Labour and the Euro summit

pqrdef

CLAPTON wrote: »

so why are you so keen to join a disfunctional outfit?

I'm regretting that we allowed it to become dysfunctional. It's probably too late now. At any rate, it would need a bigger man than we currently have to do the willie-waving needed to sort Europe out now.

I was no fan of Blair or Brown, but it has to be said that they were up for it. Sarkozy couldn't treat them the way he treats Cameron.

sheffield_lad

pqrdef wrote: »

I was no fan of Blair or Brown, but it has to be said that they were up for it. Sarkozy couldn't treat them the way he treats Cameron.

Your right unlike Brown/Blair Cameron has no puppet strings .

StevieJ

howee wrote: »

Your right unlike Brown/Blair Cameron has no puppet strings .

So how are the right wing Tory eurosceptics working him

sheffield_lad

Hand up the bum I guess lol, I think a lot has been made of this week but in reality nothing has been sorted.

But on the basis of what the weakling would have signed up for I am more than happy to be sat on the sidelines rather than on the good ship Eurpope as it sinks.

pqrdef

julieq wrote: »

That means the peripheral countries can never grow and can never become competitive. Ultimately this will cause conflict and leave Germany carrying the can for the debt of the periphery anyway, which is the killing joke really. When you nail non-matched economies together rigidly you end up with the weaker parts dragging you down.

Well something has to be done about trade imbalances. If you eliminate tariffs, and you eliminate floating currencies, the only thing left is cross-subsidy. The exporting countries have to give their customers the money to buy the stuff with.

That's how the USA works. It's how all countries stop their richer regions taking all the money and the poorer regions going bust. It's not clear to me that floating currencies are a better solution.

pqrdef

The irony is that with Blair and Brown we probably did have the right men at the right time to take over the euro - but they were the ones who bottled out.

Probably just to spite each other.

julieq

The US has a federal bank that works as a central bank, not as a mechanism to support the policies of one region. That's the key difference. Also the role of the state in the US is far smaller and social costs tends to accrue to individuals rather to than the state. So it's really a hugely different situation.

Leave it until February and March and see how things have played out before damning or praising anyone involved. There is a long way to go yet. But my judgement is that any agreements in the eurozone are likely to be to buy time for an orderly deconstruction of the Euro, because the political costs in the countries at the periphery will be too heavy to bear - pretty much all democracy works on the basis that you vote for a government which can set tax and spending priorities. That ended last week, and I think that when that becomes clear it'll take no more than a couple of months of misery and recesssion to really set the cat amongst the pigeons. If you are Greek and you know that you are the cork that's holding the genie inside the bottle, the temptation to pop it out and beggar the consequences to a Eurozone that appears to be looking after the interests of Germany and France is going to become extremely strong indeed. I'm sure that's obvious to everyone involved. If I were Greek or Italian I'd be opening accounts in Euro denominations in a German bank right now, before any controls are put in place.

But if you think the UK looks isolated now, wait until you see what happens to the first country to leave the Euro.

Sir_Humphrey

A._Badger wrote: »

That is precisely the pusillanimous 'managed decline' codswallop beloved of the F.O. 'elite' (and others) that has consistently sold this country short since the 1960s.

Dan Hannan had it right today, didn't he?

"Sir Humphrey will already be fighting this with every fibre of his being"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2072651/Sir-Humphrey-fighting-fibre-being.html

You need to join the reality-based community. You have to deal with how things are, not how you wish they are.

ILW

julieq wrote: »

You don't boost pensions by destroying industry and making it uncompetitive. Where do you think pensions come from exactly?

As for savings, there is nothing virtuous in sitting on savings and getting a safe return. You need to recycle money and use it to generate returns. The "shrink wrapped meat" mentality (i.e. you buy nicely packaged meat without having to actually kill animals) is often seen where people just think they have a right to above interest returns without considering that those returns have to come from things they disapprove of doing themselves - lending for mortgages being the classic one, but also this means taking the money and investing it. Moderate inflation is a good thing because it provides the wind that drives investment and growth.

The argument that savings are not invested is wrong, they are lent on to businesses etc.

Whilst pensions are funded by investment, if you look at countries where hyperinflation has happened, pensions have been made worthless.

A level of savings should be encouraged as a means of people supporting themselves if things do not go to plan, rather than just relying on the state.

pqrdef

julieq wrote: »

Also the role of the state in the US is far smaller.

I'm not sure it is. Just better disguised, through pork-barrel rackets and the defence spending trough etc. Most US senators and congressmen are just people who go to Washington to sell their votes for federal spending in their constituencies.