The Bruges Group’s latest report has exposed that the UK is facing a maximum potential loss of €149.2 billion on its financial commitments to the EU and the Euro. The report reveals the full extent of our obligations in respect of the present and future debts of EU institutions including: […]
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The EU: who governs whom?
Via France election: Germany rules out reworking EU’s ‘fiskalpakt’ – Telegraph. Mr Hollande has called for a shift in strategy toward more growth-oriented measures including more public spending. But Mr Seibert said Angela Merkel would not accept “deficit spending” to feed economic expansion, and believed in “growth through structural reforms” such […]
Read MorePhilipp Bagus explains how to overcome obstacles to Euro exit
Via Is there no escape from the euro? Intellectual honesty requires us to admit that there are important costs to exiting the euro, such as legal problems or the disentangling of the ECB. However, these costs can be mitigated by reforms or clever handling. Some of the alleged costs are […]
Read MoreWhy Is There a Euro Crisis?
From a magnificent article by Philipp Bagus – Why Is There a Euro Crisis? Today’s banks are not free-market institutions. They live in a symbiosis with governments that they are financing. The banks’ survival depends on privileges and government interventions. Such an intervention explains the unusual stock gains. On Wednesday night, an […]
Read MoreRemarks on the Eurozone crisis at the People’s Pledge Congress
At the People’s Pledge Congress today, I appeared on a panel discussing the political implications of the Eurozone crisis. I would have loved to focus on democracy, freedom and the rule of law but the cause of the crisis was the key theme. As ever, I blamed our statist, inflationary […]
Read MoreThe greatest gift to the Greeks might be to let them go it alone – Telegraph
There comes a moment in any decent tragedy when the penny finally drops. The light breaks. The protagonist suddenly realises what a chump he has been – that he has somehow managed accidentally to marry his mother and kill his father – and that all his assumptions about his life […]
Read MoreOn Vickers: it’s time to end the fantasy that we can consume without producing
I’ll blog shortly about the Independent Commission on Banking’s Interim Report but, as I see Spain is thought by some to be next for a bailout, this quote from Mises’ Causes of the Economic Crisis seems apt: In discussing the situation as it developed under the expansionist pressure on trade […]
Read MoreIt’s not our job to save the euro – Telegraph
Via It’s not our job to save the euro – Telegraph: The failure of the euro will signify the failure of the European ideal, and that is why eurocrats fight so hard for it. What should have been a club of free-trading nations over-reached itself, and sought to unite people with […]
Read MoreEmbrace Default! » The Cobden Centre
Via Embrace Default! » The Cobden Centre: There is a myth circulating, and I am not sure whether it has its origin in sloppy thinking or devious manipulation. It is this: sovereign default in the euro-area is the biggest threat to the euro’s survival. Really? Why? The euro is a form […]
Read MoreLegatum: Euro set to fall apart one by one, warn top economists
I just received a press release from Legatum as follows: Eurozone set to fall apart one by one, warn top economists The small, debt-ridden countries on the fringes of the European Union will soon start dropping out of the Euro, according to a major new report by two top economic […]
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