FTT - Fantasy, Trickery & Theft! The UK Acts & Fitch Downgrades

Of the three large credit rating agencies Fitch, which downgraded the UK from Triple A to AA+ yesterday evening, is the only one with strong links to France for which it maintained its Triple A rating.

At the same time news emerged that the UK was going to challenge the legality of the Financial Transaction Tax, eleven EU countries are presently preparing under the Enhance Cooperation provisions of the EU Treaties. Open Europe has a good detailed report on that move linked here.

Far be it from me to attack or defend credit rating agencies, which by maintaining any triple A rating for any nation within the Euro Group must IMO be completely disconnected from any reality, but this clear connection in timing has to be pointed out.

France has been the country pushing hardest for the FTT. Its national economic estimates incorporate revenue from the tax which allows the fiction that it will meet its EU agreed targets for the present and coming years even slightly realistic.

Yesterday morning on this blog I suggested Britain and France work together to counter the dangerous direction Germany now seems to be taking our Continent, instead they have picked this fight over a completely absurd tax proposal.

This morning on Radio 4 Today programme we heard the harrowing account of a then eleven year old Jewish girl's escape from the Germans, though the sewers of Warsaw during the uprising which took place 70 years ago this weekend. The sheer horror of what then took place must AGAIN be generally recognised in Europe, together we must accept and confront the direction we seem to once gain be heading towards similar ghastliness.

That means leadership, which four Parliamentary votes yesterday in Italy failed to achieve but they try again this morning. BUT what are PM Cameron and President Hollande doing this weekend? They need to agree on something other than a tax disputation which was how things were left last evening!

The EU as ever in search of its own resources to squander and waste!

Article 311, the golden key that removes the EU from national accountability through its own resources! Watch yet another of the faceless ghostlike men who will strip us of our humanity - our democracy is already theirs!



If the video does not work, try this link.

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!

FTT Madness - Cameron in Davos

Early video of Cameron's blistering attack against the FTT is below. As more of his speech is available it will be posted on this blog:

FTT - The Tax that could free Britain from the EU

Barmy Barnier did nothing yesterday to convince the City of London that he is not both slightly loopy, out of control and almost certainly their and the nation's present major threat. Good

The likes of Clegg and Cameron need the incentive of an opinionated and out of control French Commissioner to perhaps wake them from their stupor and recognise the true nature of the dreadful threat their country faces from the EU. Maggie only woke up when confronted by Delors,can Barnier perform a similar service now?

On the financial transaction tax itself, EurActiv has a report on how it is today being pushed at the top of the EU, where any potential source of new funds are desperately required, linked here. A more impartial view with questions and answers on the possible working of the tax is in Al Arabiyah, linked here.

Britain's Coalition strains on EU covered in EurActiv

Headlining Cameron's pledge to block a Tobin tax made on the Marr TV show yesterday morning, EurActiv, linked here, goes on to discuss the strains over the EU within Britain's governing coalition, which are likely to worsen today as Nick Clegg hosts Olli Rehn and several other fanatical eurofederalists vaguely sharing a label of "liberal".

Eurosceptic temptation

Cameron may see the political benefit of a more assertive approach to Brussels after his decision to veto the new EU treaty won him praise from eurosceptics on the right of his Conservative Party and brought him a boost in the opinion polls.
However, it angered his pro-European junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.
Cameron said it was a "myth" his veto left Britain isolated, saying eurozone members had met without Britain for years. He added that other EU states may eventually reject the pact.
Britain has opened a new battle front with its EU partners by saying members of the new "fiscal compact" should not take decisions on issues affecting the EU's single market for trade.
"Britain's interest is in having a strong single market that's determined at the level of the 27," Cameron said.
He said Britain would be part of agreements it had a national interest in joining, such as the EU single market and NATO, but not of the Schengen passport-free zone or the euro, which it had no national interest in joining.
"We are a lot better off outside the euro, with our own currency and our very low interest rates that we have right now," he said.
Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, is to host a meeting of his liberal allies from around Europe in London on Monday to promote his agenda of re-engagement with the EU after Cameron's treaty veto.

CNBC TV reports Sarkozy will give France a FTT even on its own

FTT, Robin Hood tax, Tobin tax, it has all kinds of fancy names, maybe something in French will be more apt if Sarkozy gets his wish and goes ahead with it for France all alone, as happened with the doomed 35 hour week.

Other reports do not mention this remark following the Franco/Italian summit today in Paris, one such is here.

Update 2035 GMT: Deutsche Welle now carries a full report, linked here.

France's EU Minister says Financial Transfer Tax will pass this year!

EurActiv has the report on the FTT which is linked here. This is especially good news for Britain, as it would be electoral suicide for even the rabid EU federalist LibDems to support such legislation, and if it becomes law elsewhere in the EU, there will be a fantastic boom in financial services in the City of London, possibly even leading to our ejection from the doomed EU before the final collapse occurs!

AT LAST! Britain says NO! to the EU

Attacking the City of London and seeing that financial institution as the next source for EU pillaging, has finally forced even the previously weak-willed Prime Minister, David Cameron, to finally say no to the EU.  A report from Oz is here. BBC internet report here.

BBC News has played a statement from Cameron confirming that Britain will not agree to a treaty within a treaty and is so far only joined by Hungary, which country seems also to be wavering.

It will be a tough fight to prevent the 26 using the existing Treaties and Institutions against Britain, which nation will quickly be branded as both a pariah and enemy number one of the EU former nations in the run-up to its final collapse, or Britain's capitulation.

On the eve of the first Elizabethan era the Hanseatic League collapsed and English merchant adventurers set forth to set the foundations for centuries of trade and the spread of civilisation. At the twilight of the second Elizabethan era, we finally have the chance to follow in their footsteps, using the great gifts of our language and entrepreneurship, all this after decades of drift and ever-growing decadence brought on by our pursuit of a fatally flawed trading alliance that metamorphosed into an anti-democratic and totalitarian nightmare.

EPP Marseille - Europe's Plotters Parley

EurActiv reports on the gathering of Europe's right wing/conservative conspirators group from the European Parliament, gathered at their annual gathering in Marseille, linked here, titled "EU Centre right parties cook pre-summit deal". This report contains bad news for Britain on the Tobin/FTT tax as follows:

Another divisive issue concerned the European Commission proposal for a financial transactions tax (FTT). “We support the introduction of a financial transaction tax, as a tool to discourage speculative financial activities and enable the financial sector to contribute to overcoming the economic crisis in Europe,” reads an amendment to the final resolution adopted by a large majority of the 813 EPP delegates present in Marseille.

The Wall Street Journal, reporst from the gathering that Sweden foresees problems in passing a Treaty change, read here.

Watch John Major with Frost on the FTT and other EU dangers

The video of the programme Frost over the World, from Al Jazeera, is much better than most of the output from the British based broadcasting media this weekend, it may be viewed from here.

Will today mark the start of a € exchange rate collapse?

So far in the euro crisis, the exchange rate for the dodgy currency has held up surprisingly well against the dollar and the yen. With the failure of the government change in Italy and the obvious desperation involved in proposing an EU only Financial Transaction Tax, this situation cannot surely continue. Even were one a holder of German denominated euros, against which one would expect a new deutschemark to appreciate, the processes through which one must now likely proceed to achieve value from such a new currency, would seem best put to one side for foreign holders of the currency during the transition period.

In the meantime the battle to save the symbol of the EU continues, with a report in the Daily Telegraph this morning that Germany will press Britain to offer real support for the sick and sick-inducing currency, read here, just as this blog has repeatedly warned down the years.

Germany sets course for conflict over a Financial Transaction Tax

A Tweet from Open Europe reports the following as being stated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag this morning:

Merkel - We are committed to ensuring that Commission's proposal for Financial Transaction Tax will be a success and also push for it at G20

A financial transaction tax will eventually and very quickly yield nothing. If the Euro Group enacts it then the City of London wil grow ever faster. If the EU enacts it
then the worlds financial centres will not be based there. If the G20 enacts it then financial transactions will go elsewhere.

As with economic governance and Italy this morning - it sounds acceptable but at the end of the day it is somebody else telling you how to live. If Italians will not accept 67 as a proper pensionable age before an election, are they likely to do so afterwards?

Portugal's bail out was agreed by civil servants before a general election - how democratic is that?

A financial transaction tax can only work with world government -is that really the path upon which Germany wishes to embark today?

Financial Transfer Tax to be renamed VAT to avoid British veto!

Open Europe has the thoroughly startling news contained in this post's headline its midday press report email of today:

EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta had “already started work” on presenting the FTT as a value added tax (VAT) – which could be imposed without a unanimous vote and therefore strip Britain of its right to veto.

The full report is available from here.

Maybe now the attendees at the governing Conservative Party Conference in Manchester can be persuaded to discuss the EU, and the grave danger it now threatens to Britain's prosperity!