The Farce Goes On

[aeolium]

What I was trying to suggest is that in a full currency union such as exists in the UK and USA no poor region or state could effectively be allowed to go bankrupt - it would be bailed out. Yet the eurozone is not set up like that - transfers of funds to bail out poor states are not supposed to be permitted, hence the tortuous procedures involving the IMF needed to tide the indebted countries over each successive crisis (with the rich countries grumbling bitterly about each tranche of aid and imposing harsh measures on the recipients).

[teamsaint]

the criteria for membership of the Euro stipulated controls on inflation, a fixed exchange rate (obviously) and various other economic indicators that had to be met.

Very basic economics suggests that if you control certain criteria, then as economies move at varying speeds, something else must give.
That something else is basically unemployment.In the poorer countries. As we have seen, a very big price to pay.

Incidentally, why could we not run the euro as a shadow currency...for everyday use?

[MrGongGong]

Indeed aeolium
but that doesn't really explain the almost frenzied opposition to the simple idea of sharing a currency (not necessarily physical either !) amongst people with whom one does business. There was a nominal currency that the EU used before the Euro but i've forgotten what it was called ? I was involved in a pan European music project funded by the EU that had to have it's budgets all translated into this , which was (for the administrators) a total nightmare as everything was constantly moving about.

[aeolium]

There was a nominal currency that the EU used before the Euro but i've forgotten what it was called ?

ecu, I think - or was it cowries?

The thing would work if they had a fiscal union with tax and spending centrally controlled, and an understanding that richer countries would need to make periodic transfers to poorer countries (for which they would demand central oversight of national budgets). But think of the rancour and the mud-slinging that would be stirred up - sovereignty is the sticking point.

[scottycelt]

What I was trying to suggest is that in a full currency union such as exists in the UK and USA no poor region or state could effectively be allowed to go bankrupt - it would be bailed out. Yet the eurozone is not set up like that - transfers of funds to bail out poor states are not supposed to be permitted, hence the tortuous procedures involving the IMF needed to tide the indebted countries over each successive crisis (with the rich countries grumbling bitterly about each tranche of aid and imposing harsh measures on the recipients).

Well yes, of course, unless the Eurozone consists of states similar economically it can only work with a fiscal union. This was the big mistake made ... that you could just accept that counties like Greece, Portugal and Spain were on a similar par to the northern Euro countries and allow them to join the then very successful club without some sort of central fiscal control.

The problem is not the Euro, it is simply that it is currently still only half-baked.

That's why some of us want it to be properly cooked ... ideally by way of a fully Federal Europe!

PS ... I see you got in first about fiscal union!!!

[MrGongGong]

sovereignty is the sticking point.

Sorry to return to this

but IS it really ?

after all we have privatised our public space (you try walking across Trafalgar square with a microphone in a windshield and headphones on and see how quickly you get pounced on for "illegally recording" on private land)
and given vast sums to unelected banks to spend on bonuses instead of lending to businesses
i'm not sure that we have a great amount of "sovereignty" anyway anymore as the world is run by big concerns that have little regard for any of that
or is it (as I suspect) some kind of knee jerk reaction to having the same coins as the Germans ? (et al)

[aeolium]

but IS it really ?

Yes, I think it is. It's true as you say that big corporate interests have more power than small sovereign nations but that does not mean that sovereignty does not matter to the people that live there; they are reluctant to relinquish at least the illusion of influence and accountability of domestically elected governments. If all tax and spending decisions were controlled by some federal authority in Europe people would feel even more powerless than they do now to influence policy. You can see by the huge regular demonstrations in Greece that the perception of having policy effectively dictated to the national government by the 'troika' goes down like a lead balloon, with a lot of Nazi placards and masks (not to mention real neo-Nazis patrolling the streets beating up migrants). The removal of control over their economic affairs particularly from smaller and poorer countries so that economic policy is dictated by the bigger richer ones - as we see happening at present - cannot but lead to a resurgence of nationalism and extremism. There is also the problem that the biggest and most powerful country, Germany, would for obvious reasons be reluctant to be seen to be dictating policy to countries which it had occupied in the 1940s. I think it's often forgotten by those making policy in Europe how powerful historical memory is in influencing people's perceptions of Europe vis-a-vis their own nation. If like many Greeks you had family members for whom the German occupation was a vivid memory then you might think twice about surrendering more power to a European authority in which Germany appears to have the strongest influence.

[MrGongGong]

Indeed
but as someone who has completely lost any faith I had in the ability of us to have any influence whatsoever
it matters little in the grand scheme of things
the illusion of influence is simply that .................. an illusion

[teamsaint]

Thinking on the hoof here...and I have very deep reservations about the EU project....however I agree with MrGG that non governmental powers like the banks are running everything.As small individual nations there is unlikely to be much we can do to change this situation, not least since in the UK for instance, all the major parties do whatever big money wants them to.
So perhaps, just perhaps, thing getting steadily worse in the EU might be the catalyst for some concerted international effort to break the power of the banks/arms dealer/power companies/drugs companies and other assorted tax avoiders.
Get someone with the will to fight these interests from the centre of Europe and good change might come.
But I'm not holding my breath, because institutions always turn those who participate into insiders.

[ahinton]

Thinking on the hoof here...and I have very deep reservations about the EU project....however I agree with MrGG that non governmental powers like the banks are running everything.As small individual nations there is unlikely to be much we can do to change this situation, not least since in the UK for instance, all the major parties do whatever big money wants them to.
So perhaps, just perhaps, thing getting steadily worse in the EU might be the catalyst for some concerted international effort to break the power of the banks/arms dealer/power companies/drugs companies and other assorted tax avoiders.
Get someone with the will to fight these interests from the centre of Europe and good change might come.
But I'm not holding my breath, because institutions always turn those who participate into insiders.

They only way of which I am aware in which any kind of dent can effectively be put into those large organisations, be they tax avoiders or not, is to try lessen the extent of dependency upon them - and that is a far from simple task. Let's take the four examples that you cite here. The stranglehold of power supply companies can be reduced by greater numbers of individuals and businesses trying to make as much of their own energy as they can. That of drugs companies is far harder to deal with because they supply governments' public health services as well as private organisations and individuals and there are no obvious alternatives to what they supply. Dependency upon banks is also difficult to avoid as long as we continue to trade and transact in currencies. As to arms dealers, the most prominent and large-scale of these are not individuals or corporations but governments, so the only way to deal with that is for people in as many countries as possible to vote against as much of that as possible.

[aeolium]

Another disturbing report here on just how bad things are getting in Greece.

[teamsaint]

Thanks for the link Aeolium.

Scary. Of course, the question about who really benefits from all of this. Real people are having their assets stripped, their hard won rights ripped up, and as ever, the people are being set against each other, in the interests of the avaricious few.
Who kmows, perhaps the EU will be the vehicle for a stop to be put to this devastation. but it won't be under the current leaders I guess.

[Serial_Apologist]

Another disturbing report here on just how bad things are getting in Greece.

Once socialism is ruled out of any agenda by the commentariat, this will be what you get - as the late Prof Hobsbawm rightly (in this connection) predicted in what was politically a grievously slanted radio discussion I made a point of taping for posterity, about 20 years ago, titled, "What's the Big Idea? End of the Socialist Dream".

[teamsaint]

Once socialism is ruled out of any agenda by the commentariat, this will be what you get - as the late Prof Hobsbawm rightly (in this connection) predicted in what was politically a grievously slanted radio discussion I made a point of taping for posterity, about 20 years ago, titled, "What's the Big Idea? End of the Socialist Dream".

excellent point.
Did you get to the Demo OK, S_A? How did it go?

[Serial_Apologist]

excellent point.
Did you get to the Demo OK, S_A? How did it go?

Didn't see any reports but it was well attended - people still swarming into the park as I was leaving the rally after 2 exhausted hours. Processing very slowly would of course have made it easier for the police had there been any trouble. At the same time whistles and vuvuzelas, now ubiquitous, come across as childish and demeaning of any dignity attendant on such occasions, one can't help feeling, (not to mention fatal for one's tinnitus!), and the podium rhetoric was cliched to the point of one wondering, what is the point? One has to admire the SWP their efficient organisation, whatever one thinks of their politics - stalls, pavilions selling literature, their placards the most prominent. The most amusing moments (for me): placard reading "We're fighting for a better Barnet" carried by two very bald men, and a group of Muslim women demonstrators with cameras, enthralled at the Scottish pipe band in full uniform, just one part of the Ivesian clash of rhythms and sonorities.