Is the end nigh for the Euro? [vol. 3]

Is the end nigh for the Euro? [vol. 3]

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Discussion

Original Poster:

40,601 posts

239 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all

Gargamel

14,957 posts

260 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all

Yes, and by Autumn


Mermaid

21,492 posts

170 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Gargamel said:
Yes, and by Autumn
Central bankers(markets) can remain irrational longer than each volume of this thread.

Digga

40,202 posts

282 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Who's moved all my stuff?

Gargamel

14,957 posts

260 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Mermaid said:
Central bankers(markets) can remain irrational longer than each volume of this thread.
Central Bankers cannot escape economic fundamentals forever.


spikeyhead

17,222 posts

196 months

Friday 28th June 2013
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Gargamel said:
Mermaid said:
Central bankers(markets) can remain irrational longer than each volume of this thread.
Central Bankers cannot escape economic fundamentals forever.
Forever is a long long way off

mondeoman

11,430 posts

265 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Just had a new client on the phone - his comment was "things are starting to pick up"

Green shoots of recovery anyone?

toppstuff

13,698 posts

246 months

Friday 28th June 2013
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mondeoman said:
Just had a new client on the phone - his comment was "things are starting to pick up"

Green shoots of recovery anyone?
I really hope so.

If things are recovering, then it is going to be patchy. If you are in Spain, France, Portugal or Ireland right now and one of the many, many unemployed I don't think there are any green shoots anywhere.

What this means in the long run for what is supposed to be an interdependent financial and economic union is anyones guess.

Gargamel

14,957 posts

260 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Doom and Gloom as reported by Mr Ambrose in the Telegraph

Just 22% - We know the Brits are a bit spineless, but the French have a proud tradition of manning the barricades.




"Mr Hollande has been more careful, though he too warned recently that France is a self-governing sovereign state and would not tolerate further "diktats" from Brussels.

A recent study by Pew Foundation said French support for the European Project has crashed from 60pc to 40pc over the past year. Just 22pc now think EU economic integration is positive.

Describing a "dyspeptic France" that has become the new "sick man of Europe", it said French attitudes have decoupled from the core EMU states and now resembles views in the crisis-stricken South. Fortunately for the French treasury, global bond investors are still treating its debt as if it were core debt.

Just 9pc think economic conditions are good, though it is worse in Spain (4pc) and Italy (3pc). The dramatic contrast is with Germany, where 75pc are content. France and Germany have never been so far apart in EU history."


Digga

40,202 posts

282 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
toppstuff said:
mondeoman said:
Just had a new client on the phone - his comment was "things are starting to pick up"

Green shoots of recovery anyone?
I really hope so.

If things are recovering, then it is going to be patchy. If you are in Spain, France, Portugal or Ireland right now and one of the many, many unemployed I don't think there are any green shoots anywhere.

What this means in the long run for what is supposed to be an interdependent financial and economic union is anyones guess.
I'd say green shoots for the UK too.

I have pretty dire anecdotals about France and Italy right now. Of the latter, a firm a mate worked for has just gone under and he mentioned that even at the time (early 90s) he was there, the firm finance operations through about 12 or 13 different bank accounts.

SkepticSteve

3,598 posts

193 months

Friday 28th June 2013
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Gargamel said:
France and Germany have never been so far apart in EU history.
Having been to Le Mans, I would say the French resent everybody who went there and spent money "freely".

There seems to be a nasty undertone building up, and as per normal it is everybody elses fault not the French!

I have some good French friends and even Frence relatives now, but it has to be said.

Gary11

4,162 posts

200 months

Friday 28th June 2013
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The trouble is we were recently treated to a "bit" more positve press and started to lift our heads out of the trough so to speak,however its now doom and gloom again people wont buy into this 2015 extended austerity and will always go for the cheap quick fix they dillusionaly think perhaps Balls and co will provide,I say that beacause millipede1 will be gone ready for millipede2 to return from exile,then we will be in a world of pain should the fools return to office,IMO just bite the bullet slash Vat knock 30p a litre off fuel and take back into the UK the foreign owned utilitys and knock a third off all energy tarrifs,then scrap all this green eco crap...simples.Thats the only way we will generate confidence and get money back in peoples pockets,to keep throwing money into the hole is folly people have no money hence we have no economy.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

245 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Did I remember to mention 1,000 pages and 2 years of British moaning and groaning about the foreigners? Daily assertions that the euro is finished? Daily assertions that the EU will disintegrate?

Well guess what. The moaners have been consistently wrong. And my money says the next 500 pages and the next 12 months will follow the same pattern.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

245 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Topstuff said:
Unemployment is at staggering levels across the Eurozone. Youth unemployment and disenfranchisement is now so serious in countries like Spain, Ireland, Portugal and France that an entire generation is affected. The ramifications of this will play out over the next decades to come.
This is undoubtedly the BIG issue IMO.

But it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Euro. The dreamers on here who keep asserting "if only they had their own currency everything would be OK" are talking unmitigated rubbish.

The issue that will play out is far more political than economic. The next socialist revolution is on the way.

toppstuff

13,698 posts

246 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
Ozzie Osmond said:
Did I remember to mention 1,000 pages and 2 years of British moaning and groaning about the foreigners? Daily assertions that the euro is finished? Daily assertions that the EU will disintegrate?

Well guess what. The moaners have been consistently wrong. And my money says the next 500 pages and the next 12 months will follow the same pattern.
Wrong that the EURO is finished? Yes

Wrong that the EU will disintegrate? Yes

But wrong with the notion that the EU project is ultimately going to fail? I'm not so sure.

It depends how you measure failure. Sure, the EU zone is intact and functioning. But all it takes is a visit to any regional town or City across much of the Eurozone to see that it IS failing. Failing to provide prosperity and aspiration to the people of Europe, failing to lift Europe so that it is a long term competitor on the global stage.

The title of the thread may be wrong and the original narrative of the thread has not come to pass, but with 1 in 4 young people in the EU having no prospects, mass migration to other parts of the world of the best educated and stupendous levels of debt, you would have to be stark raving mad to try and spin a narrative that all is well...

In short, I think the EU's problems are only just beginning. An entire working generation is being systematically disenfranchised right now across a significant part of continental Europe.

Only time will tell what this will mean.

CommanderJameson

22,096 posts

225 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
All empires fall, eventually. Sometimes it's dramatic, sometimes it's evolutionary. Change is inevitable and over the long term (be that human or geological) it will be drastic.

However, I think that I will die before seeing any significant collapse or even transformation of the EU itself.

The Euro, on the other hand, is a much more open question. I can certainly see a number of countries being ejected or removing themselves. But it will not go away.

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
toppstuff said:
Ozzie Osmond said:
Did I remember to mention 1,000 pages and 2 years of British moaning and groaning about the foreigners? Daily assertions that the euro is finished? Daily assertions that the EU will disintegrate?

Well guess what. The moaners have been consistently wrong. And my money says the next 500 pages and the next 12 months will follow the same pattern.
Wrong that the EURO is finished? Yes

Wrong that the EU will disintegrate? Yes

But wrong with the notion that the EU project is ultimately going to fail? I'm not so sure.

It depends how you measure failure. Sure, the EU zone is intact and functioning. But all it takes is a visit to any regional town or City across much of the Eurozone to see that it IS failing. Failing to provide prosperity and aspiration to the people of Europe, failing to lift Europe so that it is a long term competitor on the global stage.

The title of the thread may be wrong and the original narrative of the thread has not come to pass, but with 1 in 4 young people in the EU having no prospects, mass migration to other parts of the world of the best educated and stupendous levels of debt, you would have to be stark raving mad to try and spin a narrative that all is well...

In short, I think the EU's problems are only just beginning. An entire working generation is being systematically disenfranchised right now across a significant part of continental Europe.

Only time will tell what this will mean.
You're right. Just because something survives doesn't mean it hasn't been a failure. I can't see how the EU or Euro can be, by any measure, considered to be a success.

CommanderJameson

22,096 posts

225 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
REALIST123 said:
You're right. Just because something survives doesn't mean it hasn't been a failure. I can't see how the EU or Euro can be, by any measure, considered to be a success.
One objective of the Europe project was to avoid the kind of war that ravaged the continent from 1914-1945 and, intermittently, for centuries beforehand. The 30 Years War made a right bloody mess of what is now Germany, for example.

toppstuff

13,698 posts

246 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
CommanderJameson said:
One objective of the Europe project was to avoid the kind of war that ravaged the continent from 1914-1945 and, intermittently, for centuries beforehand. The 30 Years War made a right bloody mess of what is now Germany, for example.
This is a bloody good point.

However, I fear that the EU project and the incompetence, arrogance and corruption of its grandees will have the opposite effect to that intended. There is a growing imbalance across the Eurozone in terms of wealth, opportunity and aspiration. There is a generation of alienated youth. In the long term, this could be quite disastrous in terms of relations across the Eurozone and the rise of militant nationalism.

The EU is being run by vain, out of touch, conceited bloody idiots. They scare me.

Mermaid

21,492 posts

170 months

Friday 28th June 2013
quotequote all
toppstuff said:
This is a bloody good point.

However, I fear that the EU project and the incompetence, arrogance and corruption of its grandees will have the opposite effect to that intended. There is a growing imbalance across the Eurozone in terms of wealth, opportunity and aspiration. There is a generation of alienated youth. In the long term, this could be quite disastrous in terms of relations across the Eurozone and the rise of militant nationalism.

The EU is being run by vain, out of touch, conceited bloody idiots. They scare me.
Good points smile