Well, yes, but the European MO throughout this crisis, partly driven by political pragmatism and partly by denial about the depth and urgency of the crisis, has been to make announcements and hope that will keep things from exploding while the things being announced are put in place a long way down the line. Remember the ESM? The thing that was announced in 2010 that's suppoed to replace/bolster the EFSF? That still hasn't been ratified.



Well, I'm no expert on it, but bear in mind that the ECB has zero regulatory apparatus at the moment. No bank examiners, no enforcement regime, no rules, no procedures and no IT infrastructure to directly supervise banks. It sets interest rates, it lends money to banks, and it holds a shit-ton of collateral. That's basically it. And, to be honest, it doesn't even do that most of the time - the national central banks do it under the aegis of the Eurosystem. Now, conceivably, a similar arrangement could be cobbled together to have national central banks do supervision within an ECB framework and with ultimate authority lying with ECB. But a) it's far from clear whether Germany would be happy with that, given wide variations in national central bank behaviour before and during the crisis, and b) not every country's central bank does prudential regulation either. And, even if all those hurdles can be overcome, it's still going to take time. It took over a year from the first legislative proposal for Europe to basically rebrand CEBS as the EBA and hand it a little bit of standard setting power.

Lower. Than. Vermin

Vile isn't it?

And this is what is irritating me a bit on the Panorama thread on the 2012 forum. We got in a right two-and-eight over supposed racists in the Ukraine and Poland, but here we've got actual, proper racists running the country, and our elected opposition do absolutely sod all to stop them.

It would be a bit silly to accuse the government of racism, wouldn't it? They'd just say the concern was with unusually large numbers of people moving to Britain quickly in a recession. And hard to prove the opposite, unless you've a recent example of (eg) a large number of American libertarians being treated differently.

Are we sure it's legal? Could it be one of those cases they lose deliberately so they can moan about judges?

Are there many Greeks moving here at the moment?

It's in violation of the Treaties if Greece is still a member of the Union.

To be technically specific, I'm not arguing that the government are being racist, but that they're lower than vermin. I believe the point stands, legally speaking.

ursus arctos wrote:


Sarko got away with it with the Roma a couple of years ago, didn't he?

Ah, Francois Hollande, what a breath of fresh air. Such honesty. Such forthrightness. Not for him promising the undeliverable and then reneging the instant he got into office.

Oh, wait.

Still, as Don Draper would say, if you don;t like what people are saying, change the conversation. Re-branding ahoy!



Now, goddamn it, why didn't anyone think of this before? Greece would have been so much simpler, if the government had just cut spending, raised taxes but rejected any talk of austerity.

These Enarquistes are brilliant, I tell you. Fucking brilliant.

Still, at least Ireland is back in the Treasury markets, eh?

Gramsci, did Sarko get away with it with Roma citizens of the EU? I have a vague recollection of the threat, but not its implementation.

He did it. The EU subsequently rapped him on the knuckles, but he wasn't required to re-admit the Roma.

Hmm. So is Cameron going to introduce work permits for the Greeks?

He could start with all those tycoons who have bought property in London with encouragement from his government.

Indeed, as Knight Frank, the International Property group estimate, rich Greeks have invested £250 million in the London property market in the last year.

The last issue of Private Eye reported on the lavish biennial Posidonia shipping conference held at Athens expo centre. From the article:



The Greeks really are all in it together. Except the ones that aren’t.

Kind of interesting article on Iceland and other small countries battered by the crisis. I'd still say Krugman's more right than wrong, but it raises some valid points.

I didn't know until I read this that the IMF was calling on Latvia to devalue (so much for the theory that neo-libs are all about hard money) and that it was the domestic political class that insisted on keeping the euro peg and adjusting via internal devaluation instead.

I wish I knew more about Latvia. It seems to me that it has gone through adjustments at least as significant as Greece, but has done it without all the drama (and as far as I know, no tales of medicine shortages and people dropping off their babies at orphanages - but that could be lack of coverage). It makes me wonder - how much of what we are seeing in Greece is due to austerity and how much of it is due to unbelievably shit/corrupt administration? And if the latter, doesn't that make Germany's case a lot stronger?

I know that we try really hard not to get upset about language and stuff here, but I have to say, Gramsch, that I'm really struggling with that post.

The word "drama", specifically? It wasn't meant to imply that the drama had been overdone. Drama meaning "action", "events of importance", etc.

I'd think TT might also have problems with the word "adjustments" - in multitude-of-sins-covering terms, it can be interpreted as doing a fuck a lot of work.

Do neolibs really believe in "hard money" too? I don't really think they necessarily believe in hard anything. Theirs is a faith-based doctrine after all.

It's a bit wonkish, I suppose, but "net fiscal tightening" - which is the only way rally to compare magnitudes of severity across countries - sounded worse to me.

The IMF always gets nailed with the "hard money" thing, after Argentina. Maybe not all neo-libs, it's true.

Yeah, generally the rather sickening use of euphemisms for attacks on living standards by those in very comfortable positions personally.