Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Belgium beating Spain and Portugal?
  • iDave
    Free Member

    Who will be next? Anyone wanna buy a currency? 😯

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Thought you meant their fitba team – they have a superb core of young players at the moment. Fellaini, Defour, Witsel in the midfield are all class players and 21/22 years old. Their striker Romelu Lukaku, at 17 (!), is probably one of the hottest prospects in world football at the moment. That being said, they’ve lost a few qualifiers for the Euros so they’ve still got a way to go.

    loddrik
    Free Member

    I reckon people are turning away from beer and chocolate and are realising that cyclocross is shite. And let’s be honest, unless JCVD puts his hand in his pocket, what else do they have…..

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    Captain_Crash
    Free Member

    Anyone wanna buy a currency

    Haven’t read the link yet. but thats exactly the problem.
    The bond markets have sniffed blood and a way to make even more money, so they have the day-glow crayons out and are drawing huge question marks on the map of Europe.

    This is what comes when you hand a currency over to countries that couldn’t do much with their previoius ones, and tell them that its backed up by the economic power house that is Germany.

    The Germans are spitting feathers over this one, as all bail outs lead back to them. They are the only bunch powering their way out of the great reccession.

    Where as the FTSE recently reached the April peak, then pulled back, the DAX has powered on.

    Lately there have been some threads on STW knocking Thatcher.
    Perhaps they don’t realize that She tried to keep us out of the Euro, then Gordon picked up from where she left off, and if Gordon got one thing right, just one, its was that he kept us out of the Euro.

    I always said it wouldn’t work, I may have been right about that, although I always suspected it would have been Italy that would have mashed it up.

    I would never have guessed just how stupid Greece and others were with their Euros.

    Total mess now.

    Angela is calling for the Bond markets to take the risk, not just the tax payer.
    Sounds good on the face of it, but ultimately, its a dead end as if you increase the risk for Pimco, they’ll just increase their margins, making it even more expensive for Govs to borrow.

    The banker always wins 🙁

    Hence the term, Bankster.

    binners
    Full Member

    So… Captain_Crash… what you’re basically saying is that the financial state of Europe and the Euro is like a microcosm of our own society?

    Ie: All being financed by the Hard Working and now resentful (equivelent of) Daily Mail readers, who grudgingly pay their taxes (Germany, and to a certain degree now…. us), who are generally frugal

    While the crazy over-generous Benefits culture has spawned a generation of feckless young upstarts with no respect, who are busy milking the system for all its worth (Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, Greece) while contributing nothing

    Cheers. I’d never really thought of it like that

    Captain_Crash
    Free Member

    Binners.

    No, I wasn’t passing judgment on our society, etc, etc.

    The Euro, has been handed/rolled out to several countries who like to do different things with their money.

    Like for example, running two sets of account (unfecking believeable that a state would do that), and give everyone jobs working for the state, that they don’t actually do, or for which they receive mahoosive pensions 😯

    Or, Allow loads of lending to fund massive private property buidling projects, which end up being bulldozed into the ground when no one can buy them, due the need to introduce osterity measures.

    And on and on it goes.

    Basically, the Euro hasn’t worked because there is no federal fiscal policy. The ECB kept interest rates low, and some countries then spent like mad, while others were more prudent.

    Its a mess now, and those in the know and on the media, are now numbering the remaining days of the Euro. So to speak.

    The Euro probably will not work or even survive, unless their is pan-european fiscal policy set by one body.
    This will probably require full federalization of the EU. And basically, I don’t think thats going to happen.

    The way that the USA evolved into what it is today, I think, was/is a one off. I can’t see Europe being able to emulate it, effectively.

    You need a political sweep-up, clear out all the state parliments and replace with one Euro parliment. Well, we have part of that already, but there are still 23-odd chancellors (one in each state) setting national fiscal policy, which in turn is usually subverted to serve the politcal will of the incumbent political party of a particular member state.

    The only reason Greece, Ireland and probably the others can still borrow money when their current arrangements expire, is because the bond markets can see, for now at least, that Germany will back up the rescue fund, along with France and the UK.
    But, should anyone of those three put their hands up and say.
    “we aint giving anymore bail-out cash over”, then it all falls over in my opinion.

    So question is, will Germany and the UK just keep on tipping into the rescue fund to bail out Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium ?. Handing German and UK tax payers the bill ??.

    Tough call.

    EDIT: And all the while, the banksters are demanding high returns on bonds and lower bond prices, really putting the squeeze on Europe.

    Rio
    Full Member

    I reckon people are turning away from beer and chocolate

    I think most of the chocolate companies are owned by Turks or Americans now, and InBev has most of the breweries. That just leaves the cyclocross to support the economy. 🙂

    binners
    Full Member

    Its certainly interesting Captain. What I can’t believe is that ourselves and Germany – in fact anyone else in Europe – were prepared to allow Ireland the bailout without telling them in no uncertain terms that they could forget their 12% corporation Tax rate.

    As, lets be honest, this amounts to a begger-my-neighbour approach which, while undercutting all other European countries, appears suicidal given their need to raise revenue.

    They said it wasn’t up for negotiation. I’d say ‘beggers can’t be choosers’

    Captain_Crash
    Free Member

    Binners.

    Exactly. You have hit the nail on the head. All these countries are sending out the SOS, but as soon as Germany says.
    “OK, we’ll back-you-up when you go to the bond markets, but then we want you to behave as we do, or as we say

    Then thats when the friction sets in cos no one wants to be told how to run their country, especially if it isn’t aligned to their poilitical persuation.

    So you have economic mad member states getting into trouble with the banksters, then crying into their beer and asking for help, then giving the two fingered salute when you try to impose fiscal lending conditions to avoid it happening again.

    This is why, imo, unless there is a federal ECB controlling the macro fiscal policy of all “Europe”, then this aint gonna work.

    Mrs T saw this way back in the 80s and wanted nothing to do with it.
    Her actions and words from the time, appear spookily prophetic now, and make you wonder/appreciate just how savy she may have been.

    Gordon kept us out of the Euro for different reasons, but at the moment, I’m glad he did. Yeah, sure, we’re still having to take the pain of the bail-out. We’re borrowing money to lend to Ireland.
    But beacuse we kept the Pound, we’re able to set our own house in order.

    Look back to the 80s and 90s, and you’ll see alot of the political big names of today, slagging off the then Euro sceptics for keeping us out of the Euro.
    Now they’re probably glad that we’re not.

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