Is the end nigh for the Euro? [vol. 3]
Discussion
fblm said:
RYH64E said:
An alternative scenario is one where the remaining EU states manipulate duties, tariffs and quotas to induce UK companies to relocate to mainland europe.
You mean playing games like giving £80m of EU taxpayer money to Ford to move Transit production from Southampton to Turkey. Given that they pull that kind of s
t while you're still in their club you actually have a very good point about what they might do when you leave. Your continued mebership of the EU is like a battered wife staying with her husband because of what he might do if she leaves.My own view is that it partly serves the workers right. I would guess the majority live in Eastleigh and they voted in a seriously pro-EU LibDem MP, Chris Huhne. IIRC he turned out to be a bit of rotter, not quite entirely truthful etc.
The closure at least partly explains why UKIP came so close to winning the seat in the subsequent bye election.Andy Zarse said:
Recession? Much of it is, or until very recently has been, in actual depression.
Really we need to come up with a stronger new word, something which trumps the ubiquitous "depression". Not even a "lost decade" really covers it: Perma-slump maybe appropriate for Greece, Portugal and especially Italy who's economy is now smaller than when it joined the Euro in 1999...
Persistent vegetative stateReally we need to come up with a stronger new word, something which trumps the ubiquitous "depression". Not even a "lost decade" really covers it: Perma-slump maybe appropriate for Greece, Portugal and especially Italy who's economy is now smaller than when it joined the Euro in 1999...
Andy Zarse said:
Driller said:
Steffan said:
Driller said:
Steffan said:
I can only see one end to this nonsense.
No, wait, don't tell me...
from me.
PS Driller, genuinely sorry to hear of your travails in the other thread. It's tough being caught in such a trap.
An interesting article by Daniel Hannan. I didn't realise the demographics in Europe were so bad.
http://www.capx.co/world-economy-leaves-europe-beh...
http://www.capx.co/world-economy-leaves-europe-beh...
rovermorris999 said:
An interesting article by Daniel Hannan. I didn't realise the demographics in Europe were so bad.
http://www.capx.co/world-economy-leaves-europe-beh...
Indeed it does. France not having a balanced budget since 1974, Italy having contracted steadily year on year since she (?) joined the EU and on and on. Steadfast refusal to offer reality politics. Politicians, particularly in Europe treat the electorate and taxpayers of the EU as milking machines to take everything valuable from and by offering bland dishonest policies in return that enable the politicians to gain oersonally and obtain celebrity status whilst being esconced on the EU gravy train.http://www.capx.co/world-economy-leaves-europe-beh...
Mermaid suggested some days ago on this thread, that this busines could continue for some time. He is a coonsiderable thinkerin such matters. His suggestion therefore caused me to wonder once again whether that is a probability. On balance, personally I doubt it. I do not doubt the EU leaders are sufficiently duplicitous and crooked to continue with this but I do think there are events all over Europe that will not go away and there are going to be changes coming that the EU leaders cannot challenge.
Within the UK he result in itself in Rochester, which certainly needs consideration, must not be overestimated. However despite the mealy mouthed protests of Mr Gove and Co for the conservatives and Miliband and co for Labour, who were both given body blows by this result electorally, I think that a change in the attitude of a large numbers of UK voters is becoming apparent in these results. Taken in conjunction with the previous UKIP victory at Clacton again in two seats never before contested by UKIP there is a growing body of evidence that a major shift in voting patterns may be apparent. If UKIP iactually get their act together and challenge a number of seats in 2015 there will be upwards of thirty MP's elected then fr UKIP IMO possibly more.
Once that happens, or anything like thatnhappens, then I think reality will arrive to the current boys club that is running UK politics. Like it or not, immigration into tye UK has to be altered and i do believe that a significant number of existing MP's will already be seeking quiet discussions on switching allegence to UKIP because their current position will otherwise be that the loser in the next election. No certainty to any of this, which is all based upon my suppositions, but I do think we are now seeing in the UK a growing realisation that the unrealistic politics of governments constantly spending more money then the country earns cannot continue and therefore, will become discredited.
Once reality politics starts to be the way to get elected then the steadfast refusal to listen or admit the concerns of many voters in the UK will be forced upon the recalcitrant current politicians. I do think that change is coming, if for no other reason than at last, I think, a voice has been found into which the desire for change in the political representation and policies of the UK, can now being effectively channelled. Could be very interesting times come next years election.
Steffan! I take it you will have read today of the massive new EU initiative to get the moribund economies of the Eurozone back to work? According to Jean-Claude Junker;
"Today we are adding the third point of a virtuous triangle: We need to send a message to the people of Europe and to the rest of the world: Europe is back in business. This is not the moment to look back. Investment is about the future, a grand bargain to put Europe back to work. I have a vision of school children in Thessaloniki walking into a brand new classroom, decked out with computers."
Total ddrivel of course and as an accountant and an anti-EU protagonist you will love this:
http://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2014/11/...
This article by Shaun Richards absolutely shreds Junker's crazy make believe world.
Sorry, currently in African climes, slightly three sheets.
What staggers me more, is that decent honourable, normal PHers are still defending this bunch of clowns.
, history will not judge this characters well, nor the poor fools of citizens that put up with these Shennanigans.
How is £8bn made to be £365bn, How will they persuade the Private sector to fund it, and what's more, what is the investment criteria?
Andy Zarse said:
Steffan! I take it you will have read today of the massive new EU initiative to get the moribund economies of the Eurozone back to work? According to Jean-Claude Junker;
"Today we are adding the third point of a virtuous triangle: We need to send a message to the people of Europe and to the rest of the world: Europe is back in business. This is not the moment to look back. Investment is about the future, a grand bargain to put Europe back to work. I have a vision of school children in Thessaloniki walking into a brand new classroom, decked out with computers."
Total ddrivel of course and as an accountant and an anti-EU protagonist you will love this:
http://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2014/11/...
This article by Shaun Richards absolutely shreds Junker's crazy make believe world.
This was indeed a most excellent complete economic nonsense propsed yet again by the EU, to bring up as another sample of the outright crookedness that is nw taking place. As Gargamel and DJRC both confrm this is becoming visible obvious downright madness. Regrettably the lunatics appear to have taken over in the EU and the total nonsenses being spouted are just appalling. None of this ridiculous waste of hundreds of Billions of the poor EU taxpayers money will actually benefit any of the failing states. This is quite unbelievable nonsense. There really ought to be a mechanism for preventing. Such dishonesty. In the EU there s no such echanism and towards yet more tragedy here the EU comes.
Perhaps the most serious matter of concern globally in politics nwadays is that outright and deliberate economic dishonesty is being practiced as greedy politicians seek to stay in power using the wealth and earnings of the poor taxpayers to line their own pockets and fool the electorate into believing that all is well. It most certainly is not all well and tragically this nonsense will end in catastrophic failure.
What I find interesting is that the critics of the voices of concern in these matters are wholly unable to explain how the ediface can be maintained. They rely on the argument that it has lasted this long so it must continue. The EU has kept this going by printing billions of Euros to bail out the failing states and to pay their interest bills to the EU. The actual economic weaknesses of the failing states are falling further and further all the time. This cannot be kept going and will fail. The EU can buy more time because thy control the printing presses. But the EU taxpayers and electorate are going to be the losers in this and the way this is going there is bound to be a huge crash. Steadily building up to that.
It is the hardworking taxpayers with whom I have every sympathy. As I have said before " Never ever trust the government".
Oh no! Here's a shock, they've found a £259bn black hole in the EU accounts. How terribly convenient, and it looks like the UK is on the hook for another £34bn. Makes last month's "shock" £1.7bn bill look like chicken feed.
Good old Cameron will be over to Brussels and will soon straighten them out I have no doubt. Oh wait etc...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/e...
Good old Cameron will be over to Brussels and will soon straighten them out I have no doubt. Oh wait etc...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/e...
Edited by Andy Zarse on Thursday 27th November 00:23
Andy Zarse said:
http://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2014/11/...
This article by Shaun Richards absolutely shreds Junker's crazy make believe world.
Hang on, I'm pretty sure I've spent the last few years being told this entire mess was the fault of banks over leveraging and not being able to cope if things didn't pan out exactly as they planned.This article by Shaun Richards absolutely shreds Junker's crazy make believe world.
And now we have 8bn magically becoming 315bn, but don't worry, the growth will be so amazing it will pay for itself?
Hmmm, any resemblance to financial institutions, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
As an aside, I've just noticed the new VATMOSS rules - how can they be so useless that rules intended to stop Google and the like putting all sales through the lowest VAT countries actually end up making people selling knitting patterns from their blog register for VAT in every EU country? It's insane.
I have just spent a little over 24hrs in Munich. I felt sure I might bump into DJRC at some point - possibly the flight home - but if I did I was not aware of it.
It was a slightly odd trip for a number of reasons.
I had to be impressed by the relative ease of travel from the airport (owned by Audi it seems - the entire place is dominated by Audi's presence) via the winter market entertainment centre.
I briefly visited an enormous office complex where open space corridors are the norm and an individual's office has 4 desks with space and entire call centre left over. There seemed to be many such individuals in residence. EU funding of course.
I stayed in a fairly down market but still comfortable enough hotel near the centre (convenient for a 1 night stop) for not too much money and consumed a decent sized bottle of beer from the fridge that cost me just €2 - but only because I told them about it on departure.
On the streets I was aware of a large number of German speaking people who were clearly not of German origin.
I was told that the area has just 2% unemployment. I assume that so far that are not including begging as a form of employment to be included in the local GDP. If they were they could probably claim full employment.
In general the prices of "stuff" seemed quite high.
The airport experience was somewhat interesting.
On arrival, taking the S-Bahn, as I waited on board I observed a young man be searched having been stopped by 2 non-uniformed security people ( I assume - they seemed to be working to official regulatory training. )
My return journey left me with plenty of time at the airport after late changes to the meeting schedule so time to observe how much space it offered; how many people in all sorts of uniform (some looking like they ought still to be in school) wandered around with semi-military style waist bands with holsters that I assume held Tasers. If they were proper pistols that could be an even greater concern. I decided not to get close enough to find out.
Sitting around waiting to go through the security entrances (I had a lot of time to spare before the flight ....) I watched a chap rummaging through the waste bins that people used to dump their liquids before going through the scan. He did this every few minutes. Just sat there watching one bin. Then I realised there was another chap, clearly know to the first one, who was doing the same thing but travelling around the bins rather than watching just one. With a trolley set up to look like he was a passenger a casual observer would have taken him for someone about to board a plane. Then a third person turned up - an older lady - also appearing with an airport trolley and at a glance looking like a traveller. They hardly acknowledged each other in a public way but one got the impression they might be a family. All three of them rummaged through the bins I could see on a regular basis extracting an occasional not quite empty plastic bottle of water or similar.
Presumably there is an entire economic sub-class who make a living re-cycling plastic bottles and other peoples discarded liquids from airport waste bins.
I wonder if they are counted as employed?
There might be some sort of basis for this. Once I got through security I observed how the many shops air-side seemed confident in trying to charge €2.40 for a 1/2 ltr bottle of water. Except for one duty free style emporium that was asking just €1 - plus a 25cent "deposit" for the bottle seemingly connected to a "green" surcharge of some sort. Perhaps there is a economic basis for collecting used plastic water bottles if you can get 25cents a time for them.
If there were enough plastic bottles in circulation the Central Bank might have a source of biblical proportions (loaves, fishes, water into wine, etc.) for turning their €8bn into something close to the several hundred billion required as discussed above. I mean, how much does it cost to make a plastic bottle in huge quantities?
The raw material cost of a 500ml bottle would seem to be about 2p - so let's call that 2.5cents. So the waste for re-cycling value must be considerably less than that since most of the production process costs will be for things other than raw materials - especially when having to reclaim the raw materials first. So lets say .25cents waste value as a generous estimate. The full bottle cost once re-manufactured is likely to be about 10 cents.
So, if we exclude inconvenient things like energy (the capacity already exists), plant (the machine already exist), factories (there are some around already ...) and all admin (already exis .......) you can turn the material cost or .25cents or less into a seals value of circa 10cents per .5 ltr bottle. (Using a weighted average of all bottle sizes of course.) That's 40x cost in man maths terms.
Not too dissimilar to the EU proposals of 8Bn to 360Bn as I think I gleaned from post above.
So there you have it. Draghi can make the entire process work with a little man maths and some people collecting used and part used plastic bottles at European airports augmented by declaring the fiscal benefits of full employment through the black economy and its beneficial effects on GDP.
Sorted.
It was a slightly odd trip for a number of reasons.
I had to be impressed by the relative ease of travel from the airport (owned by Audi it seems - the entire place is dominated by Audi's presence) via the winter market entertainment centre.
I briefly visited an enormous office complex where open space corridors are the norm and an individual's office has 4 desks with space and entire call centre left over. There seemed to be many such individuals in residence. EU funding of course.
I stayed in a fairly down market but still comfortable enough hotel near the centre (convenient for a 1 night stop) for not too much money and consumed a decent sized bottle of beer from the fridge that cost me just €2 - but only because I told them about it on departure.
On the streets I was aware of a large number of German speaking people who were clearly not of German origin.
I was told that the area has just 2% unemployment. I assume that so far that are not including begging as a form of employment to be included in the local GDP. If they were they could probably claim full employment.
In general the prices of "stuff" seemed quite high.
The airport experience was somewhat interesting.
On arrival, taking the S-Bahn, as I waited on board I observed a young man be searched having been stopped by 2 non-uniformed security people ( I assume - they seemed to be working to official regulatory training. )
My return journey left me with plenty of time at the airport after late changes to the meeting schedule so time to observe how much space it offered; how many people in all sorts of uniform (some looking like they ought still to be in school) wandered around with semi-military style waist bands with holsters that I assume held Tasers. If they were proper pistols that could be an even greater concern. I decided not to get close enough to find out.
Sitting around waiting to go through the security entrances (I had a lot of time to spare before the flight ....) I watched a chap rummaging through the waste bins that people used to dump their liquids before going through the scan. He did this every few minutes. Just sat there watching one bin. Then I realised there was another chap, clearly know to the first one, who was doing the same thing but travelling around the bins rather than watching just one. With a trolley set up to look like he was a passenger a casual observer would have taken him for someone about to board a plane. Then a third person turned up - an older lady - also appearing with an airport trolley and at a glance looking like a traveller. They hardly acknowledged each other in a public way but one got the impression they might be a family. All three of them rummaged through the bins I could see on a regular basis extracting an occasional not quite empty plastic bottle of water or similar.
Presumably there is an entire economic sub-class who make a living re-cycling plastic bottles and other peoples discarded liquids from airport waste bins.
I wonder if they are counted as employed?
There might be some sort of basis for this. Once I got through security I observed how the many shops air-side seemed confident in trying to charge €2.40 for a 1/2 ltr bottle of water. Except for one duty free style emporium that was asking just €1 - plus a 25cent "deposit" for the bottle seemingly connected to a "green" surcharge of some sort. Perhaps there is a economic basis for collecting used plastic water bottles if you can get 25cents a time for them.
If there were enough plastic bottles in circulation the Central Bank might have a source of biblical proportions (loaves, fishes, water into wine, etc.) for turning their €8bn into something close to the several hundred billion required as discussed above. I mean, how much does it cost to make a plastic bottle in huge quantities?
The raw material cost of a 500ml bottle would seem to be about 2p - so let's call that 2.5cents. So the waste for re-cycling value must be considerably less than that since most of the production process costs will be for things other than raw materials - especially when having to reclaim the raw materials first. So lets say .25cents waste value as a generous estimate. The full bottle cost once re-manufactured is likely to be about 10 cents.
So, if we exclude inconvenient things like energy (the capacity already exists), plant (the machine already exist), factories (there are some around already ...) and all admin (already exis .......) you can turn the material cost or .25cents or less into a seals value of circa 10cents per .5 ltr bottle. (Using a weighted average of all bottle sizes of course.) That's 40x cost in man maths terms.
Not too dissimilar to the EU proposals of 8Bn to 360Bn as I think I gleaned from post above.
So there you have it. Draghi can make the entire process work with a little man maths and some people collecting used and part used plastic bottles at European airports augmented by declaring the fiscal benefits of full employment through the black economy and its beneficial effects on GDP.
Sorted.
I've spent time in Germany too and the deposit system works beautifully.
I recall taking the tram (that runs 24/7 and every 3 minutes) not 100 yards from a friend's apartment on the edge of town, with a beer in my hand to enjoy before we arrived at the pub (all perfectly legal). After reaching our stop (right beside the pub), we placed our empty bottles in line with the four dozen or so others outside the entrance, against the wall.
Stepping outside later that night, a homeless guy was in the process of bagging them all up to return to any one of the many supermarkets in the morning and presumably feed him quite well for the day.
I recall taking the tram (that runs 24/7 and every 3 minutes) not 100 yards from a friend's apartment on the edge of town, with a beer in my hand to enjoy before we arrived at the pub (all perfectly legal). After reaching our stop (right beside the pub), we placed our empty bottles in line with the four dozen or so others outside the entrance, against the wall.
Stepping outside later that night, a homeless guy was in the process of bagging them all up to return to any one of the many supermarkets in the morning and presumably feed him quite well for the day.
Art0ir said:
I've spent time in Germany too and the deposit system works beautifully.
I recall taking the tram (that runs 24/7 and every 3 minutes) not 100 yards from a friend's apartment on the edge of town, with a beer in my hand to enjoy before we arrived at the pub (all perfectly legal). After reaching our stop (right beside the pub), we placed our empty bottles in line with the four dozen or so others outside the entrance, against the wall.
Stepping outside later that night, a homeless guy was in the process of bagging them all up to return to any one of the many supermarkets in the morning and presumably feed him quite well for the day.
Glass or plastic bottles?I recall taking the tram (that runs 24/7 and every 3 minutes) not 100 yards from a friend's apartment on the edge of town, with a beer in my hand to enjoy before we arrived at the pub (all perfectly legal). After reaching our stop (right beside the pub), we placed our empty bottles in line with the four dozen or so others outside the entrance, against the wall.
Stepping outside later that night, a homeless guy was in the process of bagging them all up to return to any one of the many supermarkets in the morning and presumably feed him quite well for the day.
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