We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The collapse of the eurozone, ctd This is interesting:
“As the EU debt drama continues unspooling like a perversely watchable soap opera (the FT’s Neil Hume describes it as ‘eurozone crisis porn’), an intriguing sub-plot has emerged: Britain is suing the European Central Bank. The Treasury is unhappy with an ECB move to limit the kind of euro-denominated products that can pass through UK clearing houses, suspecting it’s a bid to shift financial activity from London to Paris/Berlin. So it’s taking legal action, the first of its kind by an EU member state.)”
Via the Spectator’s “Coffee House” blog.
I enjoyed this paragraph:
“On a wider level, there’s some irony in the fact that the UK and the EU are squabbling over euro-denominated transactions. Who even knows which countries will still be using the euro by the time the year is out? Exactly what kind of euro will be cleared in clearing houses come Christmas?”
Someone explain to me why we are in the EU. I am sure there is a reason, but bugger me if I can remember now. Old age creeping in.
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I find myself in the awkward position (since I despise the man) of asking: have the British yet sent a bottle of good booze to Soros to thank him for keeping them out of the Euro?
I see where another proposed development is a two-tier Euro – one for the stable countries, one for the PIIGS. How that would work, is hard to fathom. Now you’d have two European currencies as well as the several national currencies? Seems to me that that’s actually worse than what the Euro was supposed to be in improvement on.
Thomas Gresham is surely spinning in his grave.
llater,
llamas
Couldn’t tell you JP. However this Swiss political ad provides some reason not to be there (H/t Alex at Financial Crimes).
Trying again.
Couldn’t tell you JP. However this Swiss political ad provides some reason not to be there (H/t Alex at Financial Crimes).
Oh that’s easy.
To provide constitutional backing for judicial power grabs.
Llamas, as I understand it the idea of a two-tier euro is to permit the “PIIGS euro” to be devalued in order to better reflect the economies of the nations involved (and, not coincidentally, to economically [but not legally] default on all securities denominated in that euro). Once that’s accomplished the two euros can be re-united into a single currency. It is asserted that this would accomplish the same thing as Greece et al devaluing their own currencies, which at present they can’t do since they have no national currencies. And of course we all know that devaluing one’s currency is a panacea for all economic woes.
Because many years ago, most of us voted to stay in something totally different.
“Someone explain to me why we are in the EU. I am sure there is a reason, but bugger me if I can remember now.”
From dimly-recalled arguments of famous pro-EU figures, I think it has something to do with the Continentals being jolly good chaps, Provence being a pleasant spot to spend a few weeks in summer, and Camembert being yummy. Anyone who thinks we shouldn’t have a pan-European government obviously disagrees.
Laird wrote:
‘Llamas, as I understand it the idea of a two-tier euro is to permit the “PIIGS euro” to be devalued in order to better reflect the economies of the nations involved (and, not coincidentally, to economically [but not legally] default on all securities denominated in that euro). Once that’s accomplished the two euros can be re-united into a single currency. It is asserted that this would accomplish the same thing as Greece et al devaluing their own currencies, which at present they can’t do since they have no national currencies. And of course we all know that devaluing one’s currency is a panacea for all economic woes.’
Be it duly noted that he/she and I are 100% in agreement on a matter having to do with the economics of currencies. A new first!
The point about effective default (by making the debt valueless) is especially well-made.
Or, to put it in layman’s terms – the house is 80% underwater and about to go into foreclosure because we can’t make the payments. So we tell the bank that we’re splitting the mortgage into two pieces – one very small piece on the nice comfy house, with the pool and the two-car garage, and one very large piece on the tumbledown garden shed and a small strip of weeds behind the herbaceous border. We’ll continue to make the payments on the smaller piece, default on the larger piece, and let them foreclose. And, when all’s said and done, we’ll still have the house with the pool and the 2-car garage, we’ll have dumped the giant debt, we’ll buy back the shed and the weedy bit for a few pennies on the dollar, and we’ve lost nothing.
If I could get a deal like that, I wouldn’t have to rob banks for a living. It’s beautiful. The real question for me is – do we suppose that the people holding the PIIGS’s debt are going to stand still for a haircut like that?
llater,
llamas
I can only watch this in short dozes.
Watching the politicians and so on trying to pretend that “if only we do….” all will be well, either gives me the giggles or makes me feel sick (and I am ill anyway).
And it is not just the politicians.
If I see another financial industry say “if we had Euro bonds” all will be well, I may break the screen.
Look people.
You are acting like Max Kaiser sterotypes of greedy bankers.
Stop thinking of your next scam (next bailout, “Euro Bonds”, whatever) and start telling the truth.
The Euro game (like so many games) is up – it is over.
Be done with it.
You’re in because the free-trade stuff was nice, and you didn’t read the fine print.
“”__“Someone explain to me why we are in the EU. I am sure there is a reason, but bugger me if I can remember now.”
From dimly-recalled arguments of famous pro-EU figures, I think it has something to do with the Continentals being jolly good chaps, Provence being a pleasant spot to spend a few weeks in summer, and Camembert being yummy. Anyone who thinks we shouldn’t have a pan-European government obviously disagrees.__””
I was saying substantially that stuff for years, in the 1990s, on places like “eurofaq”, “eurorealist”, and to anybody who would listen, which latter was really not many people at all: about three actually. But everybody thought I was a “swivel-eyed” “little-Englander”.
I did try, honestly and without bias, to point out several things – such as: (1) the general yumminess of continetal foodstuffs, compared with the fare on offer in most London eateries, (2) the general superior sexual attractiveness of European girls, specially in those countries that had been most viciously and barbarically fought over for longest, owing I guess to more rapid genetic hybridisation per unit-time, (3) the generally superior and much more predictable weather, such as in Provence as stated, and the effect this in particular would have on the opinions of the British Governing Class about Europe and the EU (also their leaning towards any sorts of foodstuffs not generally able to be consumed by lower-class British voters.)
Incidentally, does anybody have any notion of why English classical-liberal minimal-statist proponents of the UK’s exit from the EU are often dubbed “swivel-eyed”?
My last marvellous comment, from a minute ago, was smitbotted. I suspect all you Samizdatists are therefore closet europhiles. But as I’d happily saved it in Word, you can read it on facebook instead.
If its eurozone crisis porn, its eurozone crisis gay midget S&M porn. And since various southern Europeans are involved, I’m sure an animal is being tortured somewhere. And in the UK the establishment is having a wankfest, occassionally congratulating ourselves for ‘the one thing Gordon Brown did right’, although its not like our government is doing its utmost to take advantage of this fact.
I don’t find it interesting, just extremely depressing.
Unfortunately I need to keep an eye on the news and the dreaded FT in order to function reasonably well at work and not be seen as an alien. But I try and keep it to a minimum nowadays.
Well put, Llamas. And, by the way, that is essentially what the US government is trying for force banks to do: reduce the principal balance of loans on “underwater” properties to the current appraised value and charge off the rest. So the bank takes all the loss but if the value goes up again the borrower gets all the gain. Heads I win, tails you lose. Sounds like a fair deal to me.
(Oh, and FWIW, it’s “he”.)
Smited! And on a thoroughly innocuous comment. I guess the sarcasm filter is running again.
“Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike:
One doth not stroke me, not the other strike.”
Is it me or can I hear Dave Cameron and George Osborne sniggering?
The reason the UK is in the Eurozone is to reduce transaction costs. In this case, it means no [or very low?] tariffs.
A merged currency would further lower transaction costs, but it runs the risk of locking an economy to an unfavorable exchange rate (one too high or low to maximize labor and investment).
The downside for the UK is the loss of sovereignty and the “harmonization” of UK with Euro law. The upside is more trade.
If you built a lot of coal fired generators you could run current backwards through all those wind turbines and pull yourselves away from the continent. Things could get messy and the channel isn’t as wide as it used to be.
Jim Lindgren– OK, but you could have the trade with a customs union, so isn’t the rest extortion?
The downside for the UK is the loss of sovereignty and the “harmonization” of UK with Euro law. The upside is more trade.
The 1975 Referendum was the last and only say that the British ever had over Europe. This means that only people over 54 today were voters in that election.
The referendum itself was not whether the UK should become a part of a federal Europe, give over her sovereignty to an unelected Brussels bureaucracy, but a simple vote on whether the UK should remain a part of the Common Market – a trading union only.
By a majority of 53%, those who voted decided to remain within the Common Market. This was the only say that the British people have ever had on the EU.
http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/index.html
It is past time for another referendum (in which I confidently expect the UK electorate to vote overwealmingly for withdrawal)
This is exactly the reason they will never be allowed to vote. The only votes that are allowed are those that support a federal Europe and they will be re-ballotted if they get the result wrong (as the Irish did last time around).
In the seventies when trade union militancy was at a peak and when various swivel-eyed lefties, like Michael Foot and Tony Benn, looked like potential prime-ministers, the European Economic Community looked like a comparative haven of piece and prosperity. Many people saw membership of the EEC as protecting us from the predations of these lunatics.
Of course, if the small print had been stuck under the noses of the British people then I am sure they would have rejected the whole European project.
John Louis Swaine, you are mistaken. There is no constitional justification for this power-grab.
Indeed, insofar as the British Constitution actually exists at all, it explicitly rules out such things – no parliament can bind its successor, power is only lent from the people and must be returned, The Queen in Parliament is supreme, her coronation oath expressly requires her not to surrender the nation to any foreign power, etc etc etc.
Not to mention the Act of Supremacy, which is still on the statute book. That is pretty clear too.
What has happened is unconstitutional, illegal, void, and without justification or legitimacy.
It is, in fact, treason.
Although the connection is difficult to see, you are in the EU for the same reason your Archbishop of Canterbury has proposed you accept Sharia law for some of your population. There is an element of your country that has gained sway over the decision making for your country and they are taking full advantage of it. We have the same element here in the U.S. They are variously know as leftists, liberals, progressives, traitors or idiots.
“They are variously know as leftists, liberals, progressives, traitors or idiots.”
There is no good reason to surrender to them the word “liberal” and I cannot understand why U.S. conservatives like Jonah Goldberg continue to do so. It is a small thing in the obvious sense, but it is nontheless appalling and totally unnecessary.
For the British leadership such as Prime Minister Edward Heath, membership of “Europe” was never about free trade (a concept he hated anyway – see what he did internally, with price controls, three day weeks and so on).
It was always a POLITICAL (not an economic) project, and it still is.
Do David Cameron and co really believe in the vision of the European Union?
Perhaps – perhaps not.
Perhaps these folk (deep down) believe in nothing at all.
I read a good quote about NATO, which applies to Europe. It was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
I suppose Europe has been at peace for over 60 years. Have there been any other benefits?