[Zanu Bob]

http://globaleconomi...ates-dutch.html

'The Netherlands government has officially collapsed in a dispute over austerity measures. Elections likely in September. Meanwhile, the Czech government is also on the verge of collapse, for the same reason: austerity measures.

The Financial Times reports Dutch government falls over budget talks

The Dutch governing coalition collapsed on Saturday when far-right politician Geert Wilders pulled out of budget cut talks, saying it was not in the Netherlands’ interest to meet the deficit limit of three per cent imposed by the new European fiscal pact.

EU-imposed austerity measures have cost leaders in southern European countries, including Greece, Italy and Spain, their jobs. With the fall of the conservative Dutch government, and the possibility that Nicolas Sarkozy may lose the French presidential election that begins on Sunday, the damage seems to have spread to Europe’s prosperous north.


Highlighting widespread voter anger over EU-imposed budget cuts, Mr Wilders said he could not allow Dutch citizens to “pay out of their pockets for the senseless demands of Brussels”.

“We don’t want to follow Brussels’ orders. We don’t want to make our retirees bleed for Brussels’ diktats,” Mr Wilders said.

The loss of Mr Wilders’ support left the conservative government of Mark Rutte, prime minister, with just over a third of the seats in parliament.


Highlighting widespread voter anger over EU-imposed budget cuts, Mr Wilders said he could not allow Dutch citizens to “pay out of their pockets for the senseless demands of Brussels”.

“We don’t want to follow Brussels’ orders. We don’t want to make our retirees bleed for Brussels’ diktats,” Mr Wilders said.

The loss of Mr Wilders’ support left the conservative government of Mark Rutte, prime minister, with just over a third of the seats in parliament.

Mr Rutte and other party leaders said that made new elections inevitable. He is expected to offer his cabinet’s resignation to the Dutch Queen on Monday, but leave the cabinet in place as a caretaker government until elections are held, probably in September.

Exiting the government at this stage will allow Mr Wilders to disclaim any responsibility for unpopular budget cuts. But the biggest winner in elections could be the far-left eurosceptic Socialist party, which has seen its support rise to as much as 20 per cent of the electorate over the past year.

Meanwhile, Dutch analysts said the inability of even the prosperous, deficit-averse Netherlands to generate voter support for Europe-directed budget cuts called the sustainability of the EU fiscal pact into question.

Czech Government Collapse On the Way

Please consider Czech protesters stage anti-government rally

The Czech government faces a test of its ability to continue governing after an ambitious fiscal tightening programme splintered the ruling coalition and brought tens of thousands of protesters on to the streets of Prague at the weekend.

Petr Necas, premier, has set a Monday deadline for a breakaway group from Public Affairs – the smallest of the three parties that made up his centre-right coalition – to demonstrate that it has the support of at least 10 MPs, which would give him a working majority in the 200-member parliament.

Mr Necas has sacrificed much of his popularity after introducing a series of tax increases and benefit cuts in order to keep the budget deficit below 3 per cent next year. The additional measures were brought in after the Czech Republic posted worse than expected growth numbers – largely a consequence of the slowdown in the eurozone, the country’s largest export market.

“We cannot behave in a populist way and we must continue our policy of budget responsibility and debt reduction,” Mr Necas told reporters after one of the largest demonstrations in the Czech Republic’s post-communist history filled the streets of the capital on Saturday to protest at his policies and to show disgust with political corruption.

Organisers estimated that about 120,000 people attended, many of them jangling keys as a signal for the government to go – an echo of the protests that ousted the communists in 1989.

Slovakia Government Collapse

In case you missed it, the right-wing Slovakia government collapsed in March.

The Guardian reports Central Europe's centre-right teeters under corruption claims

Austria, Slovakia, Croatia and Czech Republic gripped by sleaze allegations involving senior politicians and governing parties.

Ruling parties, political elites and former ministers in a string of EU countries are embroiled in cash-for-influence scandals that are exposing widespread allegations of corruption, triggering public revulsion and a voters' backlash.

Hunting parties, expensive gifts, drunken car crashes, secret police wiretaps, paper bags stuffed with money and public budgets being treated as private accounts all feature in the lurid revelations and allegations being leaked daily on to the front pages of central Europe.

Austria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic are in the throes of sleaze allegations involving senior politicians and governing parties said to be funded by dirty money.

Tales of criminality, thuggery, and vast amounts of cash flowing to politicians from companies, lobbyists, and middlemen are dominating the newspapers and blogosphere across central Europe. In contrast, successful prosecutions are extremely rare for a political class that often seems to operate with impunity. Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, and the Czech Republic are in the throes of major sleaze allegations involving senior politicians and governing parties said to be funded by dirty money.

In Austria a special parliamentary committee investigating political corruption is questioning serving and former ministers this week about a convoluted web of alleged bribery and profiteering from government tenders and skewed legislation.

In an election this month next door in Slovakia, the new prime minister, Robert Fico, won a landslide after support for his rivals on the right collapsed when secret police files about the buying and selling of MPs were unearthed by a Canadian journalist and posted on the internet.

The secret police files, codenamed Gorilla, featured wiretaps of leading financiers meeting discreetly with centre-right governing politicians to trade government tenders for cash.

the latest scandal to rock the region centres on a Czech businessman and a former Prague mayor who are accused of in effect controlling the city's €2bn budget between them.

The businessman, Roman Janoušek, had long been labelled the "shadow mayor" owing to his close links with city hall, but it was not until transcripts of what are believed to be wiretaps of conversations between him and his long-time ally, former Prague city mayor Pavel Bém, were published in the daily Mladá Fronta Dnes that the scale of their alleged rigging of the city finances started to come to light.

The conversations appear to include discussions about influencing sales of city and public property, arranging expensive gifts for city officials and fixing high-ranking official posts.

On May 6 the Greek government is likely to collapse, and Nicolas Sarkozy will be ousted as president of France.

Meanwhile New "Temporary" Border Controls are tantamount to a Vote of No Confidence in Europe

Other than four ousted governments, Troika imposed governments in Greece and Italy, huge budget misses in Spain, increased protectionist measures in France, border controls, bickering between the ECB and the German Central Bank, the Bundesbank proclamation "Not ECB's Job to Tackle Spain's Problems", Europe is holding together quite nicely.'




the perfect storm.

[MrPin]

The Third Reich lasted only twelve years!

[RichM]

Yeah, but what's the bad news?

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

In the future, the near future, people will look back at the EU and the European governments and ask... "was everybody high all the time?"

[Snugglybear]

But what happens if austerity is inevitable (as many on here say) and nation state and regional governments have to impose it? Who are they going to blame if there's no EU to finger?

[Sir Harold m]

Snugglybear, on 23 April 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

But what happens if austerity is inevitable (as many on here say) and nation state and regional governments have to impose it? Who are they going to blame if there's no EU to finger?

They can blame their own governments, get rid of them and then elect another who may or may not succeed. This may result in cyclical blame etc but eventually the natural mechanics of their economy will rebalance, recession, soft default, inflation, depression, recovery.

What they will avoid is the imposition from abroad of a hand picked unelected leader who will ensure the sub prime lenders who lent the money to their predecessors get their return at all costs.

Sovereign lending is ok but lenders must realise the risks involved. There is no such thing as moral hazard in sovereign lending. You simply can not expect unborn to be morally culpable for grandads debts .

When people get this they will stop bleating about morality of defaults , inflation etc etc . Lenders (ie holders of paper) are subject to risk just as much as borrowers, if they don't like it buy assets instead !

Personally, I think people running countries should balance inflation with credibility rather than putting all eggs in one basket either through total default or massive austerity.

You gave to be out of the euro straitjacket to balance this act

[Mr. Miyagi]

Farage did say that the collapse of the EZ could come from an unexpected source, perhaps the Dutch will be the catalyst.

[stormymonday_2011]

Snugglybear, on 23 April 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

But what happens if austerity is inevitable (as many on here say) and nation state and regional governments have to impose it? Who are they going to blame if there's no EU to finger?

Foreigners, Jewish financiers, global capitalists, immigrants, neighbouring countries etc.

You know the script.

How far it will go and how extreme it will get.is anyones guess.

What is unusual is that the current hatred of pan European institutions is almost a mirror image of some of the things seen prior to the fall of the Soviet Union (ie Euro puppet regimes such as in Greece facing crowds on the streets, sullen populaces etc). However, I don't agree with those who think this is just a crisis of European 'socialism'. It is centre right governments that practise both social and economic liberalism that are feeling the heat.

The irony is that what is likely to kill the EU is the Euro, the very thing that was supposed to have guaranteed the future of the European super state. Plus. of course, eye watering levels of corruption but then the UK is well down that road too.

This post has been edited by stormymonday_2011: 23 April 2012 - 06:33 AM

[marceau]

Control, on 23 April 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

This isn't actually true or anything new. We have always expected the next generation to pay the debts of the previous ones. It happens with all sorts of things. For example we didn't pay off world war 2 debt until 2006.

Germany didn't finish paying reparations for World War 1 until 2010.


Which means every one of us has been paying off grandad's debt all our working lives. Paying off debts of previous generations is actually a non issue unless the reparations become onerous.

Rubbish.

Key word is structural - those debts weren't, our debts are. Please take 2 minutes on google to understand the difference before spouting any establishment party line bilge.

You'd have thought that after this long people would have picked up on the difference between debt and deficit.

[fluffy666]

Snugglybear, on 23 April 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

But what happens if austerity is inevitable (as many on here say) and nation state and regional governments have to impose it? Who are they going to blame if there's no EU to finger?

There is Austerity and Austerity..

Deflationary Austerity is where you try to cut nominal spending to balance the budget. This is the 'Canada Approach'; it works fine if you have low unemployment to start with and significant growth; i.e. in the good times. It also appeals to the 'shrink the government whenever' types. If you already have issues with a lack of demand, high unemployment and a shrinking economy.. then this approach is simply economic suicide; cuts mean higher unemployment and less demand, so less private sector activity and higher welfare bills. Meaning yet more cuts and more unemployment. So you end up with 50% youth unemployment and wonder why you still can't balance the budget..

Inflationary Austerity is where you quite deliberately spur inflation to double digit levels, whilst keeping tax bands in place (or only slowly raised), and restricting consumer/housing credit. So you effectively raise taxes, at least in nominal terms, whilst keeping unemployment low and demand high. Not fun for the retired or those sitting on large cash savings pots. Danger is that inflation goes completely out of control..

[georgia o'keeffe]

Control, on 23 April 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

My aren't you het up. I have no party line, but your knee jerk reflex is keenly tuned to the monetarist propaganda channel it seems. Perhaps you could take fifteen seconds to read the the statement I was responding to and then re-read my response before blustering your own dogma. It makes no difference whether the debts are structural or not. We have always handed debt on to the next generation. It's the scale of the debt that matters. But that aside we've passed structural debt on for generations it is not a new thing.

generally via the stupidity of wars as you allude to but to manage it on the back of nothing more than i want more, im entitled is no mean historical feat to be scoffed at

[Democorruptcy]

Control, on 23 April 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

My aren't you het up. I have no party line, but your knee jerk reflex is keenly tuned to the monetarist propaganda channel it seems. Perhaps you could take fifteen seconds to read the the statement I was responding to and then re-read my response before blustering your own dogma. It makes no difference whether the debts are structural or not. We have always handed debt on to the next generation. It's the scale of the debt that matters. But that aside we've passed structural debt on for generations it is not a new thing.

Have EU governments always paid billions to US banks then demanded their people have austerity and work longer to pay for it?

Sub prime, interest rate swaps...

When Morgan Stanley (MS) said in January it had cut its “net exposure” to Italy by $3.4 billion, it didn’t tell investors that the nation paid that entire amount to the bank to exit a bet on interest rates.
http://www.businessw...exit-derivative