clarity, Euro MP’s don’t introduce laws they moderate laws put forward by the unelected comissioners, ppl like kinnock, peter mandelson, etc.
The Euro is a disaster from star to finish and I think you have got a bit of a nerve Cav coming on here and saying that the Irish will never be ruled by a foriegn power, when the germans approve your own countires budget. You should look at the mess you have got yourselves into with all this before you critise us, i think.
cameron was right not to sign the treaty amendment because it does nothing to reslove the soveriegn debt built up by greece, spain, ireland, portugal, italy, hungary and france. None of who will stick to it anyway lol.
I just hope that they have a controlled exit plan for these struggling countries and that we don’t end up with military coups and even more hardship for normal people. People who have never had a chance to have a say in any of it.
just seen the FT online.
didn’t take long for Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Czechs to start talking about joining Cameron.
even among the 17 eurozone members, noises now from Ireland and Netherlands to follow his lead.
The Euro is a disaster from star to finish and I think you have got a bit of a nerve Cav coming on here and saying that the Irish will never be ruled by a foriegn power, when the germans approve your own countires budget. You should look at the mess you have got yourselves into with all this before you critise us, i think.
Wouldn’t disagree that the Euro has a been a disaster from start to finish for Ireland. An economy that was was growing at 5-6% annually at the start of the century having German interest rates foisted upon it (2%) back then was a recipe for disaster.
I didn’t say "that the Irish will never be ruled by a foreign power" and as for the "mess" we’re partly to blame, not fully. My argument here is not trans-national, blaming individual countries for what happened. My argument is that Cameron shouldn’t be fated as some kind of anti European British hero, when all he’s doing is defending the interests of the financial engineers who can rehypothecate US investment bank money to infinity in London and blow up the world economy in the process.
cameron was right not to sign the treaty amendment because it does nothing to reslove the soveriegn debt built up by greece, spain, ireland, portugal, italy, hungary and france. None of who will stick to it anyway lol.
Pre 2008, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Hungary and Italy all met the 3pc deficit targets demanded by the stability pact. There was no sovereign debt crisis, Greece excepted. The problem started when
current account
imbalances in these countries couldn’t be financed by private equity post credit crunch in 2008, a credit lockup caused by the implosion of Lehman and subsequently AIG. I’ll remind you again Dave, these two gangster organizations operated unfettered out of London, US financial regulation would not have permitted AIG’s Joe Cassano to flog 2.3 trillion dollars worth of synthetic credit default swaps from Wall Street, so he did it from an office in Mayfair instead. And its still going on today if the initial investigations into what happened to the 1.2 billion dollars of supposedly "ringfenced" client money at MF Global is anything to go by. This is the industry whose regulation Cameron opposes. Give me a break for Jayus sake.
So dont turn this into a Brits or Paddys against the Germans, Dave. Should be Brits, Paddys and Germans against the bankers and their mates. The puffy cheeked blusterer included.
Cav
Its true enough that in the shadow banking system increasingly fewer hard (i.e. cash-flow generating) assets are used to fund increasingly more liabilities in a "fractional reserve" recursive loop, which has hit about USD 30 trillion and in theory can go on in perpetuity – like a snake swallowing its own tail if it could keep conjuring up additional body length at will.
Its also true enough that London has been the shadowy sub-centre of that system.
But that’s not the problem.
You can leave a system like that to its own neverland – entropy means it will eventually topple and the participants get burned out. Then another one will start.
The problem is when a government seeks to get involved in that neverland to the extent of committing to it real world assets of the uninvolved that will never be sufficient to satisfy the continually "made up" liabilities created by the shadow system.
Why did government do that?
Because – through repealing and/or not enforcing separations between mainstream and shadow banking – they had failed in their first imperative of maintaining social order and allowed a situation to arise where what happened to players in the shadow system could affect social order in the real system.
You can make money running a betting exchange until you decide to start bailing out the punters.
The problem is with the players allowed in, not what they do once inside.
As I understand, the UK wants to get back to the world of Glass-Steagall to address that entry problem – unless this has changed since June ? :
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/uk-pre … s-steagall
It seem that the objections being voiced against Cameron are to his physical appearance / manner rather than the substance of what he’s doing ?
What do his critics think he should be doing? Joining in the self-congratulation of the 26 for achieving / planning – what exactly ?
Rules for imposing budgetary discipline across the EU already exist – the Maastricht criteria require that member states must hold deficits below 3 per cent of GDP and borrowings below 60 per cent of national income.
At last count this requirement was met in just three of the eurozone’s 17 members – Estonia, Finland and Luxembourg.
The sanctions for breach permitted by the treaties have never been enforced.
Why not ?
Maybe somebody will eventually admit that the world economy is bankrupt. Moreover, those who massage it are also morally bankrupt.
In days of yore, they would have a lovely war and kill millions, drought, famine and disease would dispose of a few more. Through it all the old order would remain ostensibly the same. Unless you are one of the mighty, looking down upon the squabbling minions, nothing you do or say is going to change a thing, so be thankful there is no such thing as immortality.PS Merry Christmas!
Perhaps a chance to rid ouselves of so many petty laws introduced by Eurp MP’s
Out of interest Bill can you give us say five examples of ‘petty laws introducted by Euro MP’s’….
Thanks
No I read the SUN
Billy's Outback Shack
All fair points Cav .. I would remind you that Iceland didn’t nationalise all of the debts and junk credit tied up in it’s financial system and if the Irish had followed their lead instead of the political elite selling out their own country, Ireland might have economic growth and it’s own devalued currency now
My understanding of the deal the Cameron rejected was not to regulate the finance industry but to tax it (Tobin Tax). I don’t know what that would do to stop this happening again?
Wit was spot on earlier when he said that the German economy has expanded at the expense of the Southern European countries and that is why Merkel and her servant Sarkozy are panicking to save the Euro. It says everything to me that thye have been unable to convince China, Brazil and India that it can actually be saved.
The EU needs to be redefined and started again as a free trading zone, in my opinion. Political and monetary union isn’t working and it isn’t going to work.
Firstly we had referedums on the Lisbon treaty rejected by the electorate in France, netherlands and Ireland. Then it becomes law, even though nobody wants it. Now we have democractically elected leaders replaced by puppet goverments in Greece and Italy. Where does it stop ??
As for the propaganda about there being another war on mainland Europe, that’s just pish talk. Nato (the US) has nearly 600,000 troops based in Europe and Germany is not allowed to have an army. Who exactly is going to fight who and what with?
The BBCs coverage of this whole event has been nothing but disgraceful and completely biased, well what would you expect coming from an organisation who’s top man was on the EU gravy train for years and years?
Personally, I don’t see cameron as a eurosceptic more of a pro-common sense man. As wit asks why have the fines not been collected from the countries who broke the 3% rule under the current arrangement? When the new agreement comes into force will EVERY country be forced to pay fines and where will the fine money go? The whole scheme is idiotic.
Anyway, I’m going for a haircut and I can pay with it with five british pounds, in cash!!
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.
Of course the pundit may be wrong; there may be other factors that he hasn’t taken into account that would scotch his analysis. But, of all the many (and I mean many) articles I’ve read on the EU’s handling of the Euro crisis, this stood out:-
Full link:-
logs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100017863/the-more-bailouts-there-are-the-worse-it-will-get/The writer is an economist, hardly a profession which nowadays suggests any great competence to comment on anything to do with finance etc. Anyway, here’s a snippet from it if you can’t be bothered to read the (not too long) whole piece:-
…The more bail-outs there are, the worse things will get. By bailing out Greece, policy-makers imposed larger losses on Spanish, French and other holders of Greek debt. By bailing out Spain, policy-makers will make Spanish bonds worth less with the consequence of imposing larger losses on Portuguese, Italian and French bondholders. At the same time the French and Italian governments are theoretically liable for a portion of the Spanish bail-out. That makes France and Italy less creditworthy in two ways – their banks are more bust and their sovereigns are more stretched. Now there is pressure to bail-out Italy in turn. How can the French and Germans not bail-out Italy if they’ve bailed out Spain? But by bailing out Italy they will increase the cost of any Italian default and thus make such a default more likely.
For a succinct, tell-it-as-it-really-is clip, have a gander at the following youtubeclip (barely 3 mins long):-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ISdTcwC-54
I rather get the impression many in the room now have real fear that what the speaker is telling them is the truth and they are finally going to have to accept the bad news that they have been utterly bloody incompetent and stupid. (Still, they’ll all be on generous pensions.)
This writer, James Kunstler, gives his no doubt equally knwledgeable ‘take’ on these matters. His earlier articles bear looking at, too. He’s long been a leading ‘doomster’ – as has another brilliant guy, Dmitry Orlov at ClubOrlov (cluborlov.com).
Orlov has an impressively, encyclopaedic mind, notably in scientific matters, but his articles on the impending crisis cover many fields. It’s well worth going back to his first articles in 2006 on the collapse of the Russia. You may already be familiar with his blog.
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