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A sharp reminder of where the real power lies As recounted here in a justifiably passionate editorial about the European Union’s plans to beat up the City of London, we are reminded that, whatever the vote might have been in the May general election, that with qualified majority voting in the EU, states can – and do – gang up to put a particular country’s economic affairs in grave difficulty.
Paris and Frankfurt have, in particular, resented the prosperity of the City. And as the recent travails of the euro show, there is precious little to be said for the supposedly wiser governnance of the euro zone. There was a certain amount of gloating after the US and UK got hit by the sub-prime mortgage meltdown (some of that gloating might have been justified) but it is quite clear that the rigidities of the euro zone remain a severe problem.
Why we are in the EU again?
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“Why we are in the EU again?”
To keep the French in the style they are accustomed to!
I don’t dispute that madness of the UK ceding control over regulation of the City to the French and Germans but I would like to take issue with a comment in the City AM Editorial.
The editor makes the point that private equity wasn’t responsible for financial crisis. Perhaps this is true but it is certainly responsible for leaving far too many companies in the poo during the current down-turn.
The professed logic of private equity was the private equity boys could detect wastage and run the target companies better hence adding value.
In reality all they did was load companies up with far too much debt (debt which the companies didn’t need and which wasn’t put to productive use) and then waited for the magic of inflation and leverage to confirm their business genius.
These companies with otherwise sound businesses may have been able to survive the economic downturn but are instead knee-capped and hamstrung by the debt load. They didn’t stand a chance.
Is it not ironic that, while the UK is a socialist country that regards tax payers as mere cash cows to be abused at will, it is a member of a socialist super state that regards it as a tax payer?
Are they so stupid they don’t understand how their own scam works?
Roue
They understand quite well how it works.
The goal is to keep the scam going !!
To survive, the collectivist beast that is the EU must feed continuously. As with any Ponzi scheme (and particularly a politically motivated one), the main way of achieving this is constant activity, divide-and-rule. When your opponent falls, seize the opportunity and try and disable him while he is down.
There is no doubt that the EU considers the voting public to be part of the problem. That is why we have to be goaded and cajoled by our politicians into voting correctly. When this is not possible or not achievable with certainty then our vote is denied.
That is why none of the Con/Lib/Lab alliance will ever give us a genuine free vote to get out of the EU. Even if they did and we voted overwhelmingly to leave (as I believe we would), I doubt that it would be honoured or the cost would be so great that we would be crippled for generations.
No – the way the tyranny of the EUSSR works is by creeping compulsion, each time a crisis arises within a state, exploit it to achieve more control until the parliament of Great Britain is no more than a parish council – or more appropriately, the palatial chambers of the Gauleiter of London.
We must hope and pray that the latest foolish episode to buck the market by promising to support the Euro to the death will be the final nail in the coffin of the EUSSR. Even though a domino effect of countries defaulting on their sovereign debt would cause massive problems across the region – that is still better than to live under tyranny.
The blood is already on the streets of Athens, when it has consumed Spain and Portugal we will most likely be next. Then it will be time to build the barricades.
“England Prevails!”
“Why we are in the EU again?”
Because you have forgotten who you are.
This has been the aim all along. We the People are inconvienient hinderances to the Grand Scheme. We have been consistently lied to, and will continue to be lied to…
“Europe’s nations should be guided towards a super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”[7]
“Why we are in the EU again?”
Don’t worry. David Cameron crossed his heart & hoped to die if he did not give you a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Oh? What’s that? David Cameron lied? Don’t be silly. No one would ever be stupid enough to elect as their next Prime Minister a guy who had bare-faced lied to them.
Oh? What’s that? Most of them did not vote for Cameron’s party, but he gets to be Prime Minister anyway.
Sounds like you Brits have bigger problems than the EU. Or at least closer problems!
The “real power” does not lie with the governance structures of the EU – that’s just what it looks like from the outside. The “real power” itself is the chain of emotionally resonant ideas submersed in the minds of people all across Europe. So powerful is it that it seldom occurs to them in any serious form that there is – or ever could be – an alternative to obeying the law whilst keeping a good conscience.
MarkyMark, you are correct about “(i)n reality all they did was load companies up with far too much debt (debt which the companies didn’t need and which wasn’t put to productive use)”, but that is the idea of private equity to begin with.
“The professed logic of private equity was the private equity boys could detect wastage and run the target companies better hence adding value.” is a claim I have never seen a private equity firm make. I used to work for a private equity fund (as an analyst, not a principal) – these guys insist that the current management stay and run the company, and give it a hefty equity incentive to do so. They do not meddle in the day-to-day management one bit, and in fact only offer (but do not insist) to put one of their guys on the company board if the company needs help with financing decisions.
Loading up on debt ahead of an economic downturn was surely not a good idea, and as you note, must have dragged some companies taken private under. However, the private equity guys are taking the biggest losses from this, and are not asking for bail-outs, so I do not have much to hold against them. The employees of such companies will hurt, but if your company is being taken private, and you do not immediately begin for looking for alternative employment, you only have yourself to blame – your company just got levered to the eyeballs, and therefore more risky.
And this is why I strongly considered voting for the BNP and, had they a chance of winning in my seat would have done. The single issue that overrides all others for The UK is The EU. Life under a national socialist government would not be pleasant but if it was government that seceded then it would have been the first step.
As it was I voted UKIP, as neither party had a hope in hhell and my protest vote registered as an anti-EU one rather than anti- any of the other things that a BNP vote could have been construed as.
As has been pointed out above, The EU will march towards federalism until it collapses. We can wait until it does (possibly centuries) or leave. Or put up with it.
Federalism worked well for the US, but while our states were treated as limited sovereign entities, they had no history as sovereign nation states, unlike the states of Europe. While your nations have much in common, there are also many cultural and linguistic differences that divide you as well. Federalism will never work in Europe. Truthfully, it has had limited success in the US, where it could work well, but we have the opposite problem. Here, our elitist politicians don’t honestly believe in it, other than when it seems convenient, or for purposes of lip service.
Very good, compelling blog you have here. I recently added you to my blogroll, and thought I should drop by and say hello.
“Federalism worked well in the U.S.”
It sort of worked (if one ignores things like the Civil War) up till the time of President Wilson.
However, then such things as the Federal Reserve system (a vast source of credit money for the politically connected) undermined Federalism.
Herbert Hoover (contrary to establishment history) made things a lot worse – by such things as having a de facto Federal wage policy in peacetime (a policy of keeping up wages at a time of economic slump – i.e. a policy of insanity) and having a trade war with the rest of the world.
President F.D. Roosevelt (a follower of President Wilson) made the Federal government much bigger than the State governments (which makes “Federalism” a bit of a joke).
Since the time of FDR Presidnents (including the absurd George Walker Bush) have mostly (Ike, Ford and Reagan were the only exceptions) worked to increase the size and scope of the Federal government – and Comrade Barack Obama (I make no apology for, yet again, pointing out that this man is a life long Marxist with a deep hatred of the West in general and the United States in particular) is trying to complete the process.
As for the E.U. – yuk.
And as for George Osbourne and David Cameron (who have just sold out the 80% of E.U. hedge funds that are based in Britain – on the basis of the BIG LIE that “lack of regulation” caused the current crises) – also yuk.