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Post by aster » Fri, 10 Feb 2012 8:49 pm

A bit like the Sicilians I'd say. No wait, they do pay their taxes down there. In full. And oh yes is it enforced. There's just one problem: none of that money ever shows up in Rome.

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Post by JR8 » Sat, 11 Feb 2012 6:02 am

-----------------------------
'Europe is now deliberately trying to push Greece out
...
What is more, to push Greece out is of course the right approach for all. There is now no chance
whatsoever of Greece making it in the eurozone. Economically and politically, the country is
in meltdown.

Nobody in their right mind would invest in Greece right now, knowing that at any moment Greece
might leave the euro and that overnight, they will therefore lose half to two thirds of their money.
... [continues]'

--------------------------------
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/je ... reece-out/


Interesting angle.... now the EU are trying to force Greece out? Maybe a case of the economic pragmatists vs the political mafia.

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Post by aster » Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:30 am

When the storm hit it was dangerous to let Greece go, so they were simply just buying time all along.

Now that the skies have cleared, and even massive downgrades by the ratings clowns or hollow threats by the Shylocks are ridiculed to the point of sending the markets upwards, Greece is no longer a danger in the sense of being able to pull others down with them.

Whereas before we had to be delicate with Greece because of the collateral damage, now is the time to really hit them hard with stringent conditions and puppy-dog obedience if they are to beg their way into receiving any more help... It's become a take it or leave it game now. Or rather take it or... F O!!! :)

P.S. Oh my, even the article mentions the word "Shylock." :D

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Post by JR8 » Tue, 14 Feb 2012 4:27 am

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

The Mexicans work longer hours than the Yanks.

Dia madre!

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Post by sundaymorningstaple » Tue, 14 Feb 2012 8:23 am

JR8 wrote:http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

The Mexicans work longer hours than the Yanks.

Dia madre!
Yeah, but I believe the 2 hour siesta in the afternoon is counted as clocked in time. :lol:
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

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Post by aster » Wed, 22 Feb 2012 2:01 pm

I don't know the German language, but luckily this one's in English:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 10,00.html

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Post by JR8 » Tue, 28 Feb 2012 6:28 pm

Spain refusing to slash their deficit? Oh dear me, better remember what happened to Greece and Italy. I expect Merkel and Schaeuble are revving the tank engines in preparation for it's annexation.

-----------------------------------------------------
'Meanwhile, international business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard turns his attention to Spain in this morning's Telegraph. He writes that the country's new prime minister Mariano Rajoy has delved into Madrid’s ghastly accounts and concluded that it would be "suicidal" to try to slash the budget deficit from 8pc of GDP to 4.4pc of GDP this year:

Such a policy would require a further €40bn or €50bn of cuts and accelerate the downward spiral already underway, beyond the 1.7pc contraction expected this year by the International Monetary Fund.

The unemployment rate would rise to well over 25pc with six million out of work by the end of the year, equivalent to 30pc under the old definition used in the last jobless crisis in the early 1990s.

A study by BBVA of 173 cases of fiscal squeezes in OECD countries over the last thirty years concluded that demands on Spain are almost unprecedented. They found only four such cases, and three were offset by devaluations. The fourth was Ireland in 2009. The country crashed into slump, culminating in a 54pc fall in Dublin house prices.

There is near unanimity across the political spectrum that drastic pro-cyclical tightening at this stage is unwarranted and dangerous. Josep Borrell, ex-president of the European Parliament and the voice of Spain's pro-European establishment, said such debt-deflation risks pushing the banking system over the edge. "To cut the deficit almost four points in one year would be a true depressionary shock for an anaemic economy, made worse by the requirement for banks to mark their real estate losses to market prices."'


Full article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... urope.html

Edit to add: Actually it is an eye-opening article as it clearly reveals what a stitch-up the EU and euro are. Created by Germany and France, for the benefit of Germany and France. Everybody else just do what you're told and keep paying.

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Post by JR8 » Wed, 29 Feb 2012 6:17 am

What is doubly repugnant about this, is that a) a politician believes some people should give up 75% of their income to the state, and b) that as much as he professes to dislike rich people, you can bet your bottom dollar this Marxist is a multi-millionaire himself. (People like Aster probably think he's really great).

On the bright side this French mirror-image of Ed Milliband is looking likely to win the French Presidency. Good! He will only hasten the downfall of the euro and the ridiculous EU political apparatus.


-------------------------------------
'The Socialist front-runner in the race to become France's next president has announced plans to introduce a 75 per cent tax rate on millionaires.

Francois Hollande said anyone earning above the million euro mark should view the surprise measure, which is not in his manifesto, as a type of "patriotism to accept to pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again".

"It is sending out a signal, a message of social cohesion," he said during a tour of France's annual agricultural fair in Paris.

His aides said the measure was part of a drive for more fiscal "justice" following the five-year mandate of his conservative rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who the opposition dubs "the President of the rich" due to tax breaks for the wealthy he enacted early on.

Mr Hollande, who kicked off his presidential campaign in January by singling out "the world of finance" as his "greatest enemy", is known for having once remarked: "I do not like the rich." [contd]


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -plan.html

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Post by JR8 » Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:10 pm

Have the Irish gone totally nuts, they've called for a referendum on an EU treaty!!!??? Surely they realise that if you give the people a say they might reply 'No'.

Mein Gott are they mad, the EU is not that type of democracy the people are just meant to do what they're told to. Send in the paratroopers [etc... :)]!!!

-----------------------
'Enda Game On

Ireland has just tossed a mighty spanner in the EU-works. The Taoiseach has confirmed in the Dáil that the Attorney-General has advised a referendum is necessary on the EU’s fiscal union plan, “The Irish people will be asked for their authorisation in a referendum to ratify the European stability treaty”

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Post by JR8 » Sat, 03 Mar 2012 9:34 am

The long and short of it...

-----------------------------
'The ECB’s activities also create huge potential liabilities for the more solvent countries that ultimately – through their national central banks – provide the funding for all this. What is in essence happening is that the banking risks of the European periphery are being progressively foisted onto the taxpayers of the more solvent core. Once people in those countries actually realise what’s going on, they’re going to hit the roof.

Taken as a whole, the sophistry of the process is breathtaking. The ECB is in effect being used as a mechanism for making fiscal transfers between countries, which can only legitimately be agreed by elected governments. To save the politicians’ blushes, the transfers are being executed via an unelected monetary authority. It’s another example of how legal and democratic niceties seem to have been abandoned in the scramble to save the euro. The fiscal compact, almost certainly illegal within the wider framework of the European Union, is not the paving stone to fiscal federalism it pretends to be, but a form of economic dictatorship which seems to condemn much of the periphery to permanent depression.

The more policy-makers dig, the deeper into the mire they sink. In despair, one of the most famous names in British finance, the Prudential, is threatening to redomicile to Asia to escape the latest madcap piece of insurance regulation to come out of Brussels: it would wipe 20 per cent off the value of many pensions, stop insurers investing in banks and infrastructure, and would have resulted in the entire sector being declared insolvent if it had been in place at the height of the financial crisis.

Europe has no strategy for growth, no strategy for jobs, and in truth, no strategy for saving the euro. The project is broken beyond repair.'

--------------------------------
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... dness.html

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Post by aster » Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:02 pm

Interestingly it's usually the press in the UK that keeps on publishing fairy tales about the "end of the Euro." It's becoming exceedingly funny to read such nonsense, as the fact that it's not happening (and not going to happen) just infuriates the pseudo-journalists who seem to act like Clinton on viagra when it comes to this subject matter.

Curious why they hate it so much, it's not like anyone is forcing the UK to join. After all, any mention of the Euro being good for Britain's economy and the shylocks instantly panic, pumping millions into campaigns to help them continue ripping-off the British consumer. But of course marketing-wise it'll be called something completely different like "Save our sovereignty" (lol). And the public will of course fall for it whilst the Pound tumbles from a 2.00 to a 1.20 conversion rate to the Euro, so those UK banknotes are slowly starting to resemble those across the channel anyway...

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Post by JR8 » Tue, 06 Mar 2012 5:08 am

Examples from today of how '''democracy''' in the EU works:

Spain:
----------------------------------------------------------------
<Tweets>'Spain thinks changing its fiscal targets is a 'sovereign' issue, European Commission clearly thinks otherwise. gauntlet thrown down, Spanish austerity decision is sovereign but 'they will face the consequences', says official'
-----------------------------------------------------------------


Ireland:
------------------------------------------------------------------
'Bruno Waterfield has also posted an interesting comment on Sp!ked, where he argues that the EU is doing everything it can to ensure that Ireland's referendum on the new "fiskalpact" is stitched up before a vote is cast:

It has been little noted, but the treaty text contains an innovation, described by European diplomats as ‘a very unusual step’. As opposed to all other EU treaties, the fiskalpakt will enter into force when only 12 out the 17 Eurozone member state signatories have ratified it.

[...] Once upon a time, the EU operated on the principle that its rules must be agreed by all its members, through democratic ratifications held according to national principles. Today, individual nations and popular votes cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the EU, which is emerging as the instrument by which elites pit their statecraft and institutions against changing European societies.'

------------------------------------------------------------------


France:
------------------------------------------------------------------
'[...] Even the previously euro-friendly François Hollande, the grey French Socialist leader, has become too much for the EU establishment. There have been reports of murky (and completely backfiring) pacts to sabotage his bid to win the French presidency. His crime is that he wants to renegotiate the same treaty that Ireland is voting on. France, one of the most powerful EU countries, is creating more ‘nervousness’ than Ireland, senior EU officials have told me. ‘If he wants to significantly renegotiate the pact on debt brakes or sanctions then that will stop the process of ratification in a number of countries. The French elections are a big worry for Germany’, said the senior European source.'

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

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Post by aster » Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:18 pm

Trial of Iceland ex-PM over 2008 crisis begins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17254544

Seems a but like crying over spilt milk, but kind of ironic how a handful of banks were able to make the economy collapse. Wait, isn't Ireland also knee-deep in $hit due to similar thieves?

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Post by JR8 » Tue, 06 Mar 2012 3:33 pm

aster wrote:Trial of Iceland ex-PM over 2008 crisis begins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17254544

Seems a but like crying over spilt milk, but kind of ironic how a handful of banks were able to make the economy collapse. Wait, isn't Ireland also knee-deep in $hit due to similar thieves?
Er no. Ireland is in trouble because along with the Club Med countries on joining the euro it's domestic interest rates in many cases were halved and more overnight which naturally caused unparalleled credit booms. And subsequent to joining the euro, since they had no national control levers for their economies they could do nothing about it but sit back and watch the bubble grow.

To compound things further still the ECB have run a policy that is primarily suited for the German economy (perhaps you remember them raising rates last year when things seemed to be picking up in Germany, that was arguably a tiipping point for Club Med), and this has often been the opposite conditions that the Club-Med countries have needed.

You call holding a politician responsible 'split milk'. I call it good democracy. Of course it would never happen in the EU.

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Post by aster » Tue, 06 Mar 2012 5:35 pm

JR8 wrote:You call holding a politician responsible 'split milk'. I call it good democracy. Of course it would never happen in the EU.
It was the banksters that took the Icelandic economy down so now they're blaming the PM for letting them do so, so fair enough I guess.

Kind of a contrast to the UK, where the PM isn't just on their side... he's actually sold out to them and puts their interests first and foremost. How frigging embarrassing to head to an EU summit and tell Merkel and Sarkozy that he will agree to everything they want... as long as the interests of the global financial terrorists are safe.

It a way it's history repeating itself. Back in the day it was deemed perfectly fine to be a pirate, and go out murdering and stealing all over... as long as at the end of the day you gave a cut to the queen. Now it's all about housing the world's biggest thieves... as long as they too hand over a cut of their plunder.

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