Are the cracks beginning to show?

[powerdesal]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9920666/Germanys-anti-euro-party-is-a-nasty-shock-for-Angela-Merkel.html

[Frederick]

Cracks  !   The whole EU is like one  big crazy pavement  !  All sorts of political factions springing up dissatisfied  with the ways things have turned out .

[just john]

[quote user="Frederick"]Cracks  !   The whole EU is like one  big crazy pavement  !  All sorts of political factions springing up dissatisfied  with the ways things have turned out .
[/quote]

There are no winners. Each country is blighted in turn, and in different ways. Like Goethe's Sorcerer's Apprentice, they have launched an experiment they cannot control. The broom has a fiendish will of its own.

A lot of people have been saying this for sometime, meanwhile the deadly behemoth lumbers on, other than a few eurocrats I fail to see a country that is really benefiting; the last few lines of the article says it; roll on a split, so a fix can begin.

[Quillan]

Meanwhile back in the UK there has been talk of printing more money and dropping the interest rate to 0.25%.

If you really want out the EU quickly go live in Scotland and hope they get independence.

[Alan Zoff]

Och! See you Quilly

[Quillan]

[quote user="Alan Zoff"]Och! See you Quilly[/quote]

Well I mean to say the Euro sceptics would be well at home in Scotland with Salmond at the tiller. They have a lot in common with him predominantly the ability to lie, talk c*ap and have a low IQ but then they probably wouldn't mind that just to escape the USE and the Euro which lets face it is doing a lot better than both sterling and the pound and suffers less inflation as well but let not the truth stand in the way.

[NormanH]

And there was I thinking that this thread would be about the Tories [:P]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/10/theresa-may-eyes-conservative-leadership-realist

[just john]

[quote user="Quillan"] Well I mean to say the Euro sceptics would be well at home in Scotland with Salmond at the tiller. They have a lot in common with him predominantly the ability to lie, talk c*ap and have a low IQ but then they probably wouldn't mind that just to escape the USE and the Euro which lets face it is doing a lot better than both sterling and the pound and suffers less inflation as well but let not the truth stand in the way.[/quote]

There are statistics and statistics, I'm sure we are all entitled to our view, and equally sure I wouldn't apply the above comments to Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of Germany's industry federation (BDI) and a chastened europhile -- the "worst error of my professional life" (amongst others in Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal; even the UK doesn't have 50% youth unemployment, riots and US investors laughing)[:)]

 

 

[Quillan]

[quote user="just john "]

[quote user="Quillan"] Well I mean to say the Euro sceptics would be well at home in Scotland with Salmond at the tiller. They have a lot in common with him predominantly the ability to lie, talk c*ap and have a low IQ but then they probably wouldn't mind that just to escape the USE and the Euro which lets face it is doing a lot better than both sterling and the pound and suffers less inflation as well but let not the truth stand in the way.[/quote]

There are statistics and statistics, I'm sure we are all entitled to our view, and equally sure I wouldn't apply the above comments to Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of Germany's industry federation (BDI) and a chastened europhile -- the "worst error of my professional life" (amongst others in Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal; even the UK doesn't have 50% youth unemployment, riots and US investors laughing)[:)]

[/quote]

Glad you mentioned him, I have heard of him before. This is the idiot who said, and I quote, "....nobody had the global financial crisis from 2007 anticipated.....". Shortly after he lost his job as special advisor to Bank of America.

[Alan Zoff]

I find it amusing when experts claim that no one saw the financial crisis coming. Well before 2007, it was a common topic in both the pub in England and in the bar in France that the bubble would burst - it was just case of when. Availability of cheap money, with little or no regulation, was breeding false confidence in the future. If someone cares to delve back though this Forum, I am sure they will be able to find views to that effect prior to the crash. Are we to believe that only the "experts" couldn't see it?

[idun]

Really AZ, I never ever found anyone who was other than delighted with the way things were going and the way house prices rocketed in the UK. I was always shot down in flames everytime I said anything about this, at least that was the intention........not that I took any notice of what was said to me, I knew it just felt all wrong and when something feels 'that' wrong, it must be wrong.

That was in NE England, if that makes any difference.

[Quillan]

Well said Alan, it is these 'experts' that got us all in the mess in the first place. See it coming! they were the ones that instigated and some are still profiting from incompetence by hitting the lecture circuits, visiting universities to tell everyone what should have happened.

These are the same experts that have been saying that the Euro and the EU would fail in six weeks for the last three or four years but it is still here. That is the benefit of the EU and the Eurozone just like the states in America. If one gets in to trouble the rest can help and as a group or federation one looks at the whole and not the individual states. While the UK is struggling with inflation both the EU and the US are not (Jan 2013 EU inflation rate 1.7%, US inflation rate 1.6%, UK rate 2.4% and rising). Interesting to note that federations have lower rates than individual states. Then there is the currency, the dollar and the pound, both of which have been up and down like a seesaw compared to each other and other world currencies where as the Euro has stayed pretty much the same.

Then we have the credit rating agencies who can cripple a country with a stroke of the pen (or the push of a button). The EU took steps to stop they way they do this in the Eurozone from 2013 onwards, bit late for the UK who has now lost it's triple A rating. If anyone watched the program on C4 last year about the credit rating companies, who sits on their boards and who out of them also sit on the US finance committee they would have seen that even a banana is less bent than them. They must be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of the EU ripping it's self apart.

[Alan Zoff]

The problem for the man in the street was that he was dragged along by what others - the "experts" - were causing to happen. House prices were rising so he felt compelled to get a foot on the ladder while he could still afford to. It is difficult as an ordinary person to ignore what is happening around you when the people who are supposed to be in charge seem comfortable with it, whatever your misgivings.

I say this from experience as I have on record a plan to sell our UK house almost 12 months before the crash to take advantage of the silly "value". But I lacked the confidence to proceed and the ability to convince my wife who, not surprisingly, had misgivings about backing my judgement against the experts. An English(wo)man's home is his/her castle and she wasn't overly keen on the idea of selling our castle to become someone else's tenant, particularly if prices were going to continue rising.

[Quillan]

See you should have invested in a crystal ball, equally as effective as the 'experts'. [;-)]