OECD shakes off its seasonal stupor!

Some take a day off for Christmas, others a couple and two more for the New Yeat, in Britain it has become traditional to spread the break out to two or even three weeks with leftover days from annual vacation allowances. The OECD it seems manages to extend this into February.

The Washington Post carries an article that informs us in a headline from its 2nd February edition "OECD paper says Europe’s bailout fund needs be doubled to stem crisis, shore up banks" well who would have thought it. Talk about crying wolf when your flock are scattered and partly eaten!

Here is a paper from the OECD in pdf format, which repeatedly informs us that the OECD is for a "STRONGER, CLEANER, FAIRER, WORLD ECONOMY" alongside a picture of the Parthenon. Tell that to the Greeks I would suggest.

The newspaper article, linked here, begins as follows:

By Associated Press, Published: February 2

PARIS — Europe needs to double the size of its bailout fund to €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) if it is to shore up its banking system and stop the spread of its spiraling debt crisis, according to a paper published Thursday by the economic organization that represents developed countries.

The paper, written by Adrian Blundell-Wignall, who is the special adviser to the secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, laid out a list of steps Europe has to take “if a fracturing of the euro is to be avoided.”

Read the rest of the article, or trace the OECD paper and read the whole thing if you wish, then ask yourself what purpose the OECD can possibly serve, other perhaps than to preserve a failed system by propping up a failed banking system.

Blog editors note on copyright. I have noted AP prohibition on reproducing this article and have quoted the small portion used to attempt to draw attention to the topic and more readers to the original article and the copyright holder. If AP considers this still infringes their rights I will remove the quotation. I have been grappling with the problem of how best to report news sourced by AP for some considerable time and would welcome their guidance.

OECD Outlook hints non-democratically ratified Lisbon Treaty will finish the EU

The June OECD report is linked from here. Hamish McRae writing in The Independent this morning, linked here, concludes as follows:

"But if it (the world economic downturn) is not going to be deep, maybe it will be long. The banks will be scarred (and scared) for a decade. Squeezing out this burst of inflation will take three years at best. The about-turn by the US Federal Reserve this week suggests that the next move in interest rates will be up, not down. The scope for interest rate cuts in the UK and in Europe is limited at best, even though rates are much higher than in the States. Were this a normal cycle you would expect the recovery to be pretty evident by 2010, but somehow I feel a growing concern that this might be wrong: that though this downswing will not be particularly deep, it will be unusually protracted. It will certainly be unusually uneven.

To say that goes far beyond conventional economic forecasting. We don't have the tools to help us envisage what economic growth and inflation will look like in 2014, when presumably our next government will come up for re-election and the next US president will be in his second term, or not. But I am pretty sure the next few years will be difficult for governments in all western democracies. Voters will expect higher living standards and it will be tough to deliver them – tougher even than it is now."

So it would appear that the objective of this blog and its forerunner can at last be seen as attainable, at least somewhere far out on the distant horizon, but what a miserable way to see a small chance for the restoration of democracy and what pain seems in store to arrive at that end.

True, Stuart Wheeler's legal case and the Irish referendum, both almost upon us, could still prevent the worst, but it looks increasingly likely that the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified without the open consent of the peoples of most of Europe. Against the background of the growing economic storm clouds the repercussions could be explosive and those individuals responsible must now clearly be seen to be even more self-serving,callous and incompetent than already evidenced by their disatrous policies which have brought the world to its present sorry plight and destroyed the powers of 27 democratic parliaments almost completely .