G8 and 20 can only map the route to chaos.

None of the West's leaders are either capable or competent. The destination, after years of inaction and dither, for all our economies is chaos! All that can now be altered is the route we take and the speed at which we arrive. Why is this the case? I believe it is because in both the EU and the USA we have had the democratic political process corrupted. Get big money out of politics in the USA and disband the EU across Europe and a new start can thereafter be made.

Fannie Mae, Walkaways and Sovereign Debt Stormclouds mount

Fox News reports on Fannie Mae one of the main factors behind the present crisis as this blog has always maintained, read it here. Negative homeowner equity will shortly become the major problem facing the coalition government yet no plans are in place to avoid the disaster sure to result. This blog made a suggestion to the disaster that was the Brown Government. I repeat that post below, will anybody now listen:

Monday, September 22, 2008

Curing Britain's Property Price Crash.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, in an interview on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning gave no sign that he was ready to confront the UK housing crisis as I feel sure will still be the case in his conference speech later this morning and that of his Puppet Master tomorrow. The steps being undertaken in the USA over the weekend as reported from an EU perspective are fairly well ( although sometimes inaccurately) summarised in this link. Britain, it is generally acknowledged, has the second gravest property price crunch in the world, yet unlike in the USA with the magic Mr Paulson, the UK government, oh so typically, seems to be doing nothing to address it, content with ignorant BBC interviewers throwing out suggestions of bonus caps in the city and windfall taxes for the energy sector while chucking ever more billions of pounds yet further down the drain for added liquidity for the institutions at fault. In my post of yesterday, immediately beneath this posting, I addressed the problem of the householder in negative equity - particularly in my example number 2, of a family with a mortgage in excess of the value of his home but not yet in default - a potential 'walkaway mortgagee' as separate from one in default and given notice of re-possession. In my view it is the potential 'walkaway' who must first be helped. A decision to quit one's home is grave indeed and places that family in a position of effectively turning their back on the system. It is therefore an action that the government must endeavour to discourage even at great cost. (Re-possessions follow from a considered action of the mortgage holder and form a separate problem). Nobody yet knows how far UK property prices will plunge but it is essential to be aware that a fall of 20 per cent from peak levels requires a rising property market of 2 per cent above inflation for a period of twelve years before the original peak value is once again achieved. That is far too long to expect an ordinary mortgage holder to maintain mortgage payments for zero return. Once 'walkaways' begin they will spread like a plague with all kinds of consequences such as cross-squatting which will make counter-measures practically impossible - effectively anarchy could be an end result. Mortgages have always assumed the equity provided by the mortgagee is the first at risk. In this crisis that has to be changed. I suggest that for houses purchased since Gordon Brown, in the words of incoming BoE Governor King, to paraphrase 'moved the Goal Posts and excluded house prices from the CPI' any loss of value on the resale of such houses be directly proportioned between the first mortgage holder and the mortgagee. This is potentially expensive, but less so if it halts further slides in house prices. As the country is effectively bankrupt such a move will need financing and as a further step to somewhat also put the cost of the greed at the door where it lies I would further suggest the exemption of the first home from capital gains tax be withdrawn.

The NHS is sucking the lifeblood from Britain

Now the fascists exempt from any expenditure cuts are demanding the right to breath test all pregnant women for evidence of smoking. Tobacco has nowhere near wrought as much damage on the country as has the message delivered by the NHS that the state is responsible for individual health! Oppression starts with the notion that we are not individually in charge of our own fates. Cutting state funding to the NHS will quickly show how caring our medical professions still remain. Local provision of care for the truly sick and incapacitated will return a sense of community to towns cities and villages up and down the country. The great charitable hospitals built by the Victorians were largely as a result of foundations and charitable donations stolen by the state in the chaos that followed World War II. How much does your GP pocket each year? What right do supposed non-fascists have to impose compulsory breath tests? Read the report here. Maybe the real policy of the Coalition Government is to reveal the true waste and inefficiency of the NHS by leaving them sufficient rope to hang themselves, if so then "Bravo" are law and order, justice, education, helping the unemployed etc., all really less important than this kind of nonsense?

25% Cuts everywhere to save the sacred cow of the NHS!

Only Overseas Aid will be exempt from the 25% cuts everywhere else in government spending to allow the outdated, inefficient and obscene relic of Marxism that is the NHS to continue its grotesque squandering of the national income and what is worse the country's ever growing borrowing of overseas funds. If the public attending the Channel 4 TV debate on public sector cuts of one hundred billion pounds this week are representative of the nation at large then 75% of the nation are in agreement with this strategy (one reason I choose not to live in the lunatic asylum that England has become is that I believe the staggering insanity this figure represents as fact). Only when the individuals represented by this 75% number are sufficiently screwed by the 25% across the board cuts everywhere else will elected politicians have the courage to take a scalpel to the NHS, winter fuel allowance, universal child benefits and all the other trappings of the extreme socialist society that is the UK as daily promoted in the media, particularly the BBC, itself exempt from any pain in this far left, blindfolded Chancellor's budget!

Osborne's Budget Misses the Target

Britain's borrowed billions are secreted in property prices. These should have been the target today as described in detail many times on this blog! Over this Parliament and with Osborne's tax/spending plans the national debt seems set to rise to one and one half trillion pounds........ How many noughts is that? More than Gideon can count methinks!

England's Malaise!

The first Wimbledon in which no English male will compete began yesterday. Across the world in South Africa an even more shameful event for the English is underway. Steve Richards in The Independent today puts his finger on the problem very well. The article titled "I hope the Slovenians beat us" is linked here and the following two paragraphs carry the main message: It is possible to enjoy football while loathing the England team and the set-up that accompanies it. Together they represent the worst of the UK and as they are our most prominent representatives across the globe this is a matter of some significance. Millions from around the world must watch and sigh in bored bewilderment. What's going on over there, they must ask? We should ask too. The national team's failings tell us something about the state of the country as much as the collapse of our banks and the short-term, cost-cutting calculations from BP that led to an environmental crisis in the US. In all three cases there was a complacent assumption that lightly regulated markets work. We know about the banks. We are discovering more about how BP works in spite of being in a theoretically competitive market place, the risks it was willing to take to save money, the lack of internal accountability so that apparently its chief executive knew little of what was going on. Now we see the consequences in football. The top clubs do not bother investing in younger talent or the resources required to develop them. They take the short cut of buying in players from abroad. As a result, English players do not get much of a chance and those that play for top clubs look better than they really are. I blame the governments of Major, Blair and Brown...... We must hope that the Cameron Clegg Coalition reverses the direction taken by these sorry specimens by fearlessly confronting the economic mess they left in today's budget. The BBC this morning are suggesting the main spending cuts will be still in the air when Osborne resumes his seat on the front bench this afternoon..... They would, would they not? Let us hope the BBC are at the forefront of the necessary cuts to clearly begin the process of restoring England's worth!

Osborne lacks luxury of an IMF bail-out!

A study issued yesterday concludes that the IMF lacks the capacity to meaningfully assist an economy the size of that of the UK. Issued by Futurus it concludes as follows:

CONCLUSION

The IMF does not have the capacity to bail-out Britain. In an extreme case, it might provide standby arrangements of US$ 30-40 billion a year for three years. Such amounts are small in relation to British fiscal deficits of US$ 240 billion per annum. Of course, it will be argued that, even in the case of an IMF bail-out, there will be no need for the IMF to totally fund UK borrowing. It is argued that once the IMF commits money and insists on a proper deficit and debt reduction programme, private international investors will fund the bulk of the necessary UK borrowing. That may, or may not, happen. It is a matter of confidence.

Without prospect of significant financing from the IMF, the politicians cannot avoid immediate and severe reductions in public spending. There is no risk of a British default on existing debt but, if these reductions do not happen, access to further funding may evaporate forcing an overnight reduction in spending so that it is covered by revenue.

George Osborne must therefore implement cuts in this week's budget that match or exceed those likely to be imposed in an actual call to the IMF for help!

"End of Euro will be horrendous for all" - ex Telegraph editor!

Charles Moore has a good column this morning. The article may be read in full from here. I particularly liked his selected quote from Shakespeare on President Sarkozy who visited London yesterday (while amazingly agreeing over lunch with Cameron and their wives in number 10 Downing Street, that they would make maternity mortality an issue at the upcoming Canadian G20) to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Brigadier De Gaulle's wartime broadcast to France via the BBC: "Now does he feel his title/ Hang loose upon him like a giant's robe/ Upon a dwarfish thief." The truth as in nearly all comment coming from the UK media on the present euro crisis is the absolute lack of any realization that the solution for the coming enormous costs arising for Britain from the euro's collapse must eventually fall upon the UK Treasury and only by early action, disregarding the interests of our self-serving and asset voracious so-called EU partners, will the costs become bearable for our already beleaguered economy. This is why Cameron's performance in Brussels on Thursday followed by the topic discussed over lunch with President Sarkozy over lunch as reported by the media was such a disaster for our nation. We need allies in Europe as it once again splits asunder, France needs us almost as much as we must lean upon them, what a missed opportunity with the stresses of June 1940 then firmly in our leaders' minds, that early moves towards addressing the coming problems as the euro currency collapses was apparently not undertaken. John Lichfield in The Independent has a set of more rambling thoughts on the euro currency, linked here.

Secret Pan-European Governance in action!

The Conclusions of yesterday's European Council at which Britain's Prime Minister surrendered to what is now clearly totalitarianism may be read here. I will restrict myself to pointing out the following clear pieces of nonsense and secretiveness: 1. The European Council today has finalised the European Union's new strategy for jobs and smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The strategy will help Europe recover from the crisis and come out stronger, both internally and at the international level, by boosting competitiveness, productivity, growth potential, social cohesion and economic convergence. 10. The European Council welcomes the progress report of the President of the Task Force on economic governance and agrees on a first set of orientations. 15. In particular, the European Council: a) calls on the Council and the European Parliament to rapidly adopt the legislative proposals on financial supervision to ensure that the European Systemic Risk Board and the three European Supervisory Authorities can begin working from the beginning of 2011; 16. The European Council agrees that Member States should introduce systems of levies and taxes on financial institutions to ensure fair burden-sharing and to set incentives to contain systemic risk.1 Such levies or taxes should be part of a credible resolution framework. Further work is urgently required on their main features and issues of level playing field and cumulative impacts of various regulatory measures should be carefully assessed. The European Council invites the Council and the Commission to take this work forward and report back in October 2010. 1 The Czech Republic reserves its right not to introduce these measures. I have posted on Teetering Tories my views on the clear treachery of David Cameron in attending and agreeing these conclusions;

Fannie Mae finally de-listed from New York stock market.

The creation of Fannie Mae as part of Roosevelt's New Deal in 1938, read here, was designed to solve the problem of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that the later mishandling of the liabilities of these companies is what I believe caused to sub-prime crisis itself leading to the the recent recession. Good news then that the pretense that they continued as viable entities up to yesterday has at last ended. More worryingly is the fact that the huge bulk of new mortgages issued in the USA this year have (in combination with various veteran associations) been issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Is BP run by men with Nazi mentalities??

Watching Jeff Randall Live on Sky News this evening, when he interviewed a barely coherent Frenchman (sporting for no obvious reason other than his own foreigness, a Union Flag lapel badge on his jacket) on the future of Britain's electricity generation sources, we suddenly cut across to Washington, USA., to be shown a clearly foreign Chairman of BP explaining in heavy accents, and complete absence of coherence, a typically elitist view on the disaster that is the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. How remote can anyone be from reality to actually refer in a supposed apology to "small people"? My entire career was spent in the oil industry, much of it involving the development of pioneering offshore oil and gas production in close association with those specialists in that area. A Bloomberg report that the leaking oil well was not to be entirely encased in cement as an economy measure is therefore completely mind-blowing. Such a gamble only became explicable as one watched the BP Chairman, the Swedish Carl-Henric Svamberg, explain in gutteral and inadequate english that he cared about small people, can any watching events unfolding on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and in the financial institutions of nearly all of a non-democratic EU really beieve that? There is something phony about this supposed BP Chairman..... Lord Brown was bad enough.... but can nobody in the present British establishment read the obvious signs these events portend. Ilamented at length the implications of the new BP logo many tears ago, all those forebodings now are fulfilled! France and Germany control our Nation through the EU and they are both clueless, and what is worse seem clearly in pursuit of a totaltarian dream as detailed in the 1941 paper by the Nazi President of the Reichsbank on a European Economic Community as described in Bernard Connolly's "Rotten Heart of Europe" ( page 231 - 232). WE MUST LEAVE THE EU NOW! Cameron departs for a European Council meeting tomorrow, let him confront the issue and only return to offer the British people our long promised referendum on the EU and thereafter recover our Parliament, our governance, our utilities, our honour and independance and rescue the names and reputations of our once great companies, clearly now controlled by money grubbing and power hungry foreigners. Small people have been crushed in England, they must react accordingly.

Euro economising proved farcical by French pension reform

Two years extra work to 62 by 2018 seems the main French response to the crisis in the nation's finances. One report in english is here while more details in french from Le Figaro may be read here. Amusingly this news coincides with a booklet arriving in my mail suggesting humungous tax spending within the department in which I live on a new high speed train line across virgin countryside starting soon with the work lasting for five years, merely to reduce the journey time between Bordeaux and Paris presumably to allow overpaid fonctionaires and eurocrats extra time to attend meetings during which they can plan how to waste yet further billions of euros they must either print or borrow!

Handing Britain to the EU

Financial regulation, indeed the very setting of the national budget for the UK are soon set to be powers handed to the EU. In a post elsewhere yesterday I linked a report from which comes the following quote: One consequence of this likely timetable is that a decision to adopt or reject the de Larosière proposals may well be one of the first European decisions taken by the new British government elected in the (.......) General Election. Piquancy is added to that prospect by the fact that on these matters the Council will decide by qualified majority and not by unanimity. A negative vote in the Council of any incoming government would probably not be enough to block the setting up of the European Systemic Risk Board and the European System of Financial Supervisors. In the past few days I have been quoting from the writings of Bernard Connolly. The actions taken by the EU to rid themselves of this percipient economist were taken to extreme lengths, read here. We need today to no longer ponder as to why this was necessary for Mr Connolly had predicted that the allowance of the PIGS into the Euro could only be explained by a need to promote today's economic crisis to allow the final power grab that will certainly destroy democracy and personal liberty across all the 27 former nations that now comprise the EU. I quote below selected passages from Mr Connolly's book, 'The Rotten Heart of Europe' my version being the Faber and Faber paperback edition ISBN 0-571-17521-X: Page 396: "At the point at which the Community, the Union or whatever, stops being an arrangement for the mutual advancement of national interests and instead becomes a vehicle for the imposition by 'neo-functionalists' of their idea of the 'interests of the Union', it will break down in conflict and in chaos, for the neo-functionalists have next to no popular support and no legitimacy" Page 391: "But if the ECB is ever created, it will not act in a disinterested way in trhe interests of the Community,as a whole, simply because there is no such thing as Community interest. Either it will act in French interests or it will not..." Page 100: " As Nölling points out, EMU was all about power and about national interests, not about a mythical Community interest. If countries were ever to engage themselves in an exercise that so explicitly gave priority to the Community interest (whatever that may be) over national interests, then the whole EMU projectwould be put in jeopardy. Ideas of 'solidarity', 'community', 'fraternity' and the rest were fine as cover for the power-play of European monetary politics, but heaven forfend that anyone should ever try to put them into practice!". Page 392: " Still the cynicism of the French technocrats,traitors to their own people, and the arrogant, overbearing, menacing zeal of the German federalists, not to mention the grandoise ambitions of Helmut Kohl, remain on a collision course. The result of this clash of forces cannot yet be predicted with any precision. But it will be extremely unpleasant for the peoples of Europe". The European System of Financial Supervisors is desribed as followed in the above linked report. +++++ The European System of Financial Supervisors (ESFS) will consist of three new European Supervisory Authorities, i.e., a European Banking Authority (EBA), a European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), and a European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA.) These new European Supervisory Authorities will take on all the missions of the current Committees of Supervisors, but in addition exercise increased responsibilities, defined legal powers and greater authority. They will also contribute to the development of a single set of harmonised rules, improve the supervision of cross-border institutions by developing common supervisory requirements and approaches and help settle possible disputes between nationalsupervisors. +++++ To confirm all this has been the original long-standing intent, the figure at the centre of all the devious tricks over ERM described in Mr Connolly's book is none other than Jean-Claude Trichet, the present spider in the web of the ECB at the heart of today's financial crisis!

EMU Lust for Crisis

In my ongoing search for more recent views from Bernard Connolly on the ongoing crisis in Europe, on which topic I posted this weekend, I have found a presentation given on 30th May 2008. The slide show is available in Powerpoint Presentation but here in html. A June 16 2008 briefing note is quoted here. Mentions of Conolly's forecasts from October and December 2009 are linked here. Connolly's contributions to an ongoing discussion forum on Macro economic and political debate are linked here.

Connolly's Rotten Europe Re-visited

Last week I returned for a brief visit to Brussels, the "Rotten Heart Of Europe", and took the chance during the journies to read once again the book of that title by Bernard Connolly, on the past woes of the ERM, details here. Returning home I considered what a disaster it was that men of Connolly's vision and talent were disposed of by the EU and pondered why he had yet to write on the disaster that the common euro currency has clearly become in further confirmation of the dirty tricks over the ERM which he previously so carefully described. I did find this paper "Dark Vision" by Mr Connolly, which predicts the events unfolding today and provide a link to the pdf file for readers of this blog..... here.... Amazing is it not? It appears to have been written in 2002! Here is a very apt prediction from page 6 of 10 from Dark Vision ============================== Within EMU, Ireland, Portugal and Finland have all gone through the up phase of a cycle generated by a discrepancy between the anticipated rate of return on capital and the ex ante real rate of interest. They are now clearly in the down phase of that cycle. In Ireland's case, the boom was so fierce that cock-eyed optimists can contemplate a sharp fall in the growth rate as perfectly absorbable. But in none of these countries -- with Greece to follow rather soon -- will the process end with a nice, smooth return to a "sustainable" long-run growth rate. All of them will face depression, deflation and potential default. Public sector financial positions in all of them will deteriorate with amazing speed (in the "peripheral Europe" boom-bust cycle a decade ago, for instance, government borrowing as a percentage of GDP increased in several countries by more than a dozen percentage points of GDP in just three or four years), yet all of them begin with public sector debt ratios higher than was Argentina's at the beginning of its recession. And the accession countries will assuredly follow a similar path when they join EMU. Can the EU stand idly by and watch this happen? At first, yes. The ECB will claim that individual country developments are not its concern. And the EU as whole may argue that the countries concerned knew the rules, including the budgetary rules of the so-called Stability Pact: they have made their own beds, now they must lie on them. But that attitude cannot possibly persist. For however small these countries may be, financial markets will be aghast once the full horror of the slump, and it sociopolitical implications, becomes apparent. Ultimately, the ECB will be forced to behave as if it were the central bank of the small countries, easing monetary conditions massively depreciating the euro to keep the small countries afloat -- at the expense of inflation elsewhere in the area -- until a "political" solution can be arranged. What the politicians will decide will be to change the rules that currently prohibit EU bailouts of individual member countries. Bailouts will be instituted in return for the forced signature of the smaller countries on a new treaty which will extinguish what remains of national political independence in Europe. The progenitors of EMU knew exactly what they were doing. Thus Jacques Delors, for instance, said in 1995 that, "Monetary union means [our emphasis] that the Union acknowledges the debts of the member states of the monetary union". The syntax is contorted, but the logic is clear: the "no bailout" provisions in the original EMU setup were a sham, designed merely to reassure the German public, which had always intuitively tended to believe that a monetary union without a political union must become a debt union. =========================

EU Waste Watch - Number 1

Number 1 - Covenant of Mayors Ceremony 4th May 2010.

Euro cannot be saved without the support or consent of Europeans

Reviewing national budgets, read here, in a forum not subject to any budgetary restraints and consequently an object of derision, namely the EU, can only lead to that organization itself becoming the object of increasing detestation by citizens living through a period of budget austerity. EU Commission President Barroso in declaring EU spending superior to national expenditure has done more to damage the prospects for survival of the common european currency than anything EU Council President Van Rompuy can possibly conjure up (either within the Treaties ,or as is increasingly becoming suggested, outside their constraints) to counter the fact that any effective actions now able to be taken must now lack democratic legitimacy, as arriving at this point was only possible in contravention of the stated wills of the Irish, French and Dutch populations and non-referendums or consultation in both Britain and Germany!

Money made worthless!

This blog has been stating the obvious regarding Quantitative Easing for so long it became pointless, for example here, so it is somewhat gratifying to see the supposed expert financial journals at last cottoning on to what is soon to occur, for example FT Alphaville this morning carrying a study by Morgan Stanley suggesting Central Banks will be the next to go bust, thus leaving money worthless, just as forecast over the years on Ironies and Ironies Too. Read the report from here. One quote from Morgan Stanley is this: Yes, central banks can extend unlimited amounts of credit to banks and governments. But they do so by issuing ever more of their own liabilities – money. And just as the trust in banks’ and governments’ liabilities eroded when they issued ever more, we believe that the trust in money will erode if central banks issue ever more of it. And who do they expect to be hit first? Yes you guessed it the poor old UK! No wonder BoE Governor, Mervyn King, is today reported to have refused a fifteen thousand pound salary increase! What use fake pounds sterling when finals day tickets in the Royal Box at Wimbledon come with the job? (Update - since posting this earlier I have just read this post on Samizdata, complex but seeming to draw the same conclusions). Also again thanks to Samizdata for the following

VGd'E emerges again as the EU plans another misstep!

The disaster that is today the Lisbon Treaty emerged from an attempt to bring the EU closer to democracy and the European Citizen as outlined in the Laeken Convention and then as sabotaged by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. It was therefore no surprise when this same old elitist emerged from the woodwork to waffle in Le Monde, yesterday, on the disaster he has done so much to help create, and bemoan the loss of the former close intimacy that once existed between Germany and France as the French prepare to push the EU yet further down the road of illegality now in pursuit of saving the doomed common currency. Thanks to Open Europe for this translation of a small part of his plutocratic pontifications: He said: "we are now in a three-speed Europe. On the one side there is Britain, which has decided to stand outside European integration, and has already announced that nothing is going to change during the next five years, as the new government has ruled out the adoption of the euro. As regards decisions concerning the Eurozone, it will not be necessary to take into account its point of view. The second group is - with some exceptions, including Sweden and Poland - the one of new EU members, which have stood back during the euro crisis. The third group is the 'Eurogroup', which is relatively homogeneous". The institutions now being used by Van Rompuy's task force on economic governance for the EU are jointly financed EU structures, Britain already pays too much towards the democracy crushing EU. If we are to be sidelined over the operation and use of these institutions then we should immediately cease to finance them. The new British Government must get toi grips with the growing problem that is the EU before it blows up completely in their faces. The crisis is NOW, ignoring it will not make it go away! Read this WSJ report on the new danger to Italy, linked here.

The Unjust EU - Innocent Citizens Deported and their families Destroyed

The EU, not content with presently trashing the very Treaties upon which their sole claim to legality supposedly rests, is now further demonstrating the complete heartlessness that greed always brings in the story of this innocent individual, Edmond Arapi, and his family as recounted on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, which may be heard from the link below. The Listen Again link is here. (0716 A man from Staffordshire is facing a 16-year jail term in Italy for a murder committed when, evidence suggests, he was not in the country. Edmond Arapi, an Albanian man who lives in Leek with his British wife and three young children, claims he is the victim of mistaken identity. BBC's home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw, has been been to meet the Arapis to hear their disturbing story.) How much longer will the citizens of Europe accept the slimy tentacles of this self-serving and non-productive organization to slide into every last corner of their everyday surroundings while impoverishing all except those who have sold their souls in its corrupt service?

Mortgage Walkaways

The practice of walking away from a mortgage is growing as warned by this blog over the past two or three years as now reported by this report in the New York Times. Readthe warnings here, here, here and all across the archives of this blog!

Franco/German suspicions

An extraordinary article online yesterday by Der Spiegel, highlighting the worsening relationship between France and Germany may be read from here.

Did German President sign "Trillion Dollar EU Bailout" into law before he quit?

I have scoured the morning press reports of the shock resignation of German President Koehler, eg here, and here, but can find no mention of the signature into law of the latest euro rescue package such as that for the earlier one reported here. If the outgoing President hesitated at signing into law such a commitment it would be much easier to understand his departure than believing the cause as the reasons now being provided. It would also indicate a much greater crisis for both Angela Merkel and the Eurozone!