Nine countries push for EU FTT 'without delay'!

Panic is clearly setting in across the EU as EurActiv describes what was reported on some business TV channels yesterday afternoon. Read here.  The essence is in this quote:

 The statement, released by Paris, says Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and the finance ministers of France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Greece and Portugal signed the letter.

The nine countries call on the Danish presidency to speed up the work of the Council of the European Union, which represents the governments of the individual member countries, so that a draft of the FTT directive is discussed in the first half of the year.

There is, of course no rational explanation for this demand, other than the imperatives of French electoral expediency, strange indeed that a proposal which can only inevitably destroy jobs in the long run, can be seen to be a vote winner for the short interim period while the City of London is being bankrupted and destroyed!