Whither the euro?

[mockney piers]

I think sometimes when H is in full flow he's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

[DaveR]

"You've allowed your hatred of foreigners to overwhelm your good sense"

There you go again. I've lived in Italy, speak Italian, have lots of Italian friends, visit regularly, and (it appears) have a rather more developed understanding of the Italian economic situation than you do. If you don't believe me, look at what the ECB ("strongest bank in the world" says H) thinks:

ECB letter to Italy

"I think you'll find that the problem was created by excessive consumer credit, bad loans, devaluation in mortage securities, under capitalisation, a liquidity crunch, and a recession that pushed borderline economies into a situtation where profiteering money markets imposed cavalier interest rates that exceeded their ability to repay."

This is similarly disingenuous. These issues have affected all European economies to a greater or lesser extent (and the UK greater than many) but they exposed rather than created sovereign debt problems. Any you criticise 'profiteering' when finally the markets are actually pricing risk accurately?

What's happened to you, H? These days you're like some swivel-eyed ranting loony, dismissing all dissent with spit-flecked prose and personal attacks. Get a grip. There is a euro crisis. There is a quite wide range of valid and sensible opinion as to what might and should be done. Your opinion may well be valid and sensible but at the moment it's obscured by nonsense.

[Huguenot]

Personal attacks? I think it was you called me a fanatic?

Just another one of those who can dish it out, but doesn't like it when it bounces back? ;-)

Put a chemist in front of a problem, he thinks it's all about chemistry, an economist thinks it's all about economics, a xenophobenthinks it's all aboutnforeginers and it seems a resident of Italy thinks it's all about Italy.

Since you haven't actually disagreed with my points DaveR, rather you've said I'm not making enough of them, it seems the main thrust of your argument is that I'm not getting hysterical enough?

This is a challenge there is no doubt, but it's only a crisis to jounalists and the self-indulgent.

A good place to start would be for everyone to stop running around like headless chickens waving bits of paper that announce the end of the world.

[mockney piers]

I'm not quite where you're getting this DaveR xenophobe thing Hugeunot.

He doesn't exactly have posting previous for that.

If memory serves me well he's mostly pedantically analytical with an interpretative leaning towards conservative (with a small c), sort of a mirror image of my socialist (with a small s) interpretative leaning of analytical pedantry.

[Huguenot]

I didn't think he particularly was, I was just annoyed at being called a fanatic and being held responsible for a 'crisis' that had its roots in cheap credit and deregulation rather than international detente and social inclusivity.

[silverfox]

So are you saying the EU and the Euro are the victims of the excess that led to the crash in 2008 (the Anglo Saxon problem as it was called at the time) rather than the political hubris of ambitious pan european politicians and the inherent flaws and contradictions of the EU/Euro?

[DaveR]

So H calls anybody who disagrees with him a xenophobe then gets 'annoyed' when someone calls him a fanatic. Get used to it. You are, literally, the only person left in the world who thinks the euro project was a noble crusade which would be all fine and dandy, but for one or two minor difficulties and 'profiteering' by money markets. Or maybe you and Ed Miliband (you know, the guy who reckons businesses are either producers or predators)

BTW, silverfox, you're not helping any. You don't have to meet simplistic nonsense with more of the same.

[silverfox]

What have I said that you disagree with or find simplistic DaveR?

[Huguenot]

You got it the wrong way round DaveR, again.

You called me a fanatic first, an observation I found to be rooted in xenophobia - do you get it? You started throwing the abuse first.

Incidentally - I notice that Italy's debt has been downgraded by Moody's due to 'market sentiment'. In other words it's been downgraded because everybody talked it down.

As a result of that their cost of borrowing has gone up, making it more difficult to make their payments. I have little doubt that the same institutions that have put their cost of borrowing up are now betting against them recovering - making it an incentive to continue to talk the market down, raise the rates and eventially trash Italy.

Do you get it DaveR? You're on their side.

This is what the EB were worried about with Greece - not the Greece economy, but that once the finance companies have rolled Greece, that they'll be on to the next one. Financiers make money faster by fuelling national crashes and misery than they do through incremental small percentage point growth.

We need to stop financial organisations winning these bets - we need to make them pay for trying to trash Europe.

[Huguenot]

Let's put it another way, to remove all doubt about my views.

We create a system where there is no punishment for rape, principally because those who might commit the crime promise that they won't do it.

Then a banker walks into a bookies and asks what the odds are on Joe Bloggs getting raped tomorrow - 20:1 says the bookie, as it's never happened before. Great, says the banker, and puts down $1m. The banker's mates realise something is up, and they all put down $1m too.

The bookie slashes the odds, to protect his business, so everyone says that Joe Bloggs is more likely to get raped tomorrow, even though Joe Bloggs is no different between today and tomorrow. Joe Bloggs is suddenly forced to make promises to be especially careful (which onlookers say is 'proof' he's going to get raped).

This creates a massive incentive on all those people who have money on Joe Bloggs getting raped to make sure it happens.

Now Joe Blogg's mates rally round and say they're going to protect him.

In response the bankers (let's now be honest, and call them rapists) put down money on 5 people to get raped tomorrow. There, they say, see if you can protect all 5?

Your response to this, DaveR, is to say 'Drop your trousers Joe Bloggs, you deserve it and rapists should have freedom of expression'.

My response to this is to either cut off their cocks or shackle their legs. Either way, the rapists shouldn't benefit.

I certainly don't blame Joe Bloggs for staying out late, or blame our society for allowing people to walk down dark alleys.

[Marmora Man]

international detente and social inclusivity.

The Euro may have been created in the noble cause you describe. However, whatever the intention the fac is that the Euro is struggling and the struggle is, at least in part, because politicians put the cart before the horse. Political detente, social inclusivity and fiscal union are necessary pre-conditions for the creation of a single currency not the inevitable outcome of a single currency.

BTW - the first use of the word xenophobe was in post 4 on 1 Oct by Hugenot - whose latest contrived and fatuous simile is possibly the most weird contribution to this debate and way OTT even for him.

[Huguenot]

Really? I was mulling it over today and thinking how surprisingly well it works at many levels.

[DaveR]

We need a new version of Godwin's Law about the inevitability in almost any thread of some cretin equating bankers with criminals

H, I'm not going to descend to your level and call you a 'liar', I'm going to remain pedantically analytical and say that you are simply wrong. The markets are currently pricing Euro zone sovereign debt realistically because the truth is out, the inherent risks in the euro project are now being realised, and governments are dithering.

[Jeremy]

What a bizarre rant, Huguenot!

Italy has a realistic rating, it would be inaccurate to suggest that they are just as able to repay their debts as Germany or France. Remember - plenty of people having been citing optimistic ratings as a contributing factor towards the credit crunch in the first place.

[Huguenot]

You're joking right??

Here's the latest...

"Moody's has downgraded the credit rating of 12 UK financial firms including Lloyds TSB, RBS, Nationwide and Santander UK.

"The ratings agency said it now believed the government was less likely to support firms that got into trouble."

Lloyds and RBS?

You think UK Plc is ever going to let those two go?

There is no difference in the threat to those two banks today compared with yesterday. Those two should be UK rated.

All they've done by changing the rating is to rape them in interest.

This is a fucking joke.

If you want to see that as 'sensible', pull your skirt down.

[Huguenot]

These cunts are raping society, and we've got their number.

Roll on ECB and take this joke out of the hands of short termers. Society should be in the hands of elected representatives, not dickwads with a C at O level.

[Senor Chevalier]

You're right H. We should all hold hands and pretend it is all OK. Anyone who says, "hang on is it right that there is a system of accumulating debt upon debt that may never be repaid?" should either be burnt at stake or drowned. If we all collude in collective delusion then we can get the asset bubbles going again. Start a religeon, extend the boom, and to hell with the bigger bust that will surely follow in due course.

Darn those pesky dickwads.

[Jeremy]

Well when the government actually come out and say that they are less likely to bail out banks in the future... and start taking steps to prevent the need to do so (i.e. all this talk of breaking up the big banks)... a downgrade in rating is understandable.

I do take your point about RBS and Lloyds though, in practise we would have no choice but to continue to prop them up.

[DaveR]

H, I'm getting a bit concerned about the sheer number of rape-based metaphors in your posts. If there wasn't enough evidence already that you could do with a lie down and a cold compress, that should tip the balance.

[silverfox]

Slovakia says no.

Okay, partly a vote of no confidence in its own government.

But more importantly Slovakia is asking itself the same question as Germany is asking - why should we bailout other miscreants, and we're one of the poorest members. And that's not why we signed up.

Some people on this forum like to think nationalism is dead, an out of date idea from the late 19th early 20th century. Really? Watch and wait.

Edited for rogue apostrophe

[Huguenot]

I'm not saying it's dead silverfox, I'm saying it's an outdated idea celebrated by geriatrics clinging on to a sense of identity generated by thugs better suited to slapping your forehead whilst they shag your wife.

You choose.

Slovakia may moan - bit since they're a hundredfold beneficiary of Euro largesse, I suspect they're doing it for small minded limping village autocrats rather than with any intent.

For you to wave it like a flag of support (really silverfox? foreigners?) speakers more to your naivety rather than your insight.

I note, rather resignedly, that as predicted Dexia is rescued and all is well in the world - apart from tedious bullshitters claiming it's the end of everything.

I have little doubt it will continue to be the same thing for the next x years. Move along Madam, nothing to see here.

[silverfox]

Nelson putting the telescope to his eye-patch?

[Huguenot]

I genuinely don't think so.

I think the UK is being whipped into a hysteria over these issues, but realistically the World Plc. doesn't want to see a meltdown, Europe doesn't want to see a meltdown and the UK doesn't want to see a meltdown.

After the last crisis banks no longer work in ivory towers.

The bigotry of Slovakian pensioners (currently living off the tax revenues of German children) is unlikely to be an overriding concern.

Thinking of campaigning to have the vote taken away from silver surfers in favour of 14 year olds. Suspect it would go a long way to righting the ills of the world.

[ibilly99]

DaveR Wrote:

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

> We need a new version of Godwin's Law about the

> inevitability in almost any thread of some cretin

> equating bankers with criminals

>

> H, I'm not going to descend to your level and call

> you a 'liar', I'm going to remain pedantically

> analytical and say that you are simply wrong. The

> markets are currently pricing Euro zone sovereign

> debt realistically because the truth is out, the

> inherent risks in the euro project are now being

> realised, and governments are dithering.

Godwin's Law Invoked - I am that cretin ..

http://www.thestreetofschemes.com/wp-content/uploads/tuckerbanksters.jpg

[Huguenot]

I don't think bankers are criminal, I think certain activities should be criminalised. I've spent plenty of effort defending certain banking activities.

I don't think people are criminal because they have the capacity to enact crimes, only if they do.

In particular from a financial perspective those activities such as betting on failure, where the speculator has the means to enforce the failure and perceives no material loss as a consequence of the failure taking place.

It is the responsibility of the government to legislate, and their unwillingness to do so makes them accessories.