Euro crisis – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

Euro crisis: “These are empty, senseless phrases, an abuse of language”

Pete Baker on June 12, 2012, 12:32 pm

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In the Irish Times, Paddy Woodworth notes an all-too-familiar tale of political chutzpah in Europe [Nevermind closer to home! – Ed]. This time it’s the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, and his spin on that ‘magic bullet’. From the Irish Times report The total reversal of his oft-stated conviction that no EU money was needed by the Spanish banks became the vindication of his strategic abilities. Flying in the face of well-documented alternative accounts of events, he insisted that it was …

Euro crisis: “A fiat currency backed by heterogeneous sovereigns is irremediably fragile…”

Pete Baker on June 6, 2012, 10:05 pm

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The Financial Times’ chief economics commentator Martin Wolf was at the Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly this year too. And on his return, as spotted by the Guardian’s eurozone crisis live-blog today, he has had this to say. How much pain can the countries under stress endure? Nobody knows. What would happen if a country left the eurozone? Nobody knows. Might even Germany consider exit? Nobody knows. What is the long-run strategy for exit from the crises? Nobody knows. Given such uncertainty, panic is, …

Euro crisis: “Europe’s common currency is its formative element.”

Pete Baker on June 4, 2012, 5:32 pm

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The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, has a plan. Or, at least, a timetable. Herman Van Rompuy told a news conference in St Petersburg, Russia that, by the next summit of EU leaders at the end of June, he and three other EU officials would present “the main building blocks for this deepened economic and monetary union” and “a working method to achieve this objective”. “In those building blocks, banking integration is an important chapter… I will deal at …

Bilderberg 2012: “Like a corporate cross between Santa Claus and a big friendly squid.”

Pete Baker on June 1, 2012, 9:44 pm

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It’s just as well that Ireland said ‘Yes’ to the Fiscal Treaty. I can only imagine the embarrassed silences Irish Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, would have experienced this weekend if the result had gone the other way. Where is Michael? He’s in the US. Virginia, since you ask. In Chantilly. At the 60th annual Bilderberg conference… It’s quite a list of attendees. Some names you might recognise include Lord [Peter] Mandelson and US Senator John Kerry, as well as the chairmen …

Spoilt Vote of the Day

Pete Baker on June 1, 2012, 2:29 pm

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As spotted by the Guardian Eurozone crisis live blog. John McGuirk @john_mcguirk Spoilt vote of the day. #eureftwitpic.com/9rjkab Let’s see if the embed works. Pete Baker

Bilderberg 2012: “Are you here for the brunch?”

Pete Baker on May 30, 2012, 6:01 pm

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The Guardian’s Charlie Skelton is in Chantilly, Virginia, ahead of the, whisper it, annual Bilderberg conference – “a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced”. As he says at the Big G’s US News blog Everything’s set. The hotel is being primped and hoovered, the security is arriving, the press is nowhere to be seen, and I just had a really boring crab salad. It’s shaping up to be a vintage Bilderberg. …

It is possible to put a precise figure in euro of the effects the so-called “austerity treaty”. Zero.

Mick Fealty on May 29, 2012, 11:52 am

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The problem with any referendum is the need both sides always feel to exaggerate the importance of whatever binary is involved. In the case of the Fiscal Compact it is clear that most of the decisions have already been taken both in principle and practice by democratically elected governments and the measure is nowhere near a solution to the ongoing problem(s): …one of the striking features of the referendum campaign has been the strenuous efforts made by the No side …

Eurovision 2012: “Good luck on your journey, Azerbaijan!”

Pete Baker on May 27, 2012, 11:29 pm

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Mark Lawson on the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Azerbaijan – “the most politicised contest yet.” [Apart from the one in 1974? – Ed] Indeed. Back to Mark Lawson. Tensions between several of the core participants had been raised by the possible exit of Greece from the stricken eurozone and, increasing the volume of disharmony to Jedward levels, BBC news and current affairs programmes have run several reports questioning the suitability of the host nation because of Azerbaijan’s record of …

Fiscal Treaty Referendum: “the outcome is still in the hands of undecided voters”

Pete Baker on May 27, 2012, 12:36 pm

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Worth noting the result of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll of voting intentions in Ireland’s European fiscal treaty referendum on Thursday. From the Irish Times report Asked how they were likely to vote on the treaty, 39 per cent of voters said Yes, 30 per cent said No, 22 per cent said they did not know, and 9 per cent said they would not be voting. When the 31 per cent of undecided and non-voters are excluded, support for the Yes side …

Krugman: Prospect of Euro collapse might concentrate their minds…

Mick Fealty on May 26, 2012, 8:15 am

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Perhaps this is what the No campaign is hoping for? Krugman interviewed in the FT: “No. I don’t think they can save Greece but they can still save the rest if they’re willing to offer open-ended financing and macroeconomic expansion.” But this would mean persuading the Germans to change their philosophy of economic life. “Well, the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind; the prospect of a collapse of the euro might concentrate their minds.” Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of …

Euro crisis: “Rome wasn’t built in a day and it didn’t fall in a day either…”

Pete Baker on May 25, 2012, 3:21 pm

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The eurozone crisis rumbles on, its democratic deficit intact, and Ireland’s Fiscal Treaty referendum approaches. Time, then, for historian Michael Wood to go looking for some historical references… The British historian Gildas (c 500-570) in his diatribe against contemporary rulers in the early 500s, looking back over the story of the Fall of Roman Britain, lists the military failures, but behind them he speaks bitterly of a loss of nerve and direction, a failure of “group feeling”. Gildas talks about …

#Euref: Underlying questions too big for a simple Yes or a No. What about a ‘Not Yes’?

Mick Fealty on May 25, 2012, 12:10 pm

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Last night’s avalanche of advocacy for the NO campaign on Vincent Browne was remarkable. Watch it though, especially for Sigrun Davidsdottir‘s remarks on why Ireland is not Iceland that seemed not to come to the notice of our eponymous host. Hint: neither includes the fact that Ireland is hemmed in by the EU, nor that Iceland is blessed with endless quantities of valuable natural resources. So first, try this fascinating little vignette on P.ie on why you might question one …

Euro crisis: “With that we buried the Maastricht Treaty, the legal basis for currency union”

Pete Baker on May 22, 2012, 3:32 pm

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A couple of interesting reports in the Irish Times with relevance to the ongoing euro crisis. First, from Derek Scally in Berlin …Mr Asmussen, a member of the ECB governing council, said growth measures – agreed without reopening the fiscal treaty – could help drive European integration. “The benefits of a currency union are so outstanding that they should be stabilised by deepening, which means a fiscal union and banking union as well as a democratic legitimised political union,” said …

#EUREF: Real political price of the Treaty is “shift from community to union”…

Mick Fealty on May 21, 2012, 4:21 pm

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Very good piece in the Irish Times today by John O’Brennan of NUI Maynooth, on the scale and dimensions of the democratic deficit that attaches to the Fiscal Compact… In effect he argues that it will dramatically sideline European Commission where smaller countries like Ireland can at least broker some national influence on the EU: It is important to point out that the fiscal treaty represents a dramatically significant break with the existing EU governance architecture. Chancellor Merkel, in particular, …

Euro crisis: “the quadriga is a perfect symbol of how confused and contested that project has become”

Pete Baker on May 20, 2012, 10:11 pm

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Tim Garton Ash asked, “Who wishes to address the assembly?“. Will Self has a point of view on the euro crisis and the European Project’s democratic deficit. You can listen to his Radio 4 Point of View here. From the accompanying BBC Magazine article That these same politicians were afflicted by a strange sort of doublethink – both aspiring towards unity, and desperate for their own nationalistic electorates to preserve the substance of their sovereignties – was and is the …

Euro crisis: When “earth’s proud empires pass away”…

Mick Fealty on May 19, 2012, 8:26 am

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Andrew Roberts in the FT with a little touch of cold realism on the Euro crisis. He also picks out the underlying political and economic problem here, and advises the EU to prepare for a big bang he argues springs from a federalist overreach of the original Treaty of Rome that never fitted such an enlarged area: …here we are in the endgame, and it is certainly not all right. Greece has now lost almost a quarter of its gross …

Euro crisis: “Tis agoreuein bouletai?”

Pete Baker on May 17, 2012, 8:02 pm

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At the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Tim Garton Ash is still a believer in the European Project but, probably, not an optimistic one. As well as mentioning a familiar quote from Luxembourg’s Prime Minister he makes an important point, as Greece faces a democratic choice, again, that applies to the wider euro crisis. From the Comment is Free article Greece’s untold, or only half-told, home truth is that its only alternatives now are bad, worse or worst. Worst is clearly an unplanned, chaotic exit from the …

Not everything you hear about Greece is true…

Mick Fealty on May 17, 2012, 9:52 am

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Richard Parker from Harvard’s Kennedy School shoots a few urban myths on Greek profligacy… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

#EUREF: Souveraineté ou survie du déluge?

Mick Fealty on May 17, 2012, 8:34 am

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FitzJamesHorse was in Dublin yesterday. His description of the way the yes camp (by his lights, ‘the establishment’) for Referendum on the Fiscal Compact as a Hobson’s Choice”: The legacy for European democracies is that their politcians have actually managed to restrict REAL CHOICE. In Ireland for example, no mainstream political party has been articulating the “No” case…it has fallen to Sinn Féin …..still somewhere between the margins and the mainstream……to rail against the notion of Austerity and loss of …

Greece: “good luck for the next restructuring…”

Pete Baker on May 15, 2012, 3:33 pm

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As the euro crisis rumbles on, confirmation, if any were needed, that Greece is, indeed, heading back to the polls. You can follow further developments on the Guardian’s live-blog. Meanwhile, having cajoled the vast majority of their private sector creditors into taking part in a bond swap deal in March, the Greek government [who? – Ed] outgoing prime minister technocrat-in-chief, Lucas Papademos, has opted to pay up, on a May 15 due bond, to those who held out at the time. …