Forward with the Troika of camel, mule & elephant?
On the whole, I think we’d rather not….
111: Spain and Italy
Target 2 deficit keeps on rising
112: Ezone loans for business drying up
113: Mass of evidence showing that Erdogan double-crossing EU re ISIS…but thanks to ‘special status’ negotiated by Cameron for the UK, we are committed to seeing Putin as our implacable enemy.
Now I’m no fan of Vlad the Lad, but (a) I’d rather deal with him than either Erdogan or Trump and (b) I don’t remember anyone asking me either way.
This is ‘getting back control’?
114: The Euro’s central bank the ECB is now the only one outside Japan whose balance sheet is still growing….ie, economy not so much stimulated as flatlining:
So, Mario is going where Abe has just gone. That should work OK, then.
115: Leading German EU observer Wolfgang Münchau says Cameron’s deal would create a 2-tier Europe….which of course, it will. But he writes in the FT, tellingly:
‘If you divide a union you end up with disunion. You cannot have it both ways….How can the EU pursue ever-closer union when one of its most important EU members enjoys a permanent exemption? Core-Europe projects — those pursued by only a subset of members — cannot be the answer. They did not work well in the past. The EU has a legal mechanism in place that would allow a minimum of nine countries to seek deeper integration among each other.’
I completely agree with him: we should get out of the way of their Handcart to Hell, and let the silly, deluded sods get on with it.
116: Crony theft Privatisations of state-owned assets remain a central plank of EC/ECB/egroupe Troika agreements with debtor nations such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. But few observers have broadcast what is really going on here.
Privatisation plans imposed on Greece under the latest and third Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) are by far the most naked examples of carpet-bagging, but it is not the only one being pressurised into implementing such programmes. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland and the UK have all seen a renewed effort to privatise the last remaining state services.
As always, however, the gap between promise and outcome displays nothing more than greed and utter incompetence. The rationale put forward by advocates of privatisation does not stand up to the evidence. Privatisation has been justified on the basis of providing revenue for indebted states and increased efficiency. Yet in nearly all cases, only profitable firms are being sold and consistently at undervalued prices. Meanwhile research by the IMF and by European universities shows that there is no evidence that the privatised firms are more efficient. Instead privatisations have undermined wages, weakened labour conditions and growing income inequality.
Cheap shares for the boys – standard practice. And in the other back pocket – the voluminous one sported by every bureaucrat with power – through selling them to other state-owned companies – especially the Chinese…who have become dominant players in buying up European energy companies, buying stakes in Portuguese, Greek and Italian public utilities. German and Azerbaijani state-owned companies have also been involved in buying in up privatised assets in other European countries.
Not forgetting of course – right at the top of the money-tree – The Slog’s previously recorded (and ignored) posts about the undeclared interests and blind eyes of Martin Schulz and Guy Verhofstadt.
Meanwhile – as always – the real brokers raking it in are the lawyers, the accountants and the banks. A small coterie of legal and financial firms are active advocates for privatisation throughout the EU, and all of them lobbied hard for it to happen…with below-the-radar help from Belgian anti-Syriza bombast Verhofstadt.
So there we are: one day into the Recommendum process, and six further solid Brexit reasons for we lucky Brits given the chance to leave this unaudited, fascist cockup.
Why ‘solid’ reasons? Simple: all of them show the eurozone area to be a cross between snowflakes in the Sahara and featherweight fatties at the trough. David Cameron is trying to tell the British People that they’re better off – “safer” – with this rubber-chicken basket case than we would be outside it. As Tim Montgomerie put it bluntly on BBCNews last night, “this was one insult too many for me to stomach, and that’s why I have resigned from the Conservative Party”.
I posted earlier to say that none of this stuff matters to the vast majority of voters, and I am absolutely certain of that. But I am told by the stats that The Slog is way above average as blogsites go for professionals, the politically aware, senior corporate management and those engaged in the markets to do more than cheat.
So if just one person in that profile slips a phrase into a speech, and the speech gets made to one influential audience, and one hack decides to write something scathing (at last) about this 2-humped psychotic Cameulephant sitting upon European freedoms and workers at all levels, I’ll be a deleriously happy bunny. And that is one too many ingredients for the metaphor blender.
Recently at The Slog: The Great McSlogagle aka The Brexit Bard
The Slog 