The Troika

A) The “troika” was supposed to assess whether Greece had fulfilled the terms of its bailout deal, right?

B) Nobody (least of all the troika) REALLY believes Greece has come anywhere near fulfilling these terms, oder?

C) The troika has loaned them 8 billion€ of someone’s money anyway. (presumably not from Christine Lagarde’s salary)

Have I got it right so far?

CONCLUSION: the troika setup was yet another LIE.

I suppose it was dubbed “the troika” because, being Russian, it would naturally be associated with mafiosi crookedness? Very clever. That way it makes it easier to remember what exactly it was.

 

Delusional Illusions

From “The Independent” ……

“A round of weekend negotiations in Brussels will be “critical” in selling the eurozone crisis.” says George Osbourne.

“selling” the crisis? What are they on about? Do they mean “solving”? There IS NO SOLUTION. Why can’t Osbourne get it? Is he simple-minded or something?

A) Greece, Italy and Spain (and France) are practically bankrupt. Idiotically, they can only pay their debts by borrowing more. YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP.

B) As they are poor risks, the cost of their borrowing is going up, so they are in a vicious circle, or if you want modern jargon, a perfect storm.

C) ONLY GERMANY could – by guaranteeing all the debts of these same bankrupt, potty, non-serious countries – keep the borrowing costs down.

D) Germany has said it WILL NOT GO ABOVE the €211 BILLION it has already pledged and that the idea of a 2 trillion bailout fund that analysts say is required is “silly” and “stupid”. On top of that, the German Constitutional Court has ruled it out as unconstitutional without a referendum.

How much CLEARER does Osbourne want it? Merkel & Sarko cannot agree because no agreement is possible, not because they don’t want to …….

The Fat Lady is singing in full voice and indeed drowning out everyone else with her final crescendo.

 

Getting out of the EU

A) “First of all the farmers would lose their income which would have to be  replaced by government payments pro tem.”

Our farmers still produce stuff which they can still sell. If not, why not? Last time I looked there was a world shortage of food.
CONCLUSION = scaremongering bilge worthy of the EU propaganda machine, the part of Brussels which works best of course.

B) “Second importers and exporters would find their goods standing on the docks until a new system of tariffs is agreed with Brussels.”

I don’t notice other countries being unable to sell stuff just because they’re not in the EU.  Switzerland seems to do OK.
CONCLUSION = scaremongering bilge.

C) “Third all regional aid from EU would come to an end.”

IT’S OUR MONEY. We’d save bank fees in sending it and then getting it back again.  AND we’d be QUIDS IN. Our £30,000,000 PER DAY to the EU could be used HERE. We would no longer have to pay for van Rompo (WHAT DOES HE DO ALL DAY?) Borinoso and all the other fatuous, useless party cronies and hacks appointed by their mates. I nearly forgot Ashton and her SIX BILLION EURO “diplomatic service” and van Rompo’s THREE HUNDRED MILLION EURO palace, plus furniture. BTW Have you checked the fact that they don’t publish audited accounts? That there is rampant FRAUD? Fraud indeed which they COVER UP (see this paper)
CONCLUSION = drivel

D) “Fourth all UK representatives and civil servants would all be unceremoniously booted out of  European institutions like Parliament, Council of Ministers,”

GOOD – HOORAY. The parliament has no power, is pointless and vastly-expensive. Parliaments govern countries. The EU is NOT A COUNTRY (Had you noticed that?) Our MEPs and all the other gravy-trainers could get a proper, productive, socially-useful job and wouldn’t have to bang up and down uselessly to Strasbourg expending thousands of tons of CO2 while forcing useless lightbulbs down our throats.
CONCLUSION = see above

In addition, we get back our sovereignty, our fishing, and everything else which is now controlled by a bunch of unelected pratts who have led Europe into a fantastic shambles through their own folly and incompetence – not that you’d notice them admitting it as long as they can blame the ratings agencies, the Anglo-Saxons, the bankers, the Chinese and soon WAIT FOR IT the Germans.

 

Eurofarce – the last act …..

Watching them writhe about pathetically trying to square the circle is hilarious. Half the best brains in Brussels (which isn’t of course saying a lot) are trying to come up with a cunning plan to save their face and banks by means of some clever “instrument” (they should just stick to the guillotine) and/or some sort of dodgy “leverage” ploy to slip past national governments (Treaty rules? WOT Treaty?) involving “insurance” to fool the markets. The EU “fool the markets” HA, HA ….. the only people they can fool is themselves.

There seems to be nobody in this farce telling it straight except Schaeble, who looks likely to spoil Sarko’s cunning plan to get the Germans to bail out the French banks. ……. I wonder if the French secret service have put out a contract on him yet.

Still, Mme Lagarde may play the role of the cavalty. She’s head of the French Monetary Fund charged with transferring yet more of our money down the Franco-Greek-Portuguese-Spanish black hole …. of course, in doing so she is merely saving the world. SAVE FRANCE AND SAVE THE WORLD sort of thing. (“And it’s not just because I’m French.”) She is in fact the former French finance minister largely responsible for France’s vast debts, so who better placed than to bail out France with someone else’s money, which is the EU’s principal role of course.

Was she the one who when France went miles over the eurozone’s rule (no, STOP LAUGHING AT ONCE) about not exceeding debt of 3% of GDP said: “That rule was designed for little countries, not big (I think she meant ‘great’) countries like France.”? IT sounds about right. Mind you, it could have been a socialist. “Socialists”? When they kick out Sarko next year they’ll put it all right. Mme Aubray will make it up (Normally of course, you couldn’t make it up) with M Hollande and they’ll have the ten-hour week to “create jobs”, principally with the extra 50,000 civil servants needed to adminster the new regime.

I can’t wait.

 

Insurance saves the World

The latest cunning plan – an INSURANCE SCAM!!!

It CAN’T fix it. “insurance”? What a load of rubbish. Either you have a two trillion fund or you don’t. What has “insurance” got to do with it. SOMEONE has to pay if ITALY goes tits-up, as is likely. Or does the EU think that with “insurance” nobody actually pays?

Of course, the cunning plan is to get this through without getting national parliamentary approval … You couldn’t make it up.

And EVEN IF this provides some short-term relief, you STILL have the same problem. The changes required in Greece and elsewhere to thrive in the euro à la Deutschland are SO VAST that they won’t be able to do it. Nor in Italy, where the ONLY solution is quite honestly a revolution to wipe out the entire venal, corrupt ruling class that has lost all touch with the people and thus legitimacy. BurlesquePhoney gets a vote of confidence! With 25% popular approval rating? And you want US to bail this lot OUT? YOU ARE INSANE.

 

GIVE US A BREAK!

“Whether or not you like the single currency, the world economy’s health depends on its survival. Should the euro collapse, we will find ourselves heading into another Great Depression.”

Jeez, there is some tosh written about this crisis. Got a magic crystal ball, have you? Perhaps you work for the EU propaganda machine?

Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and France ect (not to mention the UK under that financial genius Gordon Brown) have for many years been led by over-spending morons masquerading as responsible representatives of their people.

This financial idiocy has been going on for well over a decade. The idea that there is some quick, magic solution is STUPID. The idea that the whole world depends on the euro is equally STUPID. Even if the euro collapses – which it doesn’t need to; all that is required is to kick out the lunatic fringe and get back to proper, honest accounting – countries will STILL need and want to trade. Recovery from the crisis will be rapid. No country is going to sink below the waves.

YES, some if not most developed (HA, bloody HA) countries are going to have to accept a lower standard of living. TOUGH. Where is it written in tablets of stone that ANYONE is entitled to this or that standard? Europe and Humanity in general has been living well beyond its means for a long time, fuelled by arrogance and incompetence, for WHICH, by the way, NO SINGLE POLITICIAN (apart from Gordon Brown) has to my knowledge yet paid the price that ordinary people are paying.

This article is yet another in a long series of fatuous doom-mongering and nonsensical rants.

 

Medvedev Chickens Out

A pratt. Russia deserves better. He could have made a fight of it and reduced the chances of Putin taking over as of old. “Putin is more popular”!!! Hilarious – a very funny way of doing democracy. Of course, Labour do it differently:

“Attila the Hun is more popular than Gordon Brown, but we’ll anoint him leader anyway on the basis of his coffee-shop back-of-the-envelope deal with Blair a decade ago and anyway we’re all scared of him.”

As for Putin, he said that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of his life, so you can’t say he hasn’t given due warning of what he’d like to do.

The worst-case but not improbable scenario is that he will step up attacks against foreigners and use this to help him consolidate power for the ruling mafia led by his old KGB chums.

Still, at least with Putin what you see and hear is what you get, but Medvedev is more guilty. He has chickened out. It is always cowards and sycophants who allow dictators to acquire their immensely-destructive power.

Russia needed a braver, wiser man than Medvedev. Kasparov, for example.

 

Geitner rants on … and on …

“George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary,  are becoming increasingly exasperated at the lacklustre response of European  leaders to the ongoing single currency crisis.”

Well, they can get lost. The ONLY way to prevent an eventual default of Italy, Spain, Portugal et al (forget Greece) is for Germany to guarantee two trillion or so euros to bail them out.

The German Constitutional Court has said this is ILLEGAL and that any further transfer of power to Brussels requires a referendum. Merkel and her finance minister have also called the idea that Germany should sign up to this isane “two trillion more for the black hole” idea “silly” and “stupid”. ARE YOU DEAF Obsorne, Geithner?

You cannot put right with some magic solution the idiocy of decades. Some countries are going to have to default. TOUGH.  They brought it on themselves. This is not a reason to drag down Germany.

Geithner should really take a hike. His OWN country is racking up more debt STILL to the tune of FOUR BILLION DOLLARS PER DAY. Put your OWN house in order first, you total plonker. The time for you to have got “exasperated” is when your country started behaving like a spoilt, sulky, greedy demented child living beyond its means and transferring all its industry to Asia to enrich your CEOs beyond belief and simultaneously impoverish an entire nation.

Mr Osborne, how are you going to explain to the British public that through the IMF they should bail out feckless, idle, non tax-collecting countries in a currency that everyone KNOWS cannot survive in its present form? You’ll say “it’s in our own interests?” Really? And you think that Italy, Greece, Portugal et al will REALLY change their ways if they get a bailout? If Germans agree FOR EVER to subsidize their idle and fecklessness? Is THAT what you think?

How about a bit of LONG-TERM THINKING? Hardly ANY radical overhaul of the banks was done after the LAST crisis in 2008; the can was just “kicked down the road” as we now seem to say.

Give us a break. Stuff the EU, the IMF, the USA. Yes, things are going to be bad, but piling ever more debt on top of the vast debts we already have is a SHORT-TERM LUNACY.

The sickening thing is that EVEN with a German bailout guarantee, the problem of Greece etc not being able to cope in the eurozone WILL NOT BE SOLVED. You couldn’t make it up. Don’t you get it, Osborne? The problem will STILL BE THERE.

And underlying everything is the suffocating hand of the EU, with its vast cost and bureaucracy. An EU whose principal concern is NOT for the overall welfare of its citizens (who never get a direct say in ANYTHING) but to pursue its own unmandated policy of creating a European superstate. No, give the British a referendum. Cut the payments.

Get out and tell Geithner to stuff it. You’re taking advice from a man whose country is racking up more debt of four billion per DAY? JEEZ, what idiots are running the western world?

 

FAT & Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver is rubbishing the government about obesity:

“The British public will always react well if they are given a good plan, guidance and clarity. Sadly, our government has let us down on all fronts. Education is the key here. We need to give people the knowledge to be able to make better choices before we start making empty noises about encouraging people to eat better food. I have seen myself that giving practical information and teaching within schools and communities can make a real difference. We need more practical help and less hot air.”

So, when an obese child waddles down the street stuffing its gob with crisps it’s the government’s fault? Thank you Jamie. Now we know.

Your article is rubbish of course. Anyone who doesn’t already know how to eat healthily is a MORON. The problem is, Jamie, that these people DON’T CARE.

If you DID care, then when you got obese, don’t you think you’d WONDER WHY? and then FIND OUT? And DO something about it?

Schools TEACH this stuff, but the wonderful people you bang on about DON’T CARE. The KIDS don’t care. They listen to Miss Muppet telling them all this in biology or life-sciences or Homemaking/Domestic Science or whatever they do then when the bell goes they rush off for their Mars Bars and crisps. A school banned burgers and chips once and mothers turned up at lunchtime to feed their starving kids through the railings.

You have a bizarrely rose-tinted view of the masses. I am as depressed about this obesity epidemic as anyone, especially as it is essentially down to laziness, fecklessness, greed …. all among the least attractive aspects of Homo Sapiens. It is indeed astonishing how Man just cannot control his greed. The Chinese and Indian middle-classes ALL have this problem, just like in the west.

However, it can only be cured by a return to individual responsibility; for oneself and for one’s children.

You say you have seen what intervention can do. The trouble is, you are famous and charismatic, and the plebs only pay attention to anyone famous. If you go to a school, then of course it’ll have a short-term effect, but how many schools can you go to? Miss Muppet in form 4D of Cesspit Comprehensive is neither famous nor charismatic …..

Sorry mate – you’re living on another planet. Still, carry on bashing the government if you must; everyone else does, as it’s never the personal fault of anyone else of course. What was your take on the rioters?

 

Merkel/Sarko “Vow” n° n trillion

“Discussions over the weekend between German Chancellor Merkel and French  President Sarkozy delivered little in substance,” Credit Agricole CIB said in a research note.”

Hilarious. “little substance”?

Ok, where WAS this “little” then? I didn’t see any, only another “pledge”, or if you prefer “vow”. As these are meaningless I’d really like to know where ANY substance was.

Why the hell they don’t tell the truth is a mystery. And the truth is:

A) Greece is going to default.
B) They’re going to take more taxpayers’ money to prop up the banks to protect them from this – or borrow or print it as there isn’t any actual “money”.
C) We don’t know – perhaps because Merkel doesn’t dare tell her electorate – whether Sarko has managed to get her to agree to the IBF (Illegal Bailout Fund) to recapitalize the French banks or whether Sarko has had to give in to Merkel and will ahve to borrow and/or print yet more French euros to do this, thus risking France’s AAA rating. This latter is very good, isn’t it. It means that there is NO RISK of France defaulting on any debt. HA, HA …. “NO RISK”?

Basically, before this meeting EVERYONE KNEW it would result in another “pledge” or “vow”, NO? I mean, all the others have …..

BUT, the ONLY THING that nobody knew BEFORE this meeting (and the only important thing) nobody still knows AFTER IT.

Brilliant.

PS ILLEGALITY? Richard Sulik – Leader of a Slovak Minority party that may scupper the euro bailout – says THIS:

“First, we have to strictly adhere to the existing rules, such as not being liable for others’ debts, just as it’s spelled out in Article 125 of the Lisbon Treaty. Second, we have to let Greece go bankrupt and have the banks involved in the debt-restructuring. The creditors will have to relinquish 50 to perhaps 70 percent of their claims. So far, the agreements on that have been a joke. Third, we have to be adamant about cost-cutting and manage budgets in a responsible way.”

At last I’ve found someone who seems to have an idea of what is going on and what to do. THE BAILOUTS ARE ILLEGAL UNDER THE LISBON TREATY. Why haven’t the entire EU elite plus the governments of ALL the eurozone nations who have voted for the bailout fund been arrested? This is NOT a joke, as opposed to most of what is going on in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. The bailouts are ILLEGAL.

Hardly ANYONE seems to care. I suppose because they can get away with it.  In essence, rules only matter if there is some sanction behind them, some accountability. Not very PC, but it’s true, isn’t it?