D_Gunther Snotpole
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Ah, let a hundred flowers blossom....it is actually a crime to criticise aspects of the EU.
Extraordinary.
Can you enlarge on this, Jason?
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Ah, let a hundred flowers blossom....it is actually a crime to criticise aspects of the EU.
I used to be a big fan of the EU/USA. No more. I see it is flawed, failing, corrupt, anti-democratic, and in the operation of the CAP/Power evil. I think we are now seeing the start of the failure of the Euro/USA. This will cause lots of misery - it is not something to be pleased about. But it has the potential to be cathartic.
Ah, let a hundred flowers blossom.
Extraordinary.
Can you enlarge on this, Jason?
Ah, let a hundred flowers blossom.
Extraordinary.
Can you enlarge on this, Jason?
If you wish to effect change, you need to be a player. That means to me, the UK in Europe and Europe in the world.
But in the EU we are faced with something sinister. By a process of incremental changes it has reduced democracy to the sham of a de facto single party - the Grand Coalition - while referenda are held as often as needed until the required result is achieved. The European Commission is subject to massive fraud. The legal system is not independent of the politicians. The policies implemented include policies which are utterly beyond defense - the CAP which has the direct effect of causing famine in Africa, so that the jobs of European farmers are bought at the price of African lives. We are creating a monster, a Eurocracy which is terrifying in the powers it is taking to itself without anything resembling adequate checks.
You are a very naughty boy, Rubi.
Take a quiet look at the world. How does it work? I am lucky, I think, to be involved in International Commerce in my own small way. I meet successful and intelligent people from all over the world. I also see first hand a lot of the fall out of not being a "player".
If you wish to effect change, you need to be a player. That means to me, the UK in Europe and Europe in the world. I don't mind free market economics, they act like an accelerated form of evolution. Yes, the fittest, or strongest survive. They are the nemesis of the weak and they seek them out and constantly test. Nature shows many survival strategies. If you have a think about it, you need to find your own, as an individual, community, nation, group, empire etc etc
Well, Jason, these are cases of employees being sacked for offering detriment to the interests of their employer.
This is less worrisome than it first sounded.
I am assuming you are not an EU employee.
Making that assumption, I ask: Do you seriously suggest you could be liable if you criticized Baronness Ashton?
If you are serious and can make a case ... then the situation is a scandal.
But are you, and can you?
I can't believe that the law would be used against someone who didn't work for the EU, but stranger things have happened.
Not sure why you would say that.
But in any case, Nyvin's statement was about currency unions ... as in, to take the immediate case, the Eurozone.
Is it working?
Very many people would say No.
There's no real adjudication between these two ... only the vagaries of individual makeup and personal choice.
which is just another way of saying they are not willing to take advice from anyone whatever sort of financial system they are using. A drachma mess would just be a worse mess.Yes Greece wants to be a modern European Democracy - but it also wants to be Greece, which means tolerating the Greek way of doing things and not being run by the ECB.
Interesting. Which of them were similar to the euro and why did they fail?There are about two dozen currency unions which have failed since the 2WW.
What do you mean by non-colonial? Most of europe was a colony at one time or another. All of it has recently been under US hegemony.I do not think there is a single example of a significant, non-colonial currency union which has endured for more than a decade or two without a political union.
Then name them so we can be overwhelmed.There are overwhelming economic reasons why such a currency union without political union cannot work.
Tell me a similar project without such integration which failed, and why?The Euro project only ever made sense within the context of full political integration as one nation state.
So austerity proposed for Greece is worse than 10 years of food rationing in Britain following WWII? I think my point was that the floating German currency failed to save Germany from recession and failed to stop the subsequent rise of the Nazi party. The nazi party itself was only a symptom of gereral hatred for everyone who had inflicted the economic collapse on Germany.Austerity in Germany post 1WW was a contributor to the great depression and a major cause of the rise of the Nazis and the 2WW - I think this is an example of why such an austerity programme should not be contemplated. Austerity in the nations of Europe following the 2WW was dire, but still not as dire as what is being asked of Greece.
I don't understand why you think devaluing your currency is not an austerity program? It makes goods more expensive and erodes the value of your savings. Boosts inflation and so encourages wage demands. It sucks cash out of the private economy and places it in government hands. It is basically a massive stealth tax which is difficult to avoid, but it is still austerity. In extreme cases the currency becomes totally worthless and people start using other firm currencies (like the euro) anyway. What Greek citizen in their right mind would agree to give up savings denominated in euros for new drachmas? There would be absolutely no change to existing government debt repayable in euros which it would rapidly become impossible for the Greek government to obtain. The Greek governments own selling of drachma to buy euros to pay those debts would force its new currency to destruction. A new currency could only possibly work if the Greek government had already defaulted. And in that situation what credibility could it have?All these nations had currencies which could devalue. Much of the media and the political chatter seems to be that an austerity project is right for Greece, but I think this is dangerous thinking. A country can only take so much austerity.
And inflation produced by devaluing currency isnt going to help. That's what devaluing means. It has less value.bringing down wages and benefits rarely works anywhere and certainly isn't going to in corrupt and unionised Greece.
Yes, the solution is simple. The government has to spend less and people have to accept having less. No, persuading them to accept this, that is difficult. Really makes no difference who is calling the tune, it is agreeing to measures which counts. The IMF would never agree to lend a penny unless the Greeks massively sort out their government borrowing, which is the bit they aren't willing to do right now.In economic terms the solution is straightforward - bring in the IMF with appropriate loans, float a new drachma and devalue.
actually, what euro crisis? There is not a euro crisis. The currency is doing quite well. There is a crisis in that the Greek government is unable to finance its budget. This is arguably a EU crisis, in that one of its members might go bankrupt, but really has little to do with the euro.In the position we are now in - a Euro crisis without full political integration - we have powerful forces attacking this single currency.
Now isnt that just a teeny bit unfair? What about US policy of making biofuels from food which led to sudden hikes in rice prices..leading no doubt to countless unreported deaths? By which I am saying the idea that one country takes as much food as it wants from anyone else is nothing new. People are starving as we speak, and this will become steadily worse over the next few decades. The CAP generated surpluses in a few products and stops food from outside the EU being sold here. Fundamentally, how does this cause people to starve elsewhere? The only way it can possibly do this is because food is too cheap in many places for it to be economic to grow it. Yet still people cannot afford to pay this price. So how could they afford it if it was more expensive?There is a moral defecit of massive proportions through the Common Agricultural Policy which causes death in Africa to featherbed European farmers.
That's a big word. Invading someones country is evil. Giving them free food?I used to be a big fan of the EU. No more. I see it is flawed, failing, corrupt, anti-democratic, and in the operation of the CAP evil.
But there is a downside..... I can imagine many Englishmen who want no dilution of their vision of England, and many Frenchmen who can brook no thinning of the glories of La France profonde and so on down the line.
You are, I think, arguing that the EU does not have any formal mechanisms for wealth redistribution and thus cannot operate as a single currency area. I find this assertion very questionable, but it also seems to overlook the very real redistributive mechanism which exists in the EU. A Greek goes to Germany, gets a job and sends the money home. He is entirely entitled to do this and it is an enormously powerful mechanism. He has a legal right to go and work anywhere in the EU, and will even be paid in the right currency to carry home. Norman Tebbit's famous 'get on your bike' suggestion for the unemployed from the times of Thatcher.The EU medecine for Club Med is worse than the illness.
Only up to a point. What would be the situation in Greece now if the drachma was in free fall, which is what would be the case. Greece would have defaulted by now. There would be no money to buy anything from abroad and economic migrants running all over europe like the desperate people they would be.Devaluation (and revaluation) of freely floating currencies is the safety valve.
Again I think of the example of the UK in the 70s and 80s. Devaluation may have helped but it also pushes up inflation which can be fatal. Bad productivity in britain had to be fixed by changed practices at home. This only happened after people realised there was no choice and agreed to change. Some pain is needed to make this point.Greece needs an across the board reduction in wages and benefits which it just won't get by consensus. Devaluation makes this possible.
Surely the biggest difference is that it was the last remnant of the russian empire. That is why other countries wanted nothing to do with it. The euro is a grouping of people who want to belong to it and come from very similar economic backgrounds.The closest parallel I know to the Eurozone monetary union was the rouble union which followed the disintegration of the USSR - it is compable in terms of size and number of countries, and has both similarities and differences in the way it was administered.
But the euro does have a single admistrative control, carefully designed to represent all its members and not give control to just one, unlike in the case of Russia.The three conditions usually considered essential for a monetary union are:
1) common monetary and fiscal policy
2) a single government controlling the above
3) common legislation around banking practices/exchange rates/bond issue.
The Eurozone, like the rouble zone, lacks elements of all three. In efect (2) creates (1) and (3).
eh what? GreeK sovereign debt is not the same as German soveregn debt or anyone elses. Any market trader would laugh at a suggestion it was the same thing. A greek euro is the same as a German one, but no one would give you same price for a Greek government IOU as a Geman one.2) markets bid so as to create different prices for what is essentially the same product. In the CIS this was national banks in their international rouble trading, in the EU it is sovereign debt being sold at different prices.
http://www.case.com.pl/upload/publikacja_plik/3460035_058e.pdf[/QUOTEA source I know for the rouble union failure is ? indigo 2004 - B??D 404 - strona niedost?pna
I dont know much about currencies, but I dont need to give an example. You are claiming they cannot work and have always failed, so it is up to you to give examples where this has happened. The report you quote says 1) the russian states hated each other so could not cooperate. 2) there was no free movement of labour. 3) Russia refused to continue subsidies to the regions which it had always paid. With the euro 1) states do cooperate. 2) free movement of labour. 3) no sudden cutting off of funds, and in fact people edging round to giving more.To the fans of the Euro I say, where is your example of a currency union that has worked? If you are basing the success of the Euro on the idea that it is so big it cannot fail, remember the failure of currency of the superpower the USSR.
I dont know much about currencies, but I dont need to give an example. You are claiming they cannot work and have always failed, so it is up to you to give examples where this has happened.
To the fans of the Euro I say, where is your example of a currency union that has worked? If you are basing the success of the Euro on the idea that it is so big it cannot fail, remember the failure of currency of the superpower the USSR.