Its about time this is gone done nothing for any country in or involved with it.
Putting in different levels for different countries is rubbish.

Putting in cash for other countries to benefit ?
Would not say its the reason for global mess but everything about it is crap.

It’s not the Euro’s fault it’s the lack of common fiscal policy and the ECB. The idea is good the implementation has been wrong.

If you went back to the original 6 plus the Scandis it wouldn’t be so bad.

The Italians were the country who claimed 10 years or so ago that their GDP had overtaken the UK… provided you included the turnover of the Mafia…

I dont know enough about economics to really comment. I think the ones moaning about the Euro generally dont either, they just moan because “Our British money is going to foreigners n that”

they just moan because “Our British money is going to foreigners n that”

Well true when we are paying a lot of money on our car tax and the roads are total crap
and you find that Spain gained brand new roads in the Costa Blanca region courtesy of
British tax payers money then yes thats one example i suppose.

OK just what have we gained out of this so far apart from balling out Ireland and Greece ?
equals debt at the moment !

OK just what have we gained out of this so far apart from balling out Ireland and Greece ?

Britain didn’t bail out Ireland and Greece because of the euro, but because europe are britains biggest trading partners and watching them fail would be a massive blow to the british economy, in case you hadn’t notice britain isn’t in the euro.

The euro is currently a scapegoat for the failures of the gambles of the banking industry.

grantway – Member

OK just what have we gained out of this so far apart from balling out Ireland and Greece ?

The preservation of our strongest export markets.

Northwind – Member
grantway – Member
OK just what have we gained out of this so far apart from balling out Ireland and Greece ?

The preservation of our strongest export markets.

Seems wrong our Export stronger growth is due to non-EU markets.

Please Read

Seems wrong our Export stronger growth is due to non-EU markets.

Growth on a small percentage is still small in total exports.

in case you hadn’t notice britain isn’t in the euro.

Aware of that but we are half arssed in !

Growth on a small percentage is still small in total exports.

Think you’ll find that was an answer to the Strongest growth keep up !

go to south wales and look for the european grants.. it isn’t just one way traffic despite what the mail wants you to believe.

The euro is currently a scapegoat for the failures of the gambles of the banking industry.

I would say the two problems are seperate yet connected.
The banking crisis is a global crisis.
The problems of the Euro have been highlighted because of the global crisis.
There are four elements.
The Euro.
Common fiscal policy.
Individual countries.
The European central Bank (ECB)

The Euro is a common curreny that means I don’t pay to change currency when I travel from country to country which saves both individuals and companies alot of money, but…..
A French Euro is not the same as a Spanish Euro. A litre of diesel costs €1,50 in France yet only €1,25 in Spain. We have a common currency but not a common fiscal policy and therefore exchange rates, albeit hidden.
As the economies were growing the focus was on more is better, so more countries were included in the Eurozone with fewer checks, but the basic idea being similar to that of student loans, I’ll lend you money to improve yourself.
The Eurozone is made up of different countries with different cultures and different strengths/weaknesses and different backgrounds.
The ECB now has control of things like the interest rates removing decision making power from the individual governments which means that the best solution for increasing inflation in Germany is not necessarily the best solution for a struggling Spain or Greece.

This is ignoring certain elements like Greek book cooking and European Union greed.

grantway – Member

Seems wrong our Export stronger growth is due to non-EU markets.

Your own article proves how important europe is to us… Also, % increases are meaningless compared to the lower-percentage, higher value growth. Would you rather have 10% of a penny or 1% of a pound?

half arssed

much like your rant.

I do agree in part DS, but I am no longer sure how much power Government policy has over the economy in a real sense. In many ways monetary power has really been given away to the markets.

And if you think Greek book cooking is bad, wait untill China’s book cooking catches up with the world economy, it may happen next year or in twenty years, but it will screw us all in much bigger ways than we are currently seeing if governments don’t start taking back some of the control (and China isn’t in the euro either :wink:).

but I am no longer sure how much power Government policy has over the economy in a real sense

I doesn’t have any. The only way, in my limited experience, for Spain to become competitive is to devaule the currency, but it can’t…. But it can go for wholesale salary reductions, which I can’t imagine happening.
For the Euro to survive there needs to be a common fiscal policy or in its current state, fail.

50 american states have had the dollar for some time. Several are bankrupt. Should the dollar go too grantway?

Northwind – Member
grantway – Member
Seems wrong our Export stronger growth is due to non-EU markets.

Your own article proves how important europe is to us… Also, % increases are meaningless compared to the lower-percentage, higher value growth. Would you rather have 10% of a penny or 1% of a pound?

Yes all exports to Europe are great/good But exporting to Europe is NOT our strongest growth
to what you have said.

grantway – Member

Yes all exports to Europe are great/good But exporting to Europe is NOT our strongest growth

Greatest growth by percentage just isn’t relevant, you need to look at growth in terms of the existing size of exports. If we increase our exports to the Federated States of Micronesia (for example) tomorrow by 10000%, nobody would notice but if we add 1% to our exports to France it makes a huge difference.

Our single biggest export country is the US but if you take every non-European country in our top 10 exports and combine them, the total value is less than our exports to Germany and France alone.

I sometimes get paid in Euros, so do lots of others, what happens to us if you little Englanders and your casino bankers want to destroy our currency?

Do you not realise your opinion is manipulated by your media?

That they make money on the way down, so they can also make money on the way up?

That there is a global battle between the USD and Euro for the position of reserve currency, since the USD is so shaky and China has recently switched to holding more and more Euros?

When you read a financially based news story, does it not occur to you the PR company of a hedge fund or trading bank in currency has not had a hand in it?

It’s bullshit, they’ll sort it, they always do and the currency and market traders will make money as always..

Poor countries benefit from the euro.
We’re not one of them.

The Daily Mail is a very poor newspaper, stop reading it.

My take on this is that the countries handing over the money should buy bits of the failing countries. For example the Germans who have pumped billions into the Greek economy could have Corfu in return. This would mean they would no longer have to get up at the crack of dawn while on holiday in order to get their towels on their chosen sun lounger. It would also be a lot more civilised than their previous attempts to acquire somewhere nice to go on holiday. Perhaps the UK might pick up a bit of the Algarve or County Cork.

For example the Germans who have pumped billions into the Greek economy could have Corfu in return.

Not been to Mallorca, have you? 😛

Teh UK should have joined the Euro – it would have been a stronger currency and would have by now been the reserve currency of choice and the UK would have been far better of economically with lower interest rates over many years.

More broadly membership of the eu has been very good for us in terms of environmental legislation to reduce pollution. We have much cleaner beaches, factories and construction sites as a result.

TJ….are you joking?

The euro-zone is a mess….if the UK was part of this then we would be in the same position as Germany….Germany either has to bail out the euro at a massive cost to its citizens or pull the plug on the whole project…not a nice choice for them.

Would UK membership of the euro have prevented 20% unemployment in Spain?…or what about the 10-15% that seems to now be a standard feature of many of the member states?….these countries got themselves into this mess through massive government spending masking a lack of any real economy….imagine how much worse the UK situation would’ve been if we’d been carried along on this tidal wave of recklessness.

Britain has done well to stay away.

For years some people in this country have looked enviously at european life and talked some right old nonsense….the usual stuff includes how much better public transport is on the continent, how much better health provision is on the continent, how much better pensions are on the continent etc etc….nicely forgetting that it all has to be paid for and nobody has been paying for it in recent years, its all debt and europe is not going to be a pleasant place to live and work for the foreseeable future.

Stuff europe, the UK needs to do whats best for the UK and will hopefully come out of this euro crisis as the strongest country in the EU.

Teh UK should have joined the Euro – it would have been a stronger currency and would have by now been the reserve currency of choice and the UK would have been far better of economically with lower interest rates over many years.

No if the UK had joined the Euro the UK would have sunk without trace with a massively over valued property sector.

And as this is from someone who thinks the UK should join the Euro, but it has to address the property sector before it does.

Britain has done well to stay away.

yay for gordon brown!

Stuff europe, the UK needs to do whats best for the UK and will hopefully come out of this euro crisis as the strongest country in the EU.

selfish and short sighted

austerity measure are not the way to do it

ecb/germany has to grow some balls and force greece/italy etc to pay taxes retire at 65 or take a hike

grandstanding pms and chancellors telling the eu they have 6 weeks to act but offering no suggestions are not helping either

Deviant – no I amnot joking.

Teh ero would have been a stronger currency and the euro zone would have been better placed if we had been members.

Of course we would have had to drop the value of the pound first – its been overvalued and kept artificially high by relatively high interest rates for a long time.

We have one of the biggest and strongest economies in Europe thus together we would all have been better off

Unemployment in Spain was 20% when I worked there, the wall came down while I was there. The current woes in Spain will lead to deflation and the Spanish economy regaining competetivity even without the ability to devalue. (edit: headline unemployment figures in Spain are meaningless given the size of the black economy and the numbers employed in it)

In the US people simply left states in which a dollar too strong for the local economy led to deflation and economic decline. In Europe language is a barrier to migration so we aren’t going to see such a radical displacement of populations as in the US, but people, countries and economies will adapt to having a currency that can’t can’t be competetively devalued on whim.

Don’t agree with the Tandem dude, he’s clearly never worked in Europe, which is fine in principle but they don’t obey the rules, both France and Germany are nationalistic in extreme whilst we are not, they ignore rules we have jobsworths that apply each and every edict to the letter.

Our place would be better served out, and stop selling our global importance short, we should never have signed up for Maastricht, it’s too complicated all this, to be broad stroked in a forum, but joining the single currency him and that Godless Philandering Prevaricator Clegg must be the only folk left who think that way.

“both France and Germany are nationalistic in extreme whilst we are not”

A gem that.

Don’t agree with the Tandem dude, he’s clearly never worked in Europe, which is fine in principle but they don’t obey the rules, both France and Germany are nationalistic in extreme whilst we are not, they ignore rules we have jobsworths that apply each and every edict to the letter.

I work in Europe, and from where I’m sitting it’s hard to tell any real difference between British, French or German politicians – quite rightly they all stick up for their own nation, and screw the rest.

Perhaps if you’d chosen the Greeks you might have made more sense – they’ve been proven to have cooked the books – but France and Germany?

And if you think Greek book cooking is bad, wait untill China’s book cooking catches up with the world economy, it may happen next year or in twenty years,

I’ve herd little bit about this mainly something to do with manipulating the exchange rate, have you got a nice link on the subject please.

As for book cooking, it’s the British gouvernement that doesn’t include the bank bail outs in debt : GDP figures which would be 150% rather than the 80% or whatever is is the govermnent quotes.

The yuan rate is more a China-US conspiracy which seems to please both sides. The Chinese don’t want to see a dollar devaluation which would leave them holding a load of devalued long bonds. The Americans are quite happy to fuel their economy with cheap Chinese imports mainly because they don’t make much anymore and if the price of imports increased they’d run into inflation and recession.

The yuan rate is more a China-US conspiracy which seems to please both sides.

Not sure the US are too happy about it, at least publicly. (Something I’ve read in various places, the Telegraph article below is just the latest to mention it).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8785611/US-Treasury-Secretary-Tim-Geithner-blasts-China-for-systematically-stealing-US-intellectual-property.html

From the article you link, Mogrim:

“But this week a coalition of more than 50 US business groups told Congress that trying to force China to ditch its currency policy may be counter-productive.”

Politicians are the same bunch of feckless fools and liars in any country, it’s the commercial trade barriers that still exist, via trade organisations, bodies local ‘societies’ that rule what exactly happens at a fiscal level. Ever wondered why the French get sold French cars and the Germans German cars predominantly, ever tried to organise a trade event in Germany only to be blocked and the following year a German company runs your ‘show’.

The trouble my “agency’ had trying to break into Europe, just doesn’t bear close examination, here in the UK our market is much more open and welcoming to companies from any nation to trade, it aint the same in Europe.

French cars are more expensive in France than in Germany. German cars are more expensive in Germany than in France. So why then do I drive a Peugeot? Because I bought it when runing a French business and knew that being seen in a Merc would be bad for business.

Yes, there’s nationalism but in the positive sense that the French are proud of their culture and products and the Germans are proud of their culture and products. I generally drink French wine and my German friends generally drink German wine. Maybe if the British had been proud of the Montégo (which was a fine car) then BMW wouldn’t have been able to buy Rover for peanuts and run it into the ground.