Interesting speech yesterday by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, he of the unelected democratic leader variety. He is in Japan trying to raise Asian long term support for the ESM, or whatever acronym it is these days, and he used a speech to stick the knife into Germany and France, or that's what it looks like to me!

"The story goes back to 2003 (and) the still almost infant life of the euro, when Germany and France were too flexible concerning public deficits and debts. Of course if the father and mother of the eurozone are violating the rules, you could not expect (the likes of) Greece to be compliant!”

Whatever his reasons it looks like yesterday's Spanish bond offering wasn't the easy lay out it was supposed to be!

The UK should be insulating itself from the EU typhoon that is about to hit!

We have seen Greece raid bank accounts to match up the Troika bailout funding (buying out holders of UK style (legally written) bonds) but looking a bit closer we can see even making the payments as they become due is a futile exercise now. The new bailout money they are borrowing won't pay upcoming bonds and interest payments while keeping her economy afloat as well! Effectively they have gone to a loan shark to pay the credits cards which pay the bank loans which pay the mortgage.

This can only mean that the Greek people are suffering to pay other European bankers, but maybe that's what you get when you impose an unelected head of state!

Interesting to see one of the main protected debtors…………….Germany and the military supply contract they have with Greece. That's right, buy some aero fighters never mind treat the old and sick, educate the young and generally behave in an anyway decent way toward your peoples.

Another point worth noting is the potential oil reserves being test drilled for now off the Greek coast. Turkey has already made sabre rattling noises saying it owns the 'Greek' islands where the finds are being examined. Could Greece be another oil play or is it just the same old Greek Tragedy?

Malcolmn wrote:

"…………….Germany and the military supply contract they have with Greece. That's right, buy some aero fighters never mind treat the old and sick, educate the young and generally behave in an anyway decent way toward your peoples."

But who needs the warplanes? Yep, The Colonels.

I think its even worse and cynical than that Symptoms, looks like Germany is willing to lend Greece money to buy German armaments, which it then becomes a first line debtor, so Greek kids can go hungry just so long as Germany gets its interest payments!

These people need to be lined up against the nearest wall!

Just as we thought it couldn't get any worse the major Greek political parties have just awarded themselves……..30 million euros, ostensibly to hold the next elections.

This is on top of the 250 million euros they already 'owe' for past occurrences, can't really call them democratic seeing as their Prime Minister is unelected and instead imposed by the Troika!

Anyone still feel like throwing into the IMF bailout fund?

Worth the read.............

http://9gag.com/gag/2681884

Interesting speech yesterday by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, he of the unelected democratic leader variety. He is in Japan trying to raise Asian long term support for the ESM, or whatever acronym it is these days, and he used a speech to stick the knife into Germany and France, or that's what it looks like to me!

60 Billion Japanese Euros to bulk up the IMF bail out fund. Seems well done Monti plaudits are in order but then we see the first Asian 'elected' to run the World Bank. Always been a Yank up to now! Got to wonder about paybacks????????

With elections just around the corner Europe is probably going to be a much different animal soon.

The Greek and Troika elite are starting to run scarred and are briefing against all and any of the anti-austerity parties running in their election. They are also printing as many Euros as they possibly can in direct confrontation to their agreed ECB limits.

The French probably want to take their ball home and look to be ready to insist on no more bail outs for the Club Med, they need the money themselves!

Spain looks to be ready to cave and if she does goodbye Eurozone or anything like the Eurozone we have come to recognise.

Everyone now has a back-up plan for default but if they couldn't organise the what's-its-name in the brewery does anyone think they can organise a much more complex rescue?

Democracy is being ditched in a last gasp attempt to save EU banking sectors so what are we going to end up with…………….

All under the expert tutelage of the Fed, or guarantor of last resort!

Spain will probably declare war on Argentina now……….I wouldn't be surprised!

A picture is worth a thousand words.......

Christine 'Fe-Fe' Lagarde comes out and says the IMF will institute a new EU bailout fund worth 500B dollars. Frau Merkel immediately says it will only be 400B, so it becomes 400B!

So far only Japan and the UK (???) have pledged and they are worth 75B. In fact the Yanks have said they won't contribute! Suddenly she tells Bloomberg she has amassed 320B, but the only new donors were Switzerland and Denmark. By last weekend she was claiming 420B and we got a definitive list……”$60 billion from Japan; $15 billion each from Britain, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, and smaller amounts from countries including Sweden, Norway, Poland, Australia, Denmark and Singapore.”

I would think someone is over-egging the pudding here they certainly need some basic mathematics lessons……….

The BRICS are seen as natural contributors given their strong financial positions but in the immortal words of CJ…….they didn't get where they are today by throwing cash away!

I can sum up this page with an old quote from Frazer in Dad's Army, "We're Doomed!"

Not really crash11 but interesting EU point none the less............

Central banking 101..........

I can sum up this page with an old quote from Frazer in Dad's Army, "We're Doomed!"

Adam,

With any luck it won't be us that's doomed rather the people forcing us into unsustainable ways of living who might feel the wrath for a change. Not that there is any precedent of course……….

There looks to be a whole geo-political change being forced onto the West as wealth disappears eastwards and once they had our jobs who didn't see that coming? Err, well everyone in charge and those outsourcing jobs! This is in the last 2 or 3 decades so we have livid through this stuff and we should be able to see where the mistakes were made.

America is bankrupt by any definition of the word, Europe is imploding and while we (UK) smugly sit on the sidelines our economy has already disappeared up the genie's back passage!

The thing is what all those in charge seem to forget or not allow for is the anthropological question. They have controlled us by allowing us to feel wealthier and better off but having to allow that to get out of hand and using unsustainable debt to carry it on has produced a quantum moment in our social development.

We will see more nationalistic undercurrents at play in our political futures, and if anyone doesn't believe that look at the French Presidential elections and the courting of Marine by Sarko and Holland going on. That is diametrically opposed to any furthering on EU integration in fact it has to produce the opposite effect. So while all member states bankrupt themselves trying to sort out the EU sovereign debt crisis the people will probably vote for some form of separatism and walk away from debt payments and so bring the whole pack of cards crashing down.

I think we are living in interesting times and that Mayan Long Count Calendar might have been right all along!

Adam,

With any luck it won't be us that's doomed rather the people forcing us into unsustainable ways of living who might feel the wrath for a change. Not that there is any precedent of course……….

There looks to be a whole geo-political change being forced onto the West as wealth disappears eastwards and once they had our jobs who didn't see that coming? Err, well everyone in charge and those outsourcing jobs! This is in the last 2 or 3 decades so we have livid through this stuff and we should be able to see where the mistakes were made.

America is bankrupt by any definition of the word, Europe is imploding and while we (UK) smugly sit on the sidelines our economy has already disappeared up the genie's back passage!

The thing is what all those in charge seem to forget or not allow for is the anthropological question. They have controlled us by allowing us to feel wealthier and better off but having to allow that to get out of hand and using unsustainable debt to carry it on has produced a quantum moment in our social development.

We will see more nationalistic undercurrents at play in our political futures, and if anyone doesn't believe that look at the French Presidential elections and the courting of Marine by Sarko and Holland going on. That is diametrically opposed to any furthering on EU integration in fact it has to produce the opposite effect. So while all member states bankrupt themselves trying to sort out the EU sovereign debt crisis the people will probably vote for some form of separatism and walk away from debt payments and so bring the whole pack of cards crashing down.

I think we are living in interesting times and that Mayan Long Count Calendar might have been right all along!

Well Malcolm now we are doomed now we are now in a double dip recession http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17836624, Good Job Boy George.

We have never dipped into anything, we have been hiding and massaging the figures for years..........................

We are bouncing along a plinth with a steep fall at one side and a mountain to climb at the other. Heads or tails its a bad place to be.

GET OUT NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17835821

Well Malcolm now we are doomed now we are now in a double dip recession http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-17836624, Good Job Boy George.

We are just bouncing along the bottom, and are going to be for years. Given Gordon's binge there's not really much anyone can or could have done about it - the cuts had to come and would have come more or less the same under Alistair Darling. The figures will likely be revised either way so it's just a technical argument at this point, though that won't stop the media and Westminster village idiot Too-Deep-Too-Fast Miliband trying to make political capital out of nothing of consequence.

The fact that the Pound is still improving against the US Dollar and the Euro shows that the markets have some confidence that we are moving in the right direction in reducing the debt, and that the eurozone and US aren't. This will help stem inflation, though it's not going to help our exports too much. We ARE in a hole, but at least we've stopped digging! Just now Sterling is one of a tiny few really trusted currencies in the World and we'd be lunatics to destroy that stability by falling for more of Ed Balls' crap.

though it's not going to help our exports too much.

What in the name of gods green earth do we export now?

Just about everything we produce is exported!!! We're major consumers but the majority of our consumption is of imported goods.

What in the name of gods green earth do we export now?

2011..........

Just about everything we produce is exported!!! We're major consumers but the majority of our consumption is of imported goods.

Again 2011........

What in the name of gods green earth do we export now?

I do my little bit, a part of my business allbeit a small part is that I supply materials that are exported to all corners of the world via a few of my larger customers and the bloody Chinese have the worst double standards of them all we import certain products that are turned around and sent back to them and the cheeky buggers have the ordasity to have the most stringent standards before they will accept it back as an import.

What in the name of gods green earth do we export now?

United Kingdom exports were worth 39.8 Billion GBP in February of 2012. The United Kingdom is the world's fifth-largest trading nation, highly dependent on foreign trade. The United Kingdom's major export commodities are manufactured items like telecommunications equipment, automobiles, automatic data processing equipment, medicinal and pharmaceutical products and aircraft.

http://www.tradingec...kingdom/exports

Again 2011........

I rest my case we import more then we export so we are losing money instead of gaining it.