This is the end result of the European welfare state. People in Europe work too
short hours in jobs from which they cannot be fired or laid off from. European
vacations are too long. Free medical care encourages people to overuse the
system. People retire much too young with absurdly high pensions. Badly-run
companies are given huge subsidies and the rise of new competitors is made
completely impossible. Religion and the work ethic are gone, replaced by the
crass selfishness and lack of community pride which are a characteristic of
socialist societies. Education has turned into boring political propaganda with
most people left semi-literate and completely ignorant of their national
traditions and duties as citizens at the end of the process. Families have gone
for generations living on the dole. Unions have made manufacturing increasingly
costly and uncompetitive. All of these costs are protected by robust interest
groups who will ruin any politician foolish enough to suggest even the mildest
reform. A Soviet Union-style collapse is the only option....The EU, and its
Euro, appear at bottom to be failing and failed Grand Projects of the French,
whether viewed in 1956 or 1992 or today. And this is only the latest Grand
Failure in a 500 year history of Truly Grand Failures.Somehow the very best talent put forward by French statecraft during any of the recent centuries results in debacle.
Consider the leadership opportunities available to Louis XIV including the Spanish Succession, all squandered.
Consider France's failure to populate its North American holdings, resulting in the loss of 1/3 of an entire continent. Its concurrent failure to defend holdings in India is almost as grand and unnecessary a collapse.
Consider the French Nation's wanton destruction of its own Revolutionary potential.
Consider Napoleon's ludicrous invasion of Russia.
Consider Sedan.
Consider the Versailles Treaty.
Consider the Maginot Line.
Consider the complete collapse of French Africa, including Algeria.
There is something restless about French statecraft that, seeks self-immolation.
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Until last week, it was the prospect of make-or-break Greek elections in a fortnight's time that was giving Europe's politicians sleepless nights, but Spain's bungled bailout of its fourth largest bank last weekend has forced its shaky finances to the top of the agenda.
Bankia, which has already been rescued once by the Spanish government, announced last weekend that it needed an alarming €19bn (£15bn) to patch up its finances, battered by the Spanish property crash. This was four times what had been estimated only a fortnight earlier.
With its bank bailout fund running dangerously low, the government initially proposed filling the hole with its own bonds, which Bankia could exchange with the European Central Bank (ECB) for cash. That smacked of desperation – and strayed too close to a direct bailout of the Spanish government to be acceptable to Germany and other eurozone governments, or to the ECB itself.
Without the ECB's help, it is unclear where the cash will come from. Bankia's plight, which is far more serious than the markets had suspected, raised questions about the rest of the country's banking sector, which was once the bedrock of Spain's economy.
For Angela Merkel and her colleagues, seeing Spain accept a loan would be not only damaging to confidence across the eurozone, but politically painful. Unlike Greece – IMF boss Christine Lagarde told the Guardian last week that that country's plight was "payback time" for years of tax-dodging – Spain has more or less played by the rules. Rajoy is not a reckless spender, but a right-of-centre leader who has largely followed the prescription set down by his European partners for austerity and reform – at least until the grim state of the economy made it impossible to meet the deficit targets.
Merkel last week described Spain as an ally, and said Rajoy had been handed "a difficult inheritance". Optimists hope this natural political sympathy will help to soften Germany's approach to embattled eurozone countries.
The European Commission last week urged leaders to allow the ESM to act directly to rescue banks, and to form a eurozone-wide "banking union" to avoid governments with weak banking sectors being picked off by financial markets. But both these proposals would require a dramatic attitude shift in Berlin.
Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, was clearly exasperated at German intransigence last week when he told the European parliament that leaders need to show more vision: "Can the ECB fill the vacuum of lack of action by national governments on fiscal growth? The answer is no. Can the ECB fill the vacuum of lack of action by national governments on the structural problem? The answer is no."
With an ECB policy meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Draghi could decide that the severity of the situation requires more emergency action, but his outburst last week suggested that he would now like to see leaders take over the situation, before it spirals out of control.
Derrick at BNY Mellon says: "He staved off a banking crisis; he bought time for the politicians to do something. The problem is, they haven't done anything with the time he bought them."
There is an EU summit planned for this month, but it looks increasingly as though leaders will have to take action before then to secure Spain's finances and demonstrate that the situation can be controlled – before it spreads to Italy, or even France, and threatens the very survival of the eurozone.
It's an un-named depression, where people are stopping borrowing and paying off their debts, where they can. And as money is subsequently destroyed, so there is less to lend. But this is an inevitable process, and the danger of refinancing (QE) the banks to 'solve' the depression, which they have been doing continuously since 2008 (it hasn't worked), is that they will overdo it and it will cause out of control inflation. Well, the QE thus far has failed, and more is not likely to do anything except create more debt - and lead to an even bigger problem down the road. It's time to stop (it was time to stop ages ago) and let the cookie crumbles fall where they will. The world will not end for the average guy, but it will for the banksters. It's time for the politicians to wake up and act with responsibility. Yes, there will be chaos for a time, but better sooner than much worse later, in my opinion.
Yes, It means there is a serious credit crunch under way... banks aren't lending they are just stuffing it in the central banks... European banks have just stopped doing any lending...
16 minutes ago
Banks will not lend to anyone as they realise all the other banks are bankrupt (including themselves) so they just sit on the cash and send it back to the ECB evernight for 0.25 % interest.The whole system is just waiting for a very gentle breeze.
If we had credible leaders they would be borrowing for all they were worth,not to pay the costs of disasterous policies but to purchase Gold.However we have the knob known as Cameron and his band of disfunctional village idiots after McBrown and his bunch of retards - Therefore there is bugger all hope.
Iranul va insista ca OPEC (Organizaţia Ţărilor Exportatoare de Petrol) să-şi păstreze actualul plafon de producţie pentru ţiţei, când miniştrii grupului se vor întruni, luna aceasta, potrivit televiziunii deţinute de stat, Press TV, citându-l pe ministrul Petrolului.
OPEC va discuta, de asemenea, candidaţii pentru funcţia de secretar general al organizaţiei, în cadrul întâlnirii de la Viena, de pe 14 iunie, a mai precizat Rostam Qasemi, potrivit site-ului televiziunii, preluat de Bloomberg. Iranul va nominaliza o persoană pentru această poziţie, însă nu a identificat-o public.
Iranul este al doilea cel mai mare producător al grupului, după Arabia Saudită, care şi-a mărit aprovizionarea către Statele Unite şi Europa, după ce sancţiunile asupra Iranului au redus din exporturile republicii islamice. OPEC a produs 31,62 milioane de barili pe zi, pe 5 aprilie, cu 5% peste plafonul său zilnic, de 30 milioane de barili, potrivit estimărilor lunare ale secretariatului.
Secretarul general al OPEC, generalul Abdalla el-Badri îşi va încheia cel de-al doilea mandat la finalul lunii decembrie. Ecuador, Iraq şi Arabia Saudită au nominalizat oficial persoane pentru această funcţie, potrivit surselor apropiate situaţiei.
Whether the €uro collapses or not, the debts still remain. They simply will be denoted in another currency.
It seems awfully hard for some people to understand that debts have to be settled and debts of honour come first. The voters in the countries, who sorted out their finances during the past 20 years or so, will expect their politicians to look after their interests.
I reckon the ECB will ultimately print.
And if I had to pick when, I’d say by harvest time (3 months from now)
In the last 100 years the Germans have wrecked Europe twice.
I just can’t see them making it thrice somehow.
Although sometimes those that are the most constructive are also the most destructive.
If these leaders were capable enough to do anything of consequence, they wouldn't be wasting their time in politics. Politics is a profession in which the key skill set is being able to lie, smile, and swallow your own vomit in front of cameras without anyone noticing.
I fear that when this fiat funny money machine finally throws a rod it is going to set off events that nobody can imagine. Usually what happens, is war, if history is any guide.
Living in the greater Phoenix area of Arizona, USA, there's no telling what will happen if things start getting out of control.
Drug cartels in Mexico have turned that country into a war zone, and the encroachment to and in many instances over the US border certainly make this the year of living dangerously.
Both Bush and Obama have failed to do ANYTHING about securing the southern flank. The real fear in these parts is that if or when the shooting starts (a la, markets crash and the dis / malcontent takes to the streets) there is no telling what the end game is.
Damicol expresses a preference to live in Syria (likely, allegorically) however that scenario may extend to US shores with the Obama mentality of an entitlement society engrained into an entirely too large segment of American society.
I am sick of reading articles that tell us that everything will be sweetness and light as soon as "the leaders" hold the right meeting and press the right button.
If Mr Berlusconi were willing to speak the whole truth, instead of just half the truth, he would say "if the ECB refuses to print worthless Euros, then we will!" Instead he refers to the ECB acting as a "lender of last resort," when he knows full well that the only source of funds available to the ECB is to print worthless Euros.
At least a few people are starting to wake up to the fact that "the leaders" can't do anything about what's happening. In fact they are the ones who brought it about, by promising an endless shower of benefits "at no cost to you." Get ready, here comes the waiter with the bill for the free lunch
Speaking to reporters at a summit of Baltic Sea Coast leaders last week, Ms. Merkel suggested she is willing to engage in discussion about any idea on the table.
"Of course, it is possible to consider how we are going to develop over the next five to 10 years," she said. "But if we are constantly censuring our ideas it won't work."
German officials say everything is on the table, but no single element can be adopted on its own. To see the whole picture of what Europe will look like in the future, all the pieces of the puzzle are necessary. For the Germans, this means that it will never be possible for any German leader to agree to joint European bonds or insuring bank deposits from Ireland to the Iberian coast unless Berlin is assured it has a say in the national fiscal policies in Europe. Germany is offering Europe a kind of quid pro quo and may be setting the stage for a huge step forward in European integration.
One piece of the puzzle that is still missing is France. Now that all ideas are being put on the table, it is still unclear if Mr. Hollande will soften his opposition to a tough, German-style fiscal union.
"European institutions have started working and we are mobilized to make sure this process yields results at the late June summit," a senior French official said.
"The European Union needs to reinforce its architecture," said Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy over the weekend. "And this means a compromise to create a new European fiscal authority which would guide the fiscal policy in the euro zone, harmonize the fiscal policy of member states and enable a centralized control of (public) finances."
At their informal summit on May 23, European leaders charged Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, and Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup, to pull together proposals for the next summit that would help European leaders create a road map for discussion about the future European architecture.
The issues on the table fall broadly into two categories. There are ideas such as creating joint European bonds, a European-wide deposit insurance and more broadly a "banking union," which fall into the category of mutual liability for sovereign debt and European banks. These are ideas French President François Hollande backs, but have been anathema to Ms. Merkel unless power to enforce budget discipline is shifted to Europe, which would mean a sacrifice of sovereignty.
In Japan the Nikkei 224 index dropped 1.7pc to a six-month low of 8,277.56, while the broader Topix index dropped 1.9pc to a 28-year low of 695.51 as investors in Asia digested disappointing US jobs data from Friday.
The latest data from China also contributed to mounting fears that the world's second largest economy is on the verge of a significant slowdown, after a PMI survey showed slowing growth in the services sector.
There is no resolution in sight for the eurozone crisis, which continues to play on investor fears worldwide.
Markets in Britain were closed for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee bank holiday but most of Europe was open.
By late morning the German DAX was down 1.3pc as the country's policymakers looked increasingly isolated in their refusal to back EU rescue funds for banks, and the introduction of so-called eurobonds.
The situation was different across other European markets. Despite Spain's financial woes and a banking system feared to be on the verge of collapse, the country's IBEX 35 index was up 2.5pc.
Italian exchanges were also trading higher as investors in both countries were buoyed by hopes that the eurozone might move towards greater centralised control of national budgets in the single currency bloc, after comments by Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, at the weekend.
The CAC 40 in France had been down in early trading but was up 0.3pc by late morning.
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