Portuguese Parliament Demonstrations dramatise next step in EU Torment

The mad efforts to save the foul and useless Euro currency by ruthless imposition of budget cuts and swingeing tax increase took another step last evening in Portugal; sparking demonstrations in front of the National Parliament which in turn provided an AFP copyright image that may come to signify the pointlessness of the misery of the  EU cisis, just as the My Lai massacre image did for Vietnam's agony, see it here.

"Another Fine Mess" Olli says Portugal needs more bailouts!

Read the always inevitable report of the latest absurdities from EU Finance Commissioner Olli Rehn, linked here.

Unhappily, again today, I cannot supply Olli's "Another Fine Mess" theme tune as Google have demonstrated their control by the EU in appearing to have had all versions of the original Laurel & Hardy song removed from YouTube, co-incidence - I think not!

Originally the statement on the video was that the uploader had closed their YouTube account. This morning we have the following:

"Laurel and Hardy Anoth..."
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Cinematographische Commerz Anstalt. 

 

Enough said eh!

Portugal to require second bailout - 50 Economists

Reuters pours some realism over those wishing the Eurozone's woes might just vanish, a quote is here:

A separate poll of 50 economists suggested there is a 70 percent chance that Portugal will require a second EU/IMF bailout at some point.

One is tempted to question what a private haircut on Purtuguese bonds might be called when recalling that Merkozy promised Greece would be a unique and one off case. Maybe they could get Greece to buy the bonds and cough up the 30 billion, Antonio Saraiva, head of Portugal’s main industry confederation, said yesterday was needed “I’ll dare to say we have a credit crunch...What is lacking is €30bn.” (As reported by Open Europe today) and the whole lot can now be included with the Greek haircut, (negotiations upon which are seemingly endlessly continuing) thus maintaining the pretence that things are developing as Merkozy wished!

Remember in all this, it was the dreaded two headed Merkozy which made the early error by not just accepting a Greek default and a Euro exit! They would never allow it, seemed to be one of the early statements if memory serves.

Moody's downgrade Portuguese Bonds to Junk

The report is linked here, the crumbling of the euro is speeding by the day!

Finagling Finns Dirty their own Democracy!

An English language report on the unusual nature of events, scheduled to take place this afternoon in the Finnish Parliament, from Helsinki, may be read from here.

Note some of the grotesque gyrations the Finns are now going through, in order to provide Portugal with an EU bail out, which will assuredly prove as useless as that given to Greece one year ago. All quotes come from the linked article:

Soini, whose party opposes the bailout package, promised that his ten-minute speech “will not disappoint”.

One of the issues that Soini planned to touch upon is the morality of the process.
A decision on the bailout question will be made by the new Parliament, but it is being presented to Parliament by the old government, which is still in office in a caretaker capacity as negotiations on the formation of a new coalition are going on.....

An unusual aspect of the process is that the it includes a Parliamentary vote of confidence in a government that will soon leave office....

The Social Democratic Party, which previously opposed EU subsidies for Portugal, now supports the package.