Also in the news today
 

More about the TTIP:-
EU referendum: UK could be better off leaving if TTIP passes, Joseph Stiglitz says | Business News | News | The Independent

It's of passing interest that the Labour party organised his speech.

the existence of five presidents is testimony to the bureaucratic skills of the elite
 

About this EMU project:-
Lord Mervyn King: 'Forgive them their debts’ is not the answer

And, if that is not enought reading matter from the former BoE governor, he spills the information that he wouldn't say when he held down the job. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/...mer-bank-of-e/

Good article, thanks for sharing

I'm sure you and 50,000 city workers found French president wannabe Macron's comment about rolling out the red carpet to UK banks after brexit highly comical; Monsieur Macron – there is a reason why the sixth largest French city is now LONDON!


Also BMW's chief execuitves' attempts to scare his employees into voting “the correct way” should be interpreted in the context of the Quant family's ownership (step children of that other famous German family the Goebels) of BMW and the investigation of their corrupting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the tune of €700,000 (small change to these people) and therefore the EU also. Clearly acting on orders, Torsten Muller-Otvos should understand that owning British assets does not correlate with corrupting the British political process too and if BMW hates the prospect of an independent Great Britain this much they know what they can do...

Solvency Vs Liquidity
 

The thread has been running for only about 6 weeks and it has drawn upon some excellent input to the debate, in many cases well ahead of the MSM.

As for the Lord King article, following the links in the website bring out more abstracts from his book, such as
Lord Mervyn King: why throwing money at financial panic will lead us into a new crisis

That particular link reminds me immediately of a post from January in here which remains the best single contribution to this thread to date IMO, in that it summarises so many of the issues that are facing us (all we need now are some feasible solutions):-

What price the Euro?
 

Talking of links within links within websites, this guy knows the inside story about my post from a few weeks ago:
EU superstate would have no democratic legitimacy, warns euro architect*

Worth a look....
 

This is a bit off topic but I found it very interesting and I think both "In" and "Out" thinkers will take something from this.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zlz...lE-I8-NO17jP0Q

No surprise actually
 

Right enough.
Well said Mr Grimsson.

I must admit that I have stayed well away from the subject matter of how the nation of Iceland dealt with the Rothschilds and their bretheren.
That would really get me going! (and I have done a bit of that in the economic crisis thread in this pub).

I do like how Mr G describes the long Icelandic memory that there is concerning our Mr Brown and his threats, bluster and bravado.

Misc other points from the vid:
The complicity of the ratings agencies who are all in on the scam.

Iceland threw away the shadow banking that had set itself up within the country (probably via some variation of corruption), locked up the miscreants that they could get their hands on and returned to what they do best - the real economy.

Thereby, Iceland has moved away from misuse of resources and associated malinvestment -- This is long term; no one should doubt that it is a long-haul process but Iceland has the cohesion to get on and do it.

Anyone remember "ICESave" full page adverts in the UK press, offering 12% interest rates on their savings account?

Especially notable: the USA, in private conversation, didn't give a damn. (in the context of our referendum, Pres Obama has promised to visit the UK sometime before 23 June).

All is quiet at the moment on the Greek debt, but it won't be long before it's hitting the headlines again. What Greece needs is to adopt the drachma again and be forgiven the majority of its debt.

The article above gives an excellent parallel to the treatment of Germany after WWI when the 132B gold marks of reparations that the country committed to pay was whittled down eventually to just 21B marks actually paid, but this money was borrowed and Germany then defaulted on the debt and actually ended up paying nothing.

Another good point from the article: to solve the euro crisis, don't throw out the weak countries (after all, where do you draw the line?), just throw out Germany and much of the problem goes away.

Greek debt:
Nothing will change - my post of about 7 hours ago gave me a jolt because it confirms the political imperative of not losing either the Eurozone project or any particular nation from the 19 members.
Some commentary on the recent G20 meeting indicates that the central bank governors are frustrated with their political masters who won't grasp the nettle (I think I've used that expression at least once before!!!); there again, one lot are elected and the others are not.
Merv King describes the issues very well but offers no solutions basically.

Frau Merkel has a series of elections coming up; I think the first are next month for the federal states, so "no change" will be her rule.
Therein is a big weakness of the EU "democracy" - 28 nations constantly running elections, referenda et al.


Has anyone looked at the recent D Cameron “agreement” for staying in the EU?
There seems to be an amount of comment from some quarters that this is a “final deal”, meaning that if we accept the premise of remaining in the EUnion, via our June referendum, then it is a “final solution” with no going back, ever.
If that is the case, whatever happened to article 50 of the EU Lisbon treaty??
+ how can any such deal made by a current Prime Minister bind a future UK Parliament?

Got through a lot of reading today
 

I have been intending to leave well alone the internal machinations of the current governing party but I can't ignore this recent article.
The EU is our own Hotel California amid Brexit battle writes PETER HITCHENS | Daily Mail Online
It flags up the real possibility of “place men” who will argue a certain point of view while not actually truly supporting the side they claim to support.
Others have been mentioned elsewhere but this article is suffice to confirm that we all need to apply a healthy dose of common sense when absorbing information.
OTOH, any half awake interviewer of such Trojan Horses should be able to deconstruct them.
Hopefully we will get past this in the UK discourse as the arguments are engaged in earnest, in preference to the project FUD.

Look further west, Tim, much further west. Portugal might be in a similar situation shortly given the new government's policies.


Here I don't fully agree with you. First, Greece already had a debt relief many times higher than the relief given to Germany in 1953 with the London Agreement on German Debt which included all outstanding external debt of Germany, both public and private and with a further detail: the Federal Republic assumed the entire debt of 1939's Germany which included territories subsequently taken by Czechoslovaquia, Austria, Poland and the DDR. Second, after the war Germany started a path towards prosperity and that could be seen after 1949. Greece, the exact opposite, does not want to go into a path of prosperity, this being, they really don't want anything else than living out of others' earnings. This being, I believe that yes, they should default and yes, they should go back to the dracma. But let them trail this road by themselves. Let them default by themselves and receive the punishment reserved to defaulters since the XVI century. Let them go back to the dracma and feel in their flesh the consequences of doing so. Only this way, only by allowing them to make their own choices and feel the consequences of their choices they will learn and perhaps (I doubt it but who knows...) some day they will start moving towards prosperity. If they choose not to, well, their problem.


Let's assume throwing out Germany, Netherlands, Finland as well perhaps. Wouldn't, then, the Euro be as worthless as the CFA? :innocent:

No Greek government will accept the bankruptcy bomb exploding in his hands so Greece is tied to the Eurozone. These clowns which govern in Athens nowadays tried to get support from China, Russia and Iran but received negative replies from all corners so the options became acceptance of the conditions and of the third bailout or straight bankruptcy. They are what they are but they are not complete fools willing to risk a bankruptcy with certain full blown civil insurrection following and, most probably, the military stepping in to restore order and get rid of the government in the proccess.

This is what restricts Greece: it's either the Euro, the bailouts with their conditions and all we know or going back probably more than 70 years in quality of life.


Central Banks have been kicking the proverbial can down the road trying to gain some time for governments to act. These, however, run away from the necessary measures as Dracula from garlic because the measures needed in several countries are deeply unpopular in the short term. As a matter of fact I don't think that it is possible that democratic governments do what is necessary right now in countries like Greece or Portugal. So, governments keep relying on central banks and central banks keep doing more of the same. This is reaching the end, though, for unconventional measures are not producing results anymore and when a new full blown crisis explodes nobody really knows what will happen. Not good things, though...


That is utterly absurd.

First there is the Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and the provisions for a two years negotiation leading to the exit. And, second, even if it did not exist, let's not forget that the European Union is composed of sovereign countries. England, Ireland, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, etc, etc, are Sovereign, Independent Countries. These are not states, regions, autonomies or whatever regional bodies exist in several countries. These are countries with their own governments, their own constitutions and their own military. If a country decides to declare himself out of the European Union, that country is out of the EU regardless of whatever Brussels screams and cries. Aren't there any consequences? Yes, of course there are consequences but, and this is the fun part, sanctions in EU legislation are very mild. At most the country sees its vote rights suspended. Something irrelevant for a country which declares itself out of the European Union. There are no provisions for the expulsion of a country from the European Union, commercial sanctions or any thing of the sort. At most suspension of its voting rights.

A Brexit blueprint
 

[QUOTE=ridetheworld;531580]i.e. nothing but vague sentiments with no clear vision about what the UK should be and will be without Europe.

doh[/QUOTE
There is clear vision, in contrast to the confused messages from our PM over the last 2-3 years of his pronouncements.

Here is the short version from December 2015: 33 pages in response to the series of one line questions.
http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcitlite.pdf
Who knew about the UNECE?

More to come on this subject.
No fear, minimum uncertainty, no doubt, just well constructed dialogue.
And, the leadership that I mentioned much earlier in this thread.

Deconstructing the media
 

"Britain is too poor, too weak and too stupid OR"


https://independentbritain.wordpress...anda-part-two/
A fine expose of the media campaign to do …............................ ...............well, what exactly?
What do the printed media, in their dotage while dying off, think they are achieving?