EU discussion

[scottycelt]

Scotty, why have you bothered quoting me?I said i might be happy with a European parliament under the right conditions.

The banks ARE running Europe.The ECB is spending literally hundreds of billions of Euros to keep the banks capitalised so they can profit from buying government bonds at high prices, when the ECB could do it cheaply on our behalf. it is a scandal
You don't have to be on the left to think that. I don't view myself as being on the left.(Or the Right, come to that).

Team, is this mister or missus speaking ... ?

I'm not getting at anyone in particular, and certainly not you ... I just vehemently disagree with your comments that the EU is 'run by the banks' anymore than the US or Communist China!

[french frank]

FF mentioned that the broad left might have problems with the power on the banks, national and international.

I think this power is core to a lot of peoples problems with the EU.
UK sovereignty seems compromised by the banks , which " had " to be saved at any price , apparently.
The EU (and the Eurozone in particular) seems to be in the grip of the banks, and especially the unbelievable behaviour of the ECB, and the imposition of compliant governments from the centre.

Well, the left is anti-capital permanently. The rest seemed fine with the banks as long everything was going well. But it's when they go wrong that the public realises the critical importance of the banking system to the western economies.

When you say, 'What I don't trust is the underlying structure that is allowing big money to run the show, our show', do you mean the underlying structure that is capitalism?

[aeolium]

but it does strike me that the argument for the European Union is in the last resort an argument for the rational and not the gut .... that a slower more inclusive deliberative process in which argumewnt is expressed in civil and non megaphonic debate is the best option and impossible without a full European context to our politics ....

There are though surely different visions for what such a European politics might look like, and they are not by any means identical with the vision that has been presented by successive European politicians, including the current set. The only one advanced by those politicians hitherto has been an ever closer union, encompassing an increasingly large structure, with monetary union progressing eventually to political union. Even the most Europhile of observers looking at the current situation can hardly claim that that vision has been an unqualified success so far.

My own position has varied from support for the EU (or EEC/EC as it then was) - I voted in favour in 1975 - with disenchantment setting in during the 1990s, the key signal for change being the imo disastrous Maastricht treaty. This treaty seemed to me to enshrine a particular political and economic philosophy - monetarism - within the European constitution, binding member countries to follow that philosophy in a way that had not happened before. Maastricht bound countries on a path to monetary union, with policies that severely constrained their freedom to operate. At the same time the provisions within EU competition law that related to state support made virtually impossible future nationalisations (except in temporary rescue situations such as RBS), making privatisation, or its bastard offshoot, the public-private partnership the only viable policy.

Monetary union, implemented without fiscal union, has been a total disaster, encouraging excessive credit spending by the weaker Eurozone countries to the (temporary) advantage of the stronger ones. It is certainly going to result in serious long-term economic misery for those poorer nations, in effect undoing much of the good work which the EC had done for these countries in the 1970s and 1980s. Some European politicians, sticking obdurately to their original vision, continue to argue for movement to a proper fiscal and political union, but surely this game is over. The really massive financial transfers required from richer to poorer countries would be politically unsellable, above all in Germany. And it would require a pooling of sovereignty on such a scale as to render national governments effectively disempowered. How many populations of member countries are really likely to vote for that?

I think the European vision that has dominated up to now has been an idealist one, a grand project of European unity which has ignored the messy fractious and diverse nature of European societies. At some point it would be a good idea to rein in the ambition, to have a much looser, less rigid structure in which co-operation is pursued in those areas where it is needed and where it is manageable, to aim much lower but to achieve what is aimed.

[teamsaint]

Well, the left is anti-capital permanently. The rest seemed fine with the banks as long everything was going well. But it's when they go wrong that the public realises the critical importance of the banking system to the western economies.

When you say, 'What I don't trust is the underlying structure that is allowing big money to run the show, our show', do you mean the underlying structure that is capitalism?

The underlying structure that I was referring to was EU structures, rather than capitalism itself...though perhaps the one is really a reflection of the other. When we see the huge financial power of the ECB, and how it is being used, all the other EU "issues" suddenly seem rather trivial !
You are right that many people seemed happy with the banks when all was going well... but the last 4 years have been a real eye opener, I think. Nothing has been allowed to get in the way of saving them from the problems they created by their own greed.

I know I bang on about it, and I am certainly not an expert, but the role of the ECB in the bail outs, recapitalising of banks, and buying of government bonds in Italy and Spain is very telling, and something we should look at closely, and be trying to affect.