Eu, Without Britain, Moves Towards Fiscal Deal

[interestrateripoff]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/13/uk-eu-treaty-idUKTRE7BC1NN20111213

Up to 26 European Union countries will finalise a pact to enforce budget discipline more strictly in the euro zone by March, a top official said on Tuesday, as the bloc tries to move quickly to rebuild confidence but without Britain's backing.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy expressed disappointment that Britain had shunned an agreement reached at an EU summit last week to pursue fiscal integration as part of efforts to tackle the debt crisis, but made clear the door would remain open for London.

"They recognise the euro is a common good," Van Rompuy said in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, commenting on those in the agreement. "Then, early March at the latest, this fiscal compact treaty will be signed."

The 'fiscal compact' is meant to allow closer scrutiny of countries' spending to stop a similar debt crisis recurring and potentially making it more palatable for the European Central Bank to step up its purchases of distressed euro zone debt to hold down borrowing costs.

More waffle they've got all the need to enforce fiscal discipline but no one could be bothered to enforce the existing rules. Now we'll have more rules that won't be enforced but the market is now to expect that the rules will be.

I don't think the market is currently that stupid.

[thecrashingisles]

Up to 26 European Union countries will finalise a pact

Such confidence!

[South Lorne]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/13/uk-eu-treaty-idUKTRE7BC1NN20111213

More waffle they've got all the need to enforce fiscal discipline but no one could be bothered to enforce the existing rules. Now we'll have more rules that won't be enforced but the market is now to expect that the rules will be.

I don't think the market is currently that stupid.

...stupid in the sense it is slow in reacting .....

[no accountant]

More waffle

exactly, I read at succinct piece in City AM: Utopian dreams of political union leave no place for stability in the EU

Neither the EFSF nor the ESM are serious mechanisms for solving the problem: their whole point is to mask the fact that there is no one willing to pay for the debts of the Eurozone’s periphery.

..

Europe will not become a well-functioning union. By now, everyone should see very clearly that it lacks the elements that would make it work as a monetary union. It also lacks the elements that would make it work as a political union – common electorate, shared narrative and moral like-mindedness. And unless European political elites renounce their ideological commitment to this utopia, we are all going to get badly hurt.

Edited December 13, 2011 by no accountant

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/8954974/Debt-crisis-live.html

07.40 it doesn't often happen, but the Financial Times and the Daily Mail have taken the same line on events in Europe in this morning's papers.

Both say cracks are starting to show in the agreement reached between 26 of the 27 EU nations last Friday, with Britain the odd one out, as governments have to put forward the changes to their own parliaments and electorates.

Now, the FT says, "the pressure is acute in non-eurozone countries where at least four governments warned that the precise text would determine whether they could sign up or otherwise join the UK on the sidelines."

The Czech leader Petr Necas said "there is not much more than a blank sheet of paper" on offer at the moment.

Within the euro, Ireland's PM Enda Kenny was facing calls to put the plans for more central control over tax abd spending to a referendum, and Holland's leader Mark Rutte also under pressure.

We don't have time for referendums especially as the Irish will vote No in the first one.

[interestrateripoff]

Forget David Cameron's veto, another eurozone crisis is only weeks away

You wouldn’t believe it to listen to the fulminating indignation directed at the UK from across the Channel, but David Cameron did the eurozone’s political leaders a favour last weekend. By refusing to sign up, he managed to create a convenient Aunt Sally for Europeans to throw stones at, and divert attention from the summit’s failure to come up with anything remotely credible to address either the single currency’s existential crisis or the gathering economic slump. The latest in a long line of self-styled “make or break” summits, it was in truth no more momentous than any of the others.

What was agreed was some minor strengthening of the Maastricht framework for governing monetary union, though some aspects of the original “stability and growth pact” have actually been watered down. The maximum fine that can be imposed for breach of the rules has been reduced from 0.5 per cent of GDP annually to 0.2 per cent.

In most other respects too, the idea that some kind of great leap forward in terms of fiscal and political union has occurred is a nonsense. Consider what fiscal union of the type that exists within federal states such as Germany and the United States actually means. First and foremost, it requires centralised powers of tax collection and public spending. These powers provide the main mechanism through which fiscal transfers can be made to the more depressed regions of the sovereign state.

More at the link.

Jeremy Warner sticking the boot in.

Although it's interesting that more and more of these pieces are making there way into the media, no longer is the break up of the Euro seen as something only nutjobs can contemplate.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

MArtin Wolf says similar in the FT. Cameron poor, EU worse.

[Police]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/8954974/Debt-crisis-live.html

We don't have time for referendums especially as the Irish will vote No in the first one.

The Irish have given up. They will vote yes.

[LiveAndLetBuy]

Forget David Cameron's veto, another eurozone crisis is only weeks away

More at the link.

Jeremy Warner sticking the boot in.

Although it's interesting that more and more of these pieces are making there way into the media, no longer is the break up of the Euro seen as something only nutjobs can contemplate.

Jeremy Warner has done a bit of a u-turn since moving to the Telegraph from the Independent (he used to be quite confident about the euro)

Apart from AEP a consistent commentator on the euro has been Wolfgang Munchau at the (otherwise useless) FT, but nobody here seems to mention him much...

http://www.ft.com/intl/comment/columnists/wolfgangmunchau

[PopGun]

Jeremy Warner has done a bit of a u-turn since moving to the Telegraph from the Independent (he used to be quite confident about the euro)

Sadly views and outlooks can quickly change when someone else is paying for them.

[RichB]

Sadly views and outlooks can quickly change when someone else is paying for them.

Or indeed when evidence starts to become fairly overwhelming, these days it can be hard to tell the difference.

[madpenguin]

Sadly views and outlooks can quickly change when someone else is paying for them.

Trashing everything except the dollar and the pound is standard practice at the Daily Telegraph, I often read something in there think "Dear god the sky's falling" and when you read the Bloomburg, The FT, The Independent or Guardian, the whole thing is pretty much a non event, the DT is the Sunday Sport of financial news.

[LiveAndLetBuy]

Trashing everything except the dollar and the pound is standard practice at the Daily Telegraph, I often read something in there think "Dear god the sky's falling" and when you read the Bloomburg, The FT, The Independent or Guardian, the whole thing is pretty much a non event, the DT is the Sunday Sport of financial news.

Are you suggesting that the current situation with the euro (as predicted by the Telegraph and none of the others you mention) is a none event?

[tomandlu]

The journalists seem remarkably consistent today... (well, yesterday)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/13/europe-hopeless-david-cameron-right

This has nothing as such to do with Britain, nor can Britain be said to have impeded ever-closer union. But Cameron must have been right to stand aloof from what looks a hopeless last stand in defence of a common currency – even though, bizarrely, he wants the euro rescued. Another grandiose treaty seeking ever more intervention for Brussels would have triggered a series of probably disastrous national referendums. Cameron performed Europe a good deed in vetoing that.

Even so, what will now be a German-led "unequal treaty" will impose a battery of budgetary and fiscal disciplines on Greece, Italy, Spain and possibly France, in the hope of calming markets. This in turn means decisions over budgets, taxes, benefits and transfers taken away from elected national parliaments and put in the hands of ministerial councils and Brussels commissioners. Such decisions would carry no local legitimacy and risk being unenforceable.

Already governments in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy that sought outside help and austerity in return have been toppled by their electorates. Under the new "treaty" such disciplines will be doubled and trebled, and blamed on one country, Germany. It must be likely that electorates will refuse to submit. Bond markets will seize up, public spending collapse, unemployment and emigration soar and streets descend into chaos. It has already happened in Greece. Pro-treaty Europeans may regard such alarmism as "swivel-eyed". But such passions in European history should never be taken lightly.

Cameron, with his public opinion behind him, still believes in the Europe of the single European act, a trading confederacy in which relations between states are governed not by a super-bureaucracy but by negotiation and adjustment. There is no natural equilibrium in such a confederacy, just constant give and take to achieve "level playing fields" in trade and commerce. The beleaguered eurozone must find its way back to the give and take of the 1986 act, which incidentally governed Europe's most productive era.

Edited December 14, 2011 by tomandlu

[Goat]

Sadly views and outlooks can quickly change when someone else is paying for them.

When facts change I change my opinion. What do you do?

[Goat]

Trashing everything except the dollar and the pound is standard practice at the Daily Telegraph, I often read something in there think "Dear god the sky's falling" and when you read the Bloomburg, The FT, The Independent or Guardian, the whole thing is pretty much a non event, the DT is the Sunday Sport of financial news.

So the Euro is safe then, no possibility of a breakup whatsoever.

[madpenguin]

So the Euro is safe then, no possibility of a breakup whatsoever.

That wasn't my point my point was that the Telegraph has a particular editorial agenda and rarely deviates from it, read Ambrose Evans Pritchards pieces over the years to see what I mean, "24 Hours to save the Euro" being the classic, or pieces like this from Bootle:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/8949680/EU-treaty-Britain-is-being-left-behind-...-a-rickety-cart-drawn-by-pantomime-horse-Merkozy.html

Europe, China whatever thrive or fail I just want to see a sensible balanced report rather than some sensational piece of crap, leave that to the Mail or the Express.

I find myself more and more turning to Bloomberg or the Independent for financial news due to the fact that they don't feel they have to stereotype or caricature every piece of non British/American financial news

Edited December 14, 2011 by madpenguin

[Game_Over]

That wasn't my point my point was that the Telegraph has a particular editorial agenda and rarely deviates from it, read Ambrose Evans Pritchards pieces over the years to see what I mean, "24 Hours to save the Euro" being the classic, or pieces like this from Bootle:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/8949680/EU-treaty-Britain-is-being-left-behind-...-a-rickety-cart-drawn-by-pantomime-horse-Merkozy.html

Europe, China whatever thrive or fail I just want to see a sensible balanced report rather than some sensational piece of crap, leave that to the Mail or the Express.

I find myself more and more turning to Bloomberg or the Independent for financial news due to the fact that they don't feel they have to stereotype or caricature every piece of non British/American financial news

If you believe everything you read in the Guardian you will be constantly baffled and disappointed by what actually happens in the real World.

The Guardian is just a left wing fantasy comic.

Personally I read newspapers in order to learn what is actually happening - not to have my own deluded prejudices reinforced.

[Charlie The Tramp Returns]

Eu, Without Britain, Moves Towards Fiscal Deal

Within 5 years we will see much discontent among many of those 26 Countries. The EU will go through many more trying times.

[madpenguin]

If you believe everything you read in the Guardian you will be constantly baffled and disappointed by what actually happens in the real World.

The Guardian is just a left wing fantasy comic.

Personally I read newspapers in order to learn what is actually happening - not to have my own deluded prejudices reinforced.

Every media outlet has an agenda one way or the other, I moved to the online Telegraph after the Times started charging (yes, yes I'm a cheapskate) but I have found it's bias to get highly annoying lately as whatever happens it sings the same song, Dollar and Sterling = good, anything else = bad and it's starting to feel a bit obvious, particularly with the Chinese reports.

I don't read the Guardian that much but it does pose a different point of view on various stories, and it's alway nice to know what social workers and teachers think

Sometimes RT's Kaiser report has items which coincide with my feelings about a situation but I don't pretend for one minute they don't have their own particular prejudices.

Personally I read newspapers in order to learn what is actually happening - not to have my own deluded prejudices reinforced.

Exactly!, but getting that news without an obvious slant is very difficult,

[madpenguin]

I'll hear nothing against Bootle.

It was he who predicted interest rates would stay low for at least five years, I read him and agreed and kept with a tracker plus 0.94% needless to say, I've never looked back.

I had the same belief back in 1999, but you never asked me!

[Game_Over]

Every media outlet has an agenda one way or the other, I moved to the online Telegraph after the Times started charging (yes, yes I'm a cheapskate) but I have found it's bias to get highly annoying lately as whatever happens it sings the same song, Dollar and Sterling = good, anything else = bad and it's starting to feel a bit obvious, particularly with the Chinese reports.

I don't read the Guardian that much but it does pose a different point of view on various stories, and it's alway nice to know what social workers and teachers think

Sometimes RT's Kaiser report has items which coincide with my feelings about a situation but I don't pretend for one minute they don't have their own particular prejudices.

Personally I read newspapers in order to learn what is actually happening - not to have my own deluded prejudices reinforced.

Exactly!, but getting that news without an obvious slant is very difficult,

Ok

but the reason the Telegraph keeps singing this song is because it is continually restating the obvious.

Because some people still don't seem to get it.

[madpenguin]

Back then prudence was still in vogue and we hadn't spent our grandchildren's future.

Oops I meant 2009!, can't claim to be that much of an oracle

Edited December 14, 2011 by madpenguin

[wonderpup]

When facts change I change my opinion. What do you do?

I must admit to being someone who was very pro europe- until I saw just how quickly the Eurocrats tossed democracy aside when it threatened to get in the way of their empire building.

Now I see them for what they are, power crazed, arrogant and stupid- much like all politicians- but at least I get to vote for brand of corruption I get in the UK- the Eurocrats are entirely unaccountable.

[Charlie The Tramp Returns]

For me it was watching Sarko over the last year trying every which way for anyone else to bail out his banks. After NOT helping us with rbs or hbos or the Irish.

Sarkozy when leading Merkel to blow out Cameron and where Cameron made his mistake, opt the City out or I will call for the abolition of CAP. What a kick for the French p***k in the love grenades.

So Merkel in the German Parliament stated that the UK was still an important player in the EU. Well Angela you have remembered that the UK paid billions of pounds over the years to protect you from the red threat during the cold war and your country did not pay a penny towards it.