Germany’s Dilemma

From “The Telegraph” – “Italy sold €9bn of six-month bills at an average rate of 3.25pc, down from euro-era highs of 6.50pc at a similar auction last month. Demand also rose, with 1.67 bidders for each bond, compared with 1.47 in November.”

“These actions in reality makes the problem worse by creating a greater solvency issue with the ECB – which when push comes to shove the German people will not backstop, hence the Euro is no longer a safe currency.” (BLOG COMMENT)

This is the big and in fact ONLY question. Many think Merkel will in the end have NO CHOICE. The EU political elite has manoeuvred Germany into a position whereby if Germany doesn’t backstop the ECB then the latter will eventually default. The “markets” clearly think this otherwise they wouldn’t touch Italy with a gondola pole …..

Very clever ….. if the Germans DON’T step in then they get the entire blame ….. with insults ranging along the whole spectrum from “un-European” to “Nazi”.

 

Hysterical Guilt

I have been following the Turkey-France spat about the Armenian “genocide” with growing disbelief. One reason I started this site was the appalling lack of logic allied to nationalism that seems to stalk the world and a desire to make a gesture in defence of sanity.

Re the “genocide”, let’s start from square 1.

FACTS:

A “country” cannot feel, think or speak. It can, therefore, obviously not be GUILTY of anything. A “country” just “is”. Only PEOPLE are capable of the above: feeling, thinking, speaking and being guilty.

As for historical guilt, there are TWO major premises that concern us:

1) Only a MINORITY of people can be guilty of acts at a national level, namely THOSE WITH THE POWER OF DECISION. This clearly does not apply to the majority of the population in any country.

2) In the case of Turkey and the Armenian question, ALL THE TURKISH INDIVIDUALS RESPONSIBLE for the action against Armenians are LONG DEAD. NO TURK currently alive can possibly be guilty of ANYTHING; it all happened LONG BEFORE the vast majority were born. Even those alive in 1916 were far too young to have had any power of decision.

THEREFORE, NO GUILT WHATSOEVER CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO “Turkey”. No child can be held responsible for the acts of its parents.

Given these FACTS, which in essence are bleedin’ obvious, how does one explain the hysteria of the Turks and their refusal to admit that yes, indeed, their ancestors were guilty of the genocidal killing of Armenians, which is apparently the conclusion of most historians?

Personally, I cannot understand it. A total refusal to apply logic to human behaviour is beyond my understanding.

This question of historical guilt is of course not confined to Turkey. The Germans are supposed to continue to feel guilt about the Nazis. The British should still feel guilty about the bombing of Dresden. The Japanese are supposed to feel sorry about their army’s behaviour in WWII, about the appalling massacres in China. Europe is supposed by Muslims to feel guilt about the Crusades; many Muslims still feel angry about them. Some British no doubt STILL hate the French because of the Norman invasion in 1066.  But NOBODY alive had anything to do with these acts and/or atrocities.

Concerning Dresden, I personally think it was wrong, a bombing too far, but I cannot feel ANY GUILT about it. I was not born when it happened. My parents had nothing to do with it, but even if they had, that changes nothing. The decision was taken by individuals who are all dead. Whatever guilt they bore they took with them to the grave.

Time for the Turks to grow up. The ironic thing is that by refusing to admit the facts they appear to be SYMPATHETIC to what was done by their forefathers.

The worrying thing is that even in the 21st century much of international politics seems to be carried out on the basis of primitive tribalism and illogicality. How the HELL can we change this?

 

What 2012 has in store …..

- Argentina will successfully invade the Falklands and most of the inhabitants will emigrate from their homeland and birthplace to Britain. A giant statue of General Galtieri will be erected in Stanley, or rather Freedom-from-Colonialism City as it will be renamed. A protest by Argentinian Indians demanding the return of their country from Spanish colonialists will be suppressed with massive force and the ringleaders shot if lucky or imprisoned if not. The EU will support Argentina with the French supplying Exocets Mark 21 and the UK will leave the EU in disgust. UK fishermen will reclaim their traditional fishing areas, the stocks will be better managed, the population will eat more fish and be healthy. A brief fishing-war will end with one of our aircraftless aircraft-carriers ramming a Spanish trawler. The UK will save 20 million GBP per day previously wasted on the EU and Dame Ashton, Boringoso and Van Rompo will lose their jobs. (riotous joy breaks out all over England)

- The euro will collapse leaving only Germany, Austria and Holland as members of the currency to be renamed the Nordmark. Whether the people will end up calling the Mark or the Nord for short is unknown at this time.

- In the final triumph of Brusselian zealotry the economies of Southern Europe and Ireland will collapse and millions will emigrate to the Nordmark zone and of course to England, forcing the govt to stop all immigration and review all benefits as they decide to adopt a Swedish-style benefits system. PM Cameron said: “If it’s good enough for the Swedes then it’ll do for us.”

- The Coalition will disintegrate as Cleggo leaves to spend an
indefinite period in a sanitorium recovering from a mystery illness; he was last seen being carted off by men in white coats. Meanwhile an arrest warrant will be issued for Gordon Brown for the new crime of “ruining an economy” – as opposed to running one as he thought he was doing.

- The govt will be forced to call an election which it will win in a landslide. It will then repudiate all pfi contracts signed by the previous Labour government, thus saving millions by no longer paying hundreds of pounds to change a light bulb. Striking tube workers will be immediately sacked and desperate immigrants from the south and east of Europe hired to replace them. The sacked strikers will parade around complaining about their rights. Once their benefits have stopped after the new limit of six weeks they will be hired onto the new government “Clean up your community” scheme to remove graffiti and rubbish etc. This keeps them active and fit and gives them just about enough to live on while they retrain as bog-attendants.

- WWIII will break out over Taiwan but it’s a long way away and the fallout will take months to reach Britain. In any case, a poorly-maintained nuclear reactor somewhere in Eastern Europe will explode sending radioactive dust all over Europe, so the fate of Taiwan will be the least of our worries.

- War in the Middle East will erupt between Shia and Sunni factions in various countries. Israel and the USA will bomb Iran back to the Stone age to destroy its nuclear facilities and all Muslims will be expelled from Europe. All oil imports will cease and the UK will return to coal with a gasworks being built in every town and city to provide heat and lighting. Arthur Scargill will be made Honorary President of the new British Mining Corporation. Horses and carriages will return to the City Streets with the added advantage that remakes of Sherlock Holmes stories will be much cheaper.

- Food imports will disappear and the English (the Welsh also have declared UDI and applied to unite with newly-independent Scotland, a double-whammy provoking yet another rare outburst of riotous joy in England) will start planting potatoes in their gardens – if they have one. The price of potatoes will rocket in inverse proportion to the resale value of Ferraris. Consumers will once more be able to buy curved bananas, except that there won’t be any. Curvy cucumbers, however, will regain their once-proud position in the market.

- Once the Sunnis have wiped out the Shia or vice versa they will turn on apostates (= everyone else) to try to cleanse the planet for Mohammed. They’ll have the oil but fortunately we’ll have the bomb . If anyone is left over when the dust has settled then perhaps Man will start again a bit wiser – but don’t bet on it…………..

 

The Conversion of Ed Balls

Ed Balls, shadow Chancellor, has rejected the idea of another Labour tax-and-spend bonanza:

No way. Not in a million years. Absolutely not, because that is a totally irresponsible way to get into government. You’ve got to show that you can make the tough decisions [and] be tough with public spending. There will be no splurge giveaways.

Ed Balls is an interest case for the application of logic.

A) Gordon Brown indulged in a brainless credit binge both private and public that has left Britain among the most indebted countries IN THE WORLD. I think that all but the most intellectual of comfortable middle-class cognoscenti agree on this. This magnificent feat was accompanied by two unforgettable quotes:

- “I have abolished boom and bust.” and

- “I do know how to run an economy.”  (He meant “ruin”, but let’s move on.)

B) Balls was Brown’s right-hand man for a long time while all this was going on and as far as I recall neither said nor did anything to rein in the rampaging bull smashing up all the China.

C) NOW he says Labour would never go on a spending spree and must be financially responsible etc etc.

NOW,

1) EITHER he believed in Brown’s policies for so many years, but has suddenly had a miraculous conversion

2) OR he didn’t believe in them but went along with the whole farrago of lunacy for some reason.

This reason could have been either that he was scared of Brown and gutlessly failed at any time to stand up to him, OR

He thought it would serve his own best interests in his Labour Party career and might help him to the leadership. (Sod the good of the country of course …… – that would NEVER enter into any of these people’s considerations.)

If 1) applies (the sudden conversion thinggy), the question this raises is: “Would anyone but a moron vote for someone who takes about a decade to work out the bleedin’ obvious?”

B) If B) applies, then: “Why would anyone but a moron vote for an obvious cynic and indeed LIAR?”

The inescapable end conclusion is that anyone prepared to vote for or indeed support Balls in any way is a moron. This is of course a bit harsh on morons. Still, as far as I know one can’t yet be arrested for calling someone a moron – but give it time.

 

Cuba mourns Kim Jung-Il

“Cuba declares three days of mourning for North Korean leader, while Nicaragua, Venezuela and President Mugabe loyalists express sorrow too.”

North Korea being hardly better than a giant concentration camp of brainwashed and starved humans counts for little then in this Cuban assessment of the defunct leader? So much for the New Dawn in the Cuban dictatorship. Plus ca change ….

We know well from experience that there are no depths of depravity or insanity to which even outwardly “normal” people can descend, but even to the sheer surreality of such behaviour still has the power to shock.

What is the take of the resident Cuba-lovers on this latest obscenity against the Human Spirit?

Still, the fact that the power of life or death over millions of North Koreans and the finger on a nuclear bomb threatening millions of others now rests in the hands of a four-star child general shows the lunacy of Human development. Any visiting alien would almost certainly decide to put this sick species out of its misery and eliminate it as a danger to the rest of the universe.

Meanwhile, we await Christmas to play with our Chinese plastic bits and then the sales to get our hands on cheap electrical goodies made in China, the country that totally sustains North Korea – its socialist brother alongside Cuba – in the interests of “stability”. Oh yes, that much-cherished “stability” and “order”.

Must stop – have to go and vomit.

 

STOP THIS LYING PROPAGANDA

Doesn’t one get fed up with propaganda = LIES?

Here is a magnificent example from Chuka Umunna, Labour’s shadow business secretary today:

It is crucial the UK is fully engaged in the European Union because that is the best thing for growth and British jobs.

Nobody denies the cruciality, but we ARE “fully engaged”; we are a full member of the EU. If you are referring to the refusal of the British government to back the latest silly plan to try to achieve the impossible to save the execrable than please consider this:

A) The UK is far from being the ONLY country with reservations about this undemocratic fudge foisted on the rest of the EU by France and Germany.

B) The “No” vote IN NO WAY CHANGES OUR STATUS within the EU. We are still part of the single market, still members of all the relevant committees, merely NOT involved in the desperate scrabbling about of the eurozone members to sign away their sovereignty which has NOT BEEN MANDATED BY ANY OF EUROPE’S PEOPLES. In case you had forgotten, several countries entered the euro on an ABSOLUTE LIE and the whole thing is collapsing as MOST ECONOMISTS AND INDEED THE UK SAID IT WOULD. It is only being kept alive to save A) French and German banks and B) the face of all those involved in promoting it AGAINST the advice of leading economists.

We already know, given comments which the Deputy Prime Minister and Business Secretary have made, that the Government’s detached position in Europe is detrimental to our interests.

The government does NOT HAVE a “detached position”. It merely used its DEMOCRATIC RIGHT not to sign up to something it DOES NOT BELIEVE IN and which is NOT PART of the Treaty it signed up to. Do you have a problem with democracy? The government has REPEATEDLY said it seeks to support even the euro; it simply is NOT prepared to sign away the UK’s sovereignty and in addition sound the death knell of the City of London, which contributes over TEN PER CENT of the UK’s GDP.

Now a significant number of business leaders, including Sir Richard Branson, have highlighted the risks the Government’s detached position poses for British businesses, warning that the Government’s failure to be fully involved in EU decision-making could undermine the single market and the three million British jobs that depend on exports to the EU.

Lots of things “COULD” happen, including you deciding to stop spouting propaganda. Most of these things – including the latter – are highly improbable. There is NO REASON why the single market should be undermined. It was not undermined BEFORE the euro and will not be AFTER it. What is being undermined is A) the economies of most of Europe, thanks mostly to the euro fiasco B) European harmony (have you SEEN the swastikas being paraded in Greece? and C) economic sanity.

“Ministers are out of touch with British businesses because they have severely compromised their ability to fight British business’ corner in Europe.”

Refusing to sign up to a destructive nonsense could be said to be doing the EU a massive favour. You may have noticed a certain reluctance from Sweden, Denmark et al – you know, those other EU maverick rebel “eurosceptics”.

To protect the single market and continue to attract inward investment,

NOTHING HAS CHANGED RE THE SINGLE MARKET. You are really struggling on this point.

it is now crucial the Government repairs the serious damage it has done

THERE IS NO DAMAGE DONE: the cunning Merkozy plan CONTINUES, only without the UK, which is (HAD YOU NOTICED?) NOT PART OF THE EURO.

We need a proper plan for growth and jobs in Europe….

And you think the EU is going to provide this? Are you not AWARE of the financial shambles into which the EU and its core governments have led Europe? Oh dear …… are you UNAWARE of the tsunami of regulations that is in fact causing Europe to lose competitivity? Of the vast waste of money the EU involves? Of the fact that they do not publish audited accounts, so riddled is the whole shambles with corruption and incompetence? Are you aware of ANYTHING concerning business in fact? The EU is mostly run by people who HAVE NOT GOT A CLUE about business in the REAL world. The only jobs the EU creates are those in Brussels particularly for failed national politicians such as Kinnock, Cresson, Mandelson, Borroso et al.

After 13 years of Blair, Brown, Campbell and Mandelson, you’ll have to do a lot better if you seek to fool the British public with this sort of drivel. Forget your Blair years’ grounding. BE HONEST. TELL THE TRUTH. Otherwise, your party is finished.

 

“The Social Fabric”

Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos says: “The basic choice we have to face is if we will stay in the eurozone at great cost, sacrifice and a deep recession. The real cost of an exit from the euro would be the dissolution of the social fabric.”

Thanks Evangelos. Let’s see if I have grasped this:

A) We stay in at great cost, sacrifice and a deep recession. OR

B) We get out at the cost of a “dissolution of the social fabric.”

My problem is with the second bit, the first being concrete enough, even for the moronic layman. The second bit implies that the social fabric is neither dissoluted NOW (have you somehow missed the riots and strikes outside your front door?) and NOR will become so if we do stay in and suffer this sacrifice and depression (incidentally, I wouldn’t worry about that too much – we’ve just had it for 13 years in the UK and we have somehow survived – the GBP is even going UP. Depression is part of life; after all, you’re bound to get a “socialist” government occasionally, so you should learn to live with it) In addition, the very phrase “dissolution of the social fabric” is a phrase of unmitigated and meaningless drivel.

The latter we are used to, but do pls try to be clearer. Keep by all means the drivelous content but dress it up at least in words that actually mean something in linguistic terms.

Have a good day, or if that is not possible, Survive the Day. (Sorry – would be better in latin …..)

 

Oh dear – poor Vitor

Vítor Constâncio, vice-president of the European Central Bank, has blasted any break-up of the euro as “absurd” and “unthinkable”.”For people who really understand what it means to have a monetary union, it’s really unmanageable and unthinkable.

Amazing!! This bod is clearly not among those who understands, and yet he is helping to run it!! No wonder it’s a shambles.

Vitor Old Bean – try to get your head round this:

A) A serious monetary union must have a proper central bank able to act as a “lender of last resort” as well as harmonised tax and economic policies -in other words, a fiscal union = a single country. All serious economists understand this (indeed, all brainless plebs have grasped it, too – as is clear from this very post) and indeed TOLD you lot this BEFORE THE EURO STARTED

(OK so far?)

B) The eurozone has not got ANY of this stuff and WILL NOT GET it if we are to believe Frau Merkel. Moreover no bastard has voted for it either.

ERGO

YOU ARE NOT IN A PROPER MONETARY UNION but a fudged up, mismatched, unbalanced, unworkable, undemocratic and destructive currency-sharing fiasco created for political purposes by reckless second-rate and fundamentalist zealots.

I hope this makes things easier for you.

 

What exactly is “Money”?

“Where does all this money come from?”

It all comes from a printing press. Some of it is then given to people who’ve actually worked to earn it, some even to people who have generated it through creating some of the former type of work for others to do and a lot more to people who just play around moving it from one place to another – except that in this case nothing actually moves at all except a flow of electrons down a cable.

The key point to grasp is that it’s not actually “money” as the Romans would have known it. It’s virtual, theoretical, and infinite in quantity once inflation takes a grip.

And it just goes round and round. The latest gyration is that countries with no money – in fact, thanks to Gordon Brown and his ilk, MUCH LESS than no money – are lending this non-existent “money” to a ludicrous international Quango led by a French crony and political failure rewarded with perhaps the biggest financial job in the world who is going to lend it back to some of the countries who lent it in the first place, which – having built up even more debt through lending themselves money via a third agent rather than directly – now have to borrow even more money to help pay off the money they’ve just borrowed to help pay off the debt previously incurred by their moronic leaders, who frequently quoted the phrase “borrowing requirement” as if some ogre was standing over them with a vast bludgeon forcing them to borrow money even though NONE of them was elected on a policy of “Vote for me and I will borrow so much money (to make it appear I am clever and generous) that the country will go bankrupt and make your money worthless.” Or if that was in Labour’s manifesto it must have been in very tiny print.

Anyway, at each stage of this movement numerous people who don’t do any real “work” take their cut and in the case of the political and financial elite become very rich even though no wealth-creating “work” is done whatsoever. Thus the sum of “money” involved diminishes constantly and more has to be printed to fill the gap. The vast debt built up is reduced through inflation, which of course stiffs the plebs – and especially anyone idiotic enough to save this increasingly-worthless paper – while leaving the political class largely intact.

Simple really.

 

Understanding IMF Loans

Confusing, this euro malarky ….. let’s see if I’ve got it right:

Even though the UK is not part of the euro and has been sneered at remorselessly for the last decade for this – having predicted correctly (shhhh………) that it couldn’t work – the UK is now supposed to lend billions of money it hasn’t got (and therefore must borrow from somewhere) to the IMF which will lend it to countries on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to their own lies, folly and theft.

This loan of billions is apparently required by the EU even though – according to the financial geniuses running France – Britain itself is a basket case and should be derated by the ratings agencies, whose evaluations are, however, a CIA plot and not worth the paper they are written on especially when referring to France. (Ratings are only designed for little countries anyway, not those like France.)

This billions-of-euros loan of non-existent money is because:

A) it is morally right to assist people to recover even from their own greed, folly and lies and we all believe in the Good Samaritan and even in the Bad Samaritan who fully deserves a good pasting

B) if they don’t they will default and French banks will go tits up

A) is the principal reason trumpeted by the EU “We’re all in this together – if Europe fails, then we – sorry you – fail.”, whereas B) is the real reason, as French IMF Director and previously Chief (Didn’t-she-do-well!!) Mess-upper of the French Finances Christine Lagarde will confirm, but only with a good dose of sodium pentathol or whatever it is.

This fatuous passing of non-existent money from the pretend-we’re-not-bankrupt to the bleedin’-obviously-pretence-is-now-pointless-truly-bankrupt is principally designed to protect French banks but also give Snarlkozy some faint hope of hanging onto the French Presidency.

OH, anyone objecting to this shoddy and futile attempt to deny reality and let Greece leave the euro – which it should never have been in in the first place (its current PM imposed by the EU when the former PM threatened to ask the people is the former Bank of Greece Director responsible for preparing Greece’s statistical lies cobled up to gain entry into the euro) – is a eurosceptic two-headed monster from a small group of out-of-touch backwoods toffs spitting rage and xenophobic little-Englanderism. (This last bit is from the “Lib-Dems’ Idiots’ Guide to Politics.”)

AND: this policy MUST be right on a Catch 22 basis since it is opposed by the Mayor of London. This means of evaluating policies is handy for Labour as it avoids them having to think.

Have I got that about right?