Friday, September 23, 2011
"Guilty Men" by Oborne & Weaver
IMO: It's a good book, well worth reading. Perhaps a ltttle sharp in its rebuke on those who gave bad advice etc. But of course they should have got it right - and the man in the street is the loser, not the well paid advisors and perpetrators. Find the book on Google.
Some quotes:
"The cruel fact is that countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal have been condemned to far worse austerity than Britain, precisely because of their membership of the Eurozone. It is the single currency in which Hutton so fervently believes that has brought up such terrible austerity across much of the European continent – and our own cuts would have been far worse had Britain taken his advice and joined."
and Lord Wilson said in 2005
"Although the BBC wishes to be impartial in its news coverage of the EU it is not succeeding".
On promises by politicians and would be statesmen.
"We were told that there could be no financial bail-outs of embattled member states – there have been three so far.
We were told they (financial bail-outs) were illegal – retrospective legislation is being introduced to change this.
We were told there could be no fiscal transfers between member states – the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, as it provides tens of billions of liquidity to bankrupt peripheral economies, is now turning into a mechanism for quiet fiscal transfer, ultimately at the cost of the EU taxpayer.
We were told that the ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet would “defend the European Central Bank’s independence under any circumstance and with all my strength”. This promise proved futile and he and his bank have both been captured by the big EU politicians. As a result the balance sheet of his bank is now in ruins. Like ECB independence, it has become a fiction, since the ECB marks at or near to book value its vast holdings of near worthless Greek, Irish and Portuguese debt."
IMO: I certainly hope somebody sorts out the EU but the less I have to do with it, probably the better.
Some quotes:
"The cruel fact is that countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal have been condemned to far worse austerity than Britain, precisely because of their membership of the Eurozone. It is the single currency in which Hutton so fervently believes that has brought up such terrible austerity across much of the European continent – and our own cuts would have been far worse had Britain taken his advice and joined."
and Lord Wilson said in 2005
"Although the BBC wishes to be impartial in its news coverage of the EU it is not succeeding".
On promises by politicians and would be statesmen.
"We were told that there could be no financial bail-outs of embattled member states – there have been three so far.
We were told they (financial bail-outs) were illegal – retrospective legislation is being introduced to change this.
We were told there could be no fiscal transfers between member states – the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, as it provides tens of billions of liquidity to bankrupt peripheral economies, is now turning into a mechanism for quiet fiscal transfer, ultimately at the cost of the EU taxpayer.
We were told that the ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet would “defend the European Central Bank’s independence under any circumstance and with all my strength”. This promise proved futile and he and his bank have both been captured by the big EU politicians. As a result the balance sheet of his bank is now in ruins. Like ECB independence, it has become a fiction, since the ECB marks at or near to book value its vast holdings of near worthless Greek, Irish and Portuguese debt."
IMO: I certainly hope somebody sorts out the EU but the less I have to do with it, probably the better.
# posted by uv : 1:40 PM
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