Maxed out Eurozone members meet into the night

Like a family of bankrupt spendthrifts the finance ministers of the Eurozone countries met into the night to fight over how they might start to pay off the massive debts and bailout obligations they have run-up over recent years.

The IMF in effectively blocking further advances by insisting Greek debt falls to 120% of GDP by 2020 means actual money transfers rather than vague promises will now have to be made.

Best not mentioned for the moment are the extra huge commitments run up by the ECB that future generations are almost certainly going to refuse to meet!

I will report again on this meeting on this blog when and if any real news emerges during the day

Crunch weekend for Cameron and Clegg

Make no mistake about it, what Cameron and Clegg decide to do in the coming hours will seal the fate of their Coalition, the economy of the country and the future potential (if there is to be any) of their political parties.

First the easy bit. Resulting from the need for a further Government re-shuffle following the resignation of the Government's Chief Whip, the glaring necessity to remove Osborne as Chancellor cannot be dodged a further time.

A new Governor of the Bank of England is urgently required to salvage the wreckage left by New Labour and their appointee, Sir Mervyn King; One option being reportedly considered by Osborne is his Deputy, Paul Tucker, obviously an insane impossibility. The second choice supposedly is Osborne's head, Adair Turner, which seems at first look even less acceptabale than Tucker.

In this blogger's view there is only one individual in the country with the necessary experience and qualifications, and that is Nigel Lawson. Should he feel unable to fill the post, even on an interim basis, then perhaps he should be assigned to find a successor while the Government crisis unfolds.

I will be posting later today, on this blog, on the other options available for the Coalition. The effect of the now crucially important EU crisis will be a major consideration and this summary of the situation from Ralf Grahn, posted this morning provides some good background.

Oil proves Osborne incompetent on economy - EU/Olympics for all politicos

Osborne's incompetence in attempting to intitailly destroy one of the few productive sectors of our economy in his ealiest days was pointed up by The Guardian in March 2011, linked here. This blog of course was on this case from the start reminding readers on 23rd February of this year as follows:

George Osborne's policies have already resulted in a real slow-down in exploration activity in the British sector of the North Sea. Brilliantly mistimed and breathtakingly ignorant as it was when first announced his extra tax decisions appear ever more mistaken as the threat from Iran in the Straits of Hormuz pushes the oil markets to daily higher prices.

Osborne's stubborn pride, crass ignorance and almost complete ministerial incompetence, in charge of Britain's economy during this period of grave crisis cannot surely be allowed to continue any longer, given the proof of all that knowledgeable oil industry experts have been maintaining for many months, as evidenced by this report from The Scotsman, this morning, which after the good news concludes:

“These statistics always sound very exciting because we’re operating from a low base of activity. We have some way to go before we are back to the levels seen in 2009 and 2010.”

The lamentable reports on the Olympics provide another insight into the total inability of politicians from any party, once put in office, to run anything, presumably compounded by the elitist ignorant university trained hierarchies of an almost entirely blinkered and back-scratching civil service power structure.

Yet all that shrinks into complete insignificance viewing the farce of the media show in a railway shed yesterday of the PM and his Deputy. What should have been urgently concerning these two public school pratts cannot be better summarised, I believe, than by this contribution, last evening from The Slog, linked here. A quote on Britain:

Future observers and historians will look back at this euromess, and probably have three main reactions: first, they will wonder why the populace allowed gravy-train bureaucrats and hubris-blinded politicians to continue the pointless pavane for so long;  and second, they will gasp at the smug inaction of Camerlot in failing to spot when an imponderable outcome became an impossible nightmare for the British.

Weakening euro serves to heighten German hegemony.

Watching Mrs Merkel pushing the new French President François Hollande all over the red carpet laid out for his arrival in Berlin, mere hours after having been sworn into office, I pondered the news made public earlier in the day that Germany was now almost virtually alone in having a growing economy amongst the countries lashed within the eurozone, and also grew at five times the forecast rate - an obscene achievement viewed against its present attitudes towards the prosperity plight of its supposed EU partners.

A weakening Euro, read the overnight movements from Reuters, linked here, should in theory aid the exporters in the smaller and peripheral eurozone member states, yet the German industrial panzer allowed free range within the structures of the EU, has already crushed and pulverised such ventures. German industry together with those so far allowed to survive in its immediately neighbouring states will thus gain the benefits of the tumbling Euro.

German apologists such as the Sky Foreign "expert" in Berlin for the Hollande visit, may well repeat every hour the plight of ordinary Germans during the Weimar Republic hyper-inflation, but it is wearing thin with this observer seeing first hand a Continent laid to waste through German intransigence. What does Germany want with this plundered and secreted wealth I wondered, power to prod and push it appeared was the answer!

My comment to John Redwood's Tory moderniser blog today!

Mr Redwood is usually never less than fair in re-posting my comments to his well worth reading blog, in case of delay however, I have repeated today's burning question that I posed to his rather pointess wonderings on "Tory moderniser or old fashioned Conservative" linked here.

Posted September 3, 2011 at 7:24 am |

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

I do not believe that the public, nor even past or present members of your party, are asking  “whether you are a traditionalist or a moderniser” within that party or could care much either way, that even you do not know the answer.

What we are asking, in the face of a now plainly obvious near terminal breakdown of the institution which your party has supported since the leadership of Harold Macmillan, is that you declare your position on the best course for our country, in the face of this terminal failure, or failing that, at least demand of your own party leadership, that they confront and address the crisis facing the 27 former nations of most of Wetsren Europe, and indicate what preparations thay are making for the several widely varying potential outcomes.

Reply

What now?

The intra-connected world economy has failed. Can any believe that today's crisis can be solved by actions of the G20, or the G10 or even the G7?

None can imagine the UN General assemby nor even the Security Council has any part to play in an economic crash.

The EU 27 have long since been proven ineffective as a group, with the botched Lisbon Treaty and the farce of a common EU foreign policy with the massively wasteful External Action Service under the ludicrous Baroness Ashton.

On 21st July the Euro Group of 17 countries, were jointly failed by their political leaders, as this blog recorded at the time. No solution can come from that direction as Jean-Claude Trichet so ably demonstrated in his usual supercilious style at yesterday's press conference.  Trichet's swansong and denouement was aptly similtaneously backed up by the panic-stricken letter from EU Commission President Barosso's letter to the 27 EU Heads of Government, all as reported in my postings of yesterday and forecast in my various blogs of the past several years.

Eventually the Dow in New York closed 500 points down, so what now? The solutions will have to come on an uncoordinated national basis so let's consider my country's situation on its own:

What now for Britain?

Cameron must return from Tuscany and call an immediate emergency Cabinet meeting. Top of the agenda should be the measures Britain must take to insulate itself as best as possible from the consequences of a dissolution of the Euro. It would be sensible for Parliament to be recalled and for George Osborne and Vince Cable to have a meeting with Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling before the Cabinet meets.