Is the end nigh for the Euro? [vol. 3]
Discussion
turbobloke said:
tumble dryer said:
It didn't provoke thoughts that Monbiot had much of a point.Monbiot says there's a housing bubble but outside London there isn't, PIMCO are miles away but not stupid and they can't see the circumstances for a national house price crash and don't share Monbiot's opinion.
We aren't wrecking the natural world, we're conserving it and cleaning it up as never before apart from the recent splurge in extracting rare earths for turbines and electric vehicles, Lomborg points out that London's air is cleaner than for hundreds of years and doesn't agree with Monbiot's opinion.
Nor are we 'wrecking' public services we just can't afford the growth in public sector largesse that colletivists such as Monbiot would like, which is ironic in an anti-growth-god article.
Cutting pointless red tape is a good thing but Monbiot would have us believe that every red inch protects some endangered species or starving journalist.
And so on, with more same-old Monbiot. For example "the benign and fragile climate in which we have prospered" is nonsense, climate has always been chaotic for one thing, never benign, and the claim assumes that manmade climate change fairytales and the myth of increasingly extreme weather are real. As greenwash anti-capitalist doggerel goes, it's positively Porrittesque.
But tell me this, how come we're all in the deep doo-doo then?
(Sorry, by ALL, I was referring to UK, EU - most of it for varying reasons allied to 'growth', USA - ditto, Russia - ditto, China double ditto?)
TD
DJRC said:
We arent in the deep doo doo though.
We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Indeed, deep doo doo is 50% unemployment in the 18-25 age group and an economy that's been shrinking for 6 years.We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
DJRC said:
We arent in the deep doo doo though.
We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
I hold an opposing view. (Not BTW, all of Monboit's.) We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Any bets on where the next 10yrs will take us / them?
TD
hidetheelephants said:
DJRC said:
We arent in the deep doo doo though.
We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Indeed, deep doo doo is 50% unemployment in the 18-25 age group and an economy that's been shrinking for 6 years.We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Its an interesting thing. Of the above mentioned four, Spain and Italy desperately want change/reform/renewal.
France and Greece however, want only more of the "old ways".
tumble dryer said:
DJRC said:
We arent in the deep doo doo though.
We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
I hold an opposing view. (Not BTW, all of Monboit's.) We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Any bets on where the next 10yrs will take us / them?
TD
king clue what he said and I couldn't really give a rat fk, Im just drawing exception to your comment,The next 10yrs will probably see me changing the 55 for an SLS and the 350 estate for a 63 estate.
But apart from that...havent got a scooby.
DJRC said:
tumble dryer said:
DJRC said:
We arent in the deep doo doo though.
We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
I hold an opposing view. (Not BTW, all of Monboit's.) We are in " Oh look, life isn't as rosy as it was 10yrs ago".
Thats it. Despite all the blah blah blah, that is what most of the hot air comes down to. That is a very very long way from being in deep doo doo.
Any bets on where the next 10yrs will take us / them?
TD
king clue what he said and I couldn't really give a rat fk, Im just drawing exception to your comment,The next 10yrs will probably see me changing the 55 for an SLS and the 350 estate for a 63 estate.
But apart from that...havent got a scooby.
:-) (HowTF do you make smilies work?)
TD
DJRC said:
Art thou talking Spain, Greece, Italy or France?
Its an interesting thing. Of the above mentioned four, Spain and Italy desperately want change/reform/renewal.
France and Greece however, want only more of the "old ways".
They're all circling the drain to some extent. I wonder how Portugal is getting on, as its dropped off the news agenda. Its an interesting thing. Of the above mentioned four, Spain and Italy desperately want change/reform/renewal.
France and Greece however, want only more of the "old ways".
I sort of read the piece and some of the comments.
When did Hippy philosophy make a comeback? (assuming there ever was something that one could loosely identify as a "philosphy")
Most of the commenters (an Monbiot come to think of it) seem to be stuck with the good old "joined up" thinking but only for half the circle.
What he proposes, were it possible, would require World Government (in effect). And a rather level form of worldwide "equality" - whatever that might come to mean.
Pretty much, I would suggest, what China has been rapidly leaving behind in the past decade or two.
"Few people know that 97% of our money supply is created not by the government (or the central bank), but by commercial banks in the form of loans. At no point was a democratic decision made to allow them to do this. So why do we let it happen? This, as Martin Wolf has explained in the Financial Times, “is the source of much of the instability of our economies”. The debate won’t stop the practice, but it represents the raising of a long-neglected question.
This, though, is just the beginning. Is it not also time for a government commission on post-growth economics? Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Herman Daly, Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, Kate Raworth, Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, it would look at the possibility of moving towards a steady state economy: one that seeks distribution rather than blind expansion; that does not demand infinite growth on a finite planet.
So firstly he decries the lack of democracy in the way a system has evolved (whether we all like the system is another matter) but then proposes an alternative approach that would seem very unlikely to be something that a democratic world, if such a thing existed, would or indeed could accept as a central policy of unification. A dictatorship might make it work - and many have espoused that route before Monbiot.
I wonder if he has recently read "Brave New World"?
The world economy, by definition almost, is a here and now problem that is unlikely to prove effective under steady state constraints even if they could be policed with a modicum of "democracy". It is a real time "issue" all the time and would remain that through any and all attempts to socially re-engineer the concepts across a population of 9 to 11 billion democracy loving humans. (Allegedly).
It might change more rapidly to whatever model a World Government might turn out to be if democracy was officially abandoned in order to "Save the Planet", whatever that might mean. Were that to happen one might assume that the entire process would be designed to implement rapid enforced change. No exceptions.
A slow drift towards a universal democratic solution would not be part of Monbiot's "planet saving" plan - the results would come too late for him.
Of course there might be some other event that would speed up acceptance. World war, disease or plague, large meteor strike - something like that. No doubt Monbiot would prefer war, disease or plague to notionally restrict the destruction to humanity in the main. Asteroids and meteors would probably a stretch too far even in his imagination. Too many non-human living things might perish.
I would bet that at some point this re-balancing of life forms on Earth will happen. I don't see the point of trying to force the pace for mass euthenasia. What would be the objective for humanity?
When did Hippy philosophy make a comeback? (assuming there ever was something that one could loosely identify as a "philosphy")
Most of the commenters (an Monbiot come to think of it) seem to be stuck with the good old "joined up" thinking but only for half the circle.
What he proposes, were it possible, would require World Government (in effect). And a rather level form of worldwide "equality" - whatever that might come to mean.
Pretty much, I would suggest, what China has been rapidly leaving behind in the past decade or two.
"Few people know that 97% of our money supply is created not by the government (or the central bank), but by commercial banks in the form of loans. At no point was a democratic decision made to allow them to do this. So why do we let it happen? This, as Martin Wolf has explained in the Financial Times, “is the source of much of the instability of our economies”. The debate won’t stop the practice, but it represents the raising of a long-neglected question.
This, though, is just the beginning. Is it not also time for a government commission on post-growth economics? Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Herman Daly, Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, Kate Raworth, Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, it would look at the possibility of moving towards a steady state economy: one that seeks distribution rather than blind expansion; that does not demand infinite growth on a finite planet.
So firstly he decries the lack of democracy in the way a system has evolved (whether we all like the system is another matter) but then proposes an alternative approach that would seem very unlikely to be something that a democratic world, if such a thing existed, would or indeed could accept as a central policy of unification. A dictatorship might make it work - and many have espoused that route before Monbiot.
I wonder if he has recently read "Brave New World"?
The world economy, by definition almost, is a here and now problem that is unlikely to prove effective under steady state constraints even if they could be policed with a modicum of "democracy". It is a real time "issue" all the time and would remain that through any and all attempts to socially re-engineer the concepts across a population of 9 to 11 billion democracy loving humans. (Allegedly).
It might change more rapidly to whatever model a World Government might turn out to be if democracy was officially abandoned in order to "Save the Planet", whatever that might mean. Were that to happen one might assume that the entire process would be designed to implement rapid enforced change. No exceptions.
A slow drift towards a universal democratic solution would not be part of Monbiot's "planet saving" plan - the results would come too late for him.
Of course there might be some other event that would speed up acceptance. World war, disease or plague, large meteor strike - something like that. No doubt Monbiot would prefer war, disease or plague to notionally restrict the destruction to humanity in the main. Asteroids and meteors would probably a stretch too far even in his imagination. Too many non-human living things might perish.
I would bet that at some point this re-balancing of life forms on Earth will happen. I don't see the point of trying to force the pace for mass euthenasia. What would be the objective for humanity?
Meanwhile, some of the Swiss have had enough of cheap EU labour: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-19/italian-i...
from me.
hidetheelephants said:
DJRC said:
Art thou talking Spain, Greece, Italy or France?
Its an interesting thing. Of the above mentioned four, Spain and Italy desperately want change/reform/renewal.
France and Greece however, want only more of the "old ways".
They're all circling the drain to some extent. I wonder how Portugal is getting on, as its dropped off the news agenda. Its an interesting thing. Of the above mentioned four, Spain and Italy desperately want change/reform/renewal.
France and Greece however, want only more of the "old ways".
Portuguese demographics are quite horrific. Plus the banking horror show unfolding. A slow painful death of the economy...
Andy Zarse said:
Portuguese demographics are quite horrific. Plus the banking horror show unfolding. A slow painful death of the economy...
One of my OH's Portugese students said that some are even choosing to emigrate to ... Angola !!!I thought she must have misheard, but it's true: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tens-of...
Andy Zarse said:
In a word? Emigration. Thousands of their best young people are leaving for Brazil, Spain (yes bloody Spain! How desperate do you need to be to seek work in Spain?) and also to the uk.
Portuguese demographics are quite horrific. Plus the banking horror show unfolding. A slow painful death of the economy...
Anecdotal - Have a dozen Portuguese labourers working at site near me (Polish/Latvians in the past) - polite, hard working and seem good at their job. And keep the UK tobacco companies in business Portuguese demographics are quite horrific. Plus the banking horror show unfolding. A slow painful death of the economy...
EskimoArapaho said:
One of my OH's Portugese students said that some are even choosing to emigrate to ... Angola !!!
I thought she must have misheard, but it's true: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tens-of...
I am hiring in Mozambique at the moment, large number of Portugal based candidates have applied. Former Colony situation same as Angola, Portuguese is the linga franca out that way. I thought she must have misheard, but it's true: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tens-of...
This possibly isn't going to end very well...
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30111044
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30111044
Edited by Andy Zarse on Wednesday 19th November 21:02
Andy Zarse said:
This possibly isn't going to end very well...
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30111044
agreed, the catalans do not like getting pushed around . i expect much burning of shttp://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30111044
Edited by Andy Zarse on Wednesday 19th November 21:02
t to ensue.Here's a thought: could it be that rather than what is being suggested about the end of the Euro that the Euro is in fact somehow a facade which covers up the dire economic situation and future of some of these European countries?
If that was the case then that adds another reason why they wouldn't let it fail.
(This thought is not based on any knowledge of finance and the markets so feel free to shoot it down in flames if it's ridiculous!)
If that was the case then that adds another reason why they wouldn't let it fail.
(This thought is not based on any knowledge of finance and the markets so feel free to shoot it down in flames if it's ridiculous!)
Driller said:
Here's a thought: could it be that rather than what is being suggested about the end of the Euro that the Euro is in fact somehow a facade which covers up the dire economic situation and future of some of these European countries?
If that was the case then that adds another reason why they wouldn't let it fail.
(This thought is not based on any knowledge of finance and the markets so feel free to shoot it down in flames if it's ridiculous!)
On the contrary, I think you're absolutely spot on. That was the original intention. The EU "internal market" are not about free trade anymore, it's become a customs union intended to protect against outside competition. It and the Euro are classically protectionist. However a strong Euro and its Germanic monetary hair shirt are strangling its weakest members.If that was the case then that adds another reason why they wouldn't let it fail.
(This thought is not based on any knowledge of finance and the markets so feel free to shoot it down in flames if it's ridiculous!)
Edited by Andy Zarse on Thursday 20th November 08:00
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