Monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression

[mia]

Source: Daily Telegraph

Events are moving fast in Europe. The worst riots since the fall of Communism have swept the Baltics and the south Balkans. An incipient crisis is taking shape in the Club Med bond markets. S&P has cut Greek debt to near junk. Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish bonds are on negative watch.

Dublin has nationalised Anglo Irish Bank with its half-built folly on North Wall Quay and €73bn (£65bn) of liabilities, moving a step nearer the line where markets probe the solvency of the Irish state.

A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be. Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill.

Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped....



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4278642/Monetary-union-has-left-half-of-Europe-trapped-in-depression.html

---

Not a mention of blame directed toward the U.S in this article.

[roamer65]

1. The burst of the US housing bubble was the trigger that set all of this in motion.

A severe worldwide economic recession is here. Nouriel Roubini was right, and still is...

[depakid]

2. Which makes it impressive when Americans loudly whinge about US taxpayers

having to make an effort to halt the systemic meltdown whenever there are ancillary benefits to other nations.

There's plenty of blame to go around- but the lion's share belongs to the US and the lead it took with its irresponsible deregulatory and monetary policies.

Which were supported and advanced by Republicans and Democrats alike....

[razors edge]

7. These are the symptoms, not the ailment.

There is that old saying about those who do not remember the past...

Fiat currency always fails, propping it up with more paper won't help. When nobody will accept your paper for goods and services, printing more will only make the situation worse.

[mia]

4. If half of Europe is in a depression, I wonder how long it will take

for the U.S to be considered half-way there. I'm sure that there are many here who must be feeling stresses similar eo those who lived during the Great Depression.

[JCMach1]

25. Europe's real estate bubble was just as real... and fed by the same easy credit

But, is that the fault of the EURO?

[Doctor Cynic]

3. Ah, yes. More British BS.

Without the Euro then most of the mentioned countries would be in an Icelandic-style meltdown. They're lucky the Euro has at least saved their shirts.

[reggie the dog]

8. exactly

I am much happier to have Euro today than I would be if I had French francs. I have more confidence in the Euro staying stronger than I would for the mark, the franc, the lira all divided. Half of Europe is in a depression because wages stagnated while housing, oil, food, and goods prices went up in combination with the constant delocalizing of our factories elesewhere. Is the UK not in a depression yet?? The pound is falling like a rock, wages are stagnating in face of inflation of prices, jobs are constantly being delocalized, like in the rest of EU more and more young people see "no future, no future for meee" so I think we can see the USA's the UK's and the EU's problems have other root causes going back to the seventies, not the fact that there is a shared monitary zone. Having said that he makes some pertinent critiques of the contraintes the Euro candidate countries are under.

[Baby Snooks]

5. A portent of things to come...

We no longer really have a European financial system or an Asian financial system or an American financial system. We have one financial system. And it is collapsing.

[Ghost Dog]

6. This is not news. It is opinion.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is a long-standing anti-Europe "little England" Anglo-Saxon supremacist campaigner, writing in the right-wing Telegraph newspaper. For him, "Brussels" and the Euro are to blame for everything, and England must always reign supreme.

:vomit:

There is resistance and rioting in Greece against corrupt crony capitalism. The economic conditions elsewhere in Europe are those felt everywhere in the world.

[reggie the dog]

9. Greek riots

Greek riots are reported here in France as being the result of a generation of people age 30 to 15 who have or are doing university studies, up to MA and PHD levels but who often work for 700 euro a month if they stay in Greece. Young people have trouble getting jobs or jobs that pay ok. For people not going to the university they often live on the same 700 euros a month. This is pissing off people, they live less well than their parents, they cannot move out into their own housing, they seldom have money to go on holiday, they are fed up and they have a shitty corrupt right wing governemnt so they are rioting. There are many many paralles I see with France in this aspect, but we who do studies often get 1800 euro a month after five years of work, having started at 1200. it is true some of us stagnate at 1200 euro a month others who get minimum wage get about 1000 a month, this is all after taxes. At any rate in France our money also goes farther because of our nationalized health and university systems (tuitiion at universities is in the 4, yes four, to 200 euro per year range based on income level. So in France even though we have problems with high yough unemployment and we live less well than our parents, our less well is still better off than that of Greece, but soon it will be really shitty here in France if nothing changes. I cannot imagine this is only a Greek or French problem.

[Ghost Dog]

10. Yes. This is the same here in Spain, and it appears to be

the same for most young people in most of Europe. Decent jobs are hard to get, especially outside 'service' sectors.

It is put down to "neo-liberal" in European terms ("Liberal" here means in economic terms, not in social terms) (read neo-conservative in USA) policies - ie. unregulated or loosely-regulated "laissez faire" capitalism.

The exact same forces are at play in Europe as in the USA - due to this free-for-all, lowest-common-denominator capitalist globalisation.

Where frustration has turned into ugly demonstrations, even violent rioting, in Europe, though, a common element appears to be people becoming aware of or finally feeling too fed up with the obvious signs of corruption among the rich and their hangers-on.

That and violence meted out by the 'authorities'. The flashpoint in Greece was the murder of a protesting student by a policeman (as was the case two years ago in France)...

None of this has much directly to do with the merits or demerits of the Euro currency or the European Union itself. Or at least not in Ambrose's rather partisan sense. He has been shilling for those who would like to see a breakup of the EU and/or a breakdown of the Euro ever since their inception - so as to further, it is supposed, the interests of the UK and USA.

There are many who would argue that a Europe united in a degree of mutual solidarity will prove to be more resilient than the alternative longed for by petty nationalists and mostly right-wing extremists. Including perhaps above all in Germany, which country does indeed contribute the most to the EU's economy in return for open access to Europe's very large internal market.

[bemildred]

11. Pissing off the well-educated young is a very stupid thing to do.

History is full of examples. Has nothing to do with the Euro. Look at the USA in the 1960s.

[NashVegas]

12. Yeah, Look Where That Got Us

Nixon
Reagan
Bush

[leftstreet]

18. Thanks for your perspective

Do recommend any online new sources for international news? I know it's probably all corporate bs, but do you rely on any to be fairly informative?

:hi:

[reggie the dog]

27. in english or in French???

in french the left newspaper Liberation is good but biased to the French left (hard hard left in the USA). Le monde is centrist in French terms, Figaro is our right wing (sort of like the left in the USA). type their names in your favorite search engine to find their websites.

In english the BBC new on the bbc website is, in my opinion, centrist and balanced as is the Guardian.

[Ghost Dog]

30. News out of Europe?

Corporate mainstream in English? Oh, the FT and the Guardian, especially opinions, but, as always, you need to be discriminating in your selection of reading and how to read it (often, between the lines). I usually follow Reuters on the net (and DU of course) for international breaking news. For reports from within Europe, I find sources such as El País (in Spanish), which I read every day together with local (Spanish regional) press, to be better informed than any English language mainstream press. From what I've seen (I also read some French) this is the case with other left-leaning mainstream press such as Le Monde. On the 'foreign policy' level, you could do worse than look at Le Monde Diplomatique http://mondediplo.com/

You read stories knowing more-or-less from what perspective it was written, then you form your own opinion, your own overall picture of what's going on. I refuse to have TV in the house and read a lot: I think that helps, as an antidote to all the down-dumbing bullshit brainwashing.

On the net, from a mainstream, "professional & executive" but fairly objective approach to EU stories, mostly in economics and "high politics", you could do worse than to check out EurActiv http://www.euractiv.com/en and EuroIntelligence http://www.eurointelligence.com/ from time to time. Then there's the, even more 'oficialist', New Europe http://www.neurope.eu/ . To find more sources, this may be a place to start: http://www.world-newspapers.com/ .

Then there are the Alternative sources on the net, of which there are legion. I haven't come across anything like DU or even KOS that operates at a European level yet (it would be all-but impossible in terms of the very diverse party-politics, except perhaps among Greens, but along broadly ideologically progressive lines it ought to be possible, I think). It would be nice to know if anyone else has? For myself, since I do some anti-mainstream indymedia work, I receive plenty of hints about what might be going on at the more anarchist (which does not necessarily mean violent) end of the spectrum. :) Spanish is probably one of the best languages for this. There are sometimes very relevant articles from a European perspective to be found at http://wsws.org/

At least viewed from here (if I'm not at home in the Canary Islands I'm at home in the barrio of Gràcia in Barcelona), I think I am seeing signs of an 'upwelling' (bottom-up) of political feeling (even if many don't know they are acting politically) that is forming not only a push for a kind of essentially middle-class and bourgeois 1960s-style 'cultural revolution' (essentially, looking for 'better jobs'), but also, at a more gritty level, of modern varieties of 'anarcho-syndicalist' and 'environmental-socialist' movements. The way society is organised, the political and institutional systems in power are being questioned. Where mainstream unions are too cozy with governments and the corporate status quo, more genuinely progressive movements are, fragmentedly, forming. Genuine social revolution is definitely not 'off the table' as economic conditions worsen, imo. Where privatisations, government bailouts and even nationalisations are seen to fail, pragmatic workers' cooperatives begin to look like viable alternatives as a wide range of anti-corporate, anti-bureaucracy, anti-system protest movements come to the fore.

Be aware that, while there are plenty of 'big businesses' and huge international corporations in Europe, the real economy consists of many many thousands of small to middle-sized enterprises, often family-owned and -run, or held and run by a small group of private 'associates'. This is what really holds Europe together, and local, national and intra-European markets are what these businesses mostly serve. Many of these could easily be operated on a more cooperative basis. Since the European internal market is so vital, and even without going into the more ecological, radical socialist and anarchist arguments, I fully expect to see EU barriers progressively raised raised external 'competitors', through socio-economic necessity. Thankfully, imo, many non-Western societies have been able to develop economically to varying degrees, although perhaps not so much socially, during the era of laissez-faire globalisation; era which is coming to an end, it seems to me. There will be more regulated, more controlled international trade, with an emphasis on more local production and distribution. Naturally, what happens in the USA will continue to have a significant, but declining influence, at least until the next deliberately provoked World-Scale War begins as the international oligarchs' neo-feudalist New World Order plans for us all unfold.

Edit: Sorry if this sounds incoherent: I've only just got out of bed on this bright sunny, showery Sunday morning over here on the island (where most of the local politicians and large local (property, construction, tourism services) businessmen are hand-in-glove, corruption and general under-the-table dealing is the norm; and where most 'international' residents are from all over Northern Europe as well as Italy and tend to be quite eco-minded and 'hippie-ish' :) ) which was booming with an over 17% economic growth rate that was spewing cement all over the place, and attracting a high rate of working-class immigration from South America and Eastern Europe as well as Morocco and sub-saharan Africa (often illegally but understandably) as well as from mainland Spain until just recently.

[reggie the dog]

28. awarness of injustice breeds discontent

"Where frustration has turned into ugly demonstrations, even violent rioting, in Europe, though, a common element appears to be people becoming aware of or finally feeling too fed up with the obvious signs of corruption among the rich and their hangers-on" nail hit on head!

[Warren Stupidity]

13. umm... bullshit?

this is opinion, not news and does not belong in LBN. It is just UK nationalist neoliberalism that wants to blame the EU for the bad news. Golly gee but England isn't exactly doing so well either, despite having refused that nasty monetary union thing.

[CountAllVotes]

14. you are right

this is an opinion, not LBN.

Belongs under EDITORIALS IMO!

:dem:

[Malikshah]

15. More reasons the CEOs, CFOs, and the Madoff-style folks need to be put on trial in the Hague

and/or Mussolini'd Hundreds of millions affected by the greed of a few.

Where are the consequences for this criminals?

Where is the accountability?

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. British nonsense...they hate the EU because it gives the Continent

equal footing.

They would blame anything and everything on the Union, especially the douchebag Tories, like this asshole.

[reggie the dog]

29. The UK is lucky

we still consider letting them into the Euro Zone.

[LeftishBrit]

34. We don't *all* hate the EU, but the right-wing do.

Evans-Pritchard is particularly conspiraloony on the subject.

[Hannah Bell]

17. how'd this item from the r-wing telegraph make it to the front page w/ 8 recs & 6 comments?

[scarletwoman]

21. Because too many people are clueless. (nt)

[midnight]

19. These events sound as bad as they probably are. I just have

such little understanding of all the hell these monetary institutions devised.

[Diclotican]

20. mia

mia

Good we have our own currencey, Norwigian Kroner then, who by all means doing pretty well, compared to Euro, and British pound.. Not perfect, but compared to others Norway still are in a lucy spot... The political system we have here are maybe after all not the worst of the worst when everything goes...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my naive language.

[mia]

22. I'm glad that the Kroner is doing well.

Thank you for your information as it relates to the financial situation in Europe. Norway is in a better position than some other countries now.

[Diclotican]

32. mia

mia

Maybe our different political leaders and party, who have been in power the last decade or so, was doing something right, when they was safe with the money the was beginning to get from our oil and gas from North Sea after all... You know, our socialist-light politic, or as some of your americans have told me, Communist light economical politic... Well compared to lazies affairs as your Government, both the democratic and republican alike have been selling them self, and the world we managed pretty well, with our rather strict politic i guess:evilgrin:

Maybe some input of socialism, would not harm US after all... When we know who outstanding "liberalism" was given the US in the end I have the feeling that some socialism would not be to harmfully for you too... Maybe you can get on your feet again too... But I know, just the word of something socialism would mean the end of a man who want political power.. The McCarthy of the 1950s was doing their work excellent I might have to say...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[BlueMTexpat]

23. This is from the Telegraph, not surprisingly.

Its editorial board would love to see the whole of the EU collapse. And it holds steadfastly to the use of the GBP, which is having economic difficulties of its own.

The paper occasionally has some good articles, but its slant is generally anti-EU, and especially anti-Euro. The good old boys there would very much like to turn back the clock. So take this article with a grain of salt.

:popcorn:

[DumpDavisHogg]

24. The EU overall is undemocratic

Why is everyone insisting the EU is so great? They extradited an Austrian author to Greece on bogus "blasphemy" charges, they censor video games, and the EU's new head is a climate change denier.

Someone please tell me what is so great about the EU?

[JCMach1]

26. Also, the ECB buried its head in the sand for months as the real

estate bubble burst...

First, they arrogantly believed it was an American problem. Meanwhile, they didn't notice their own bubble collapsing around them.

[LeftishBrit]

36. They also offer an alternative to RW extremism; and exert pressures for human rights.

E.g. a country that criminalizes homosexuality cannot join the EU. Also anti-death penalty, etc.

It is not perfect, but the alternatives are worse - as shown by the fact that most RW-ers hate it.

(Former Euro-sceptic here; converted to support of the EU by the anti-EU right-wing tabloids, Mark Steyn - and, by far the most of all, by George Bush and Blair's alliance with him.)

[comtec]

40. I have not run into EU game censorship

BUT, Im in the Netherlands where they just slap on a M for mature, and are done with it.
Actually MOST European countries do that. Put on a M and let the parents do their job.

The EU had the stones to take M$ to task and hold them accountable, and actually DEMAND M$ pay what was awarded against them, as opposed to the US that just sank like a wilting flower in too much heat of the MS glare.

The EU has a better record on human right than the US in the last 20 years, and has done more to improve middle eastern relations in the vacuum of US leadership.

IN ADDITION, nearly EVERY country of the EU makes sure ALL their citizens receive HEALTH CARE of some sort FREE, or heavily subsidized - Holland being an exception of sorts. it's nor free, but if you're too poor, it is paid for. Otherwise you pay full (and regulated) price - by the government.

YES the taxes are rather steep (30%+), and I can go on all day about the issues I have with Holland, as I can with my beloved California.

but THAT is why people "love the EU so much" and why the Uk can't stand us... don't worry it goes both way. No one like teh UK either :) arrogant bunch of sods ;]

[struggle4progress]

31. The wingnuts at WorldNetDaily were hawking Evans-Pritchard's book on Bill Clinton back in 2001

... Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's landmark book, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton" is available from WorldNetDaily's online store ... http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22982

And why, you ask, would WND promote that book? Well, let us look back to 1997 ...

The Pied Piper of the Clinton Conspiracists
British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks the President is guily of everything. And he has the twisted facts and distorted reporting to prove it

BY GENE LYONS

In the past, whenever lunatic Clinton-haters were accused of being beyond the pale, they would point to one particular journalist -- a veteran foreign correspondent who wrote for a respected British newspaper and whose dispatches from Washington and Arkansas, they proudly claimed, bore out their most incendiary charges.

The correspondent's name is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Much to the regret of our home-grown kooks and conspiracists, he has since departed these shores to become the London Daily Telegraph's "roving European correspondent." As a parting gift, however, Evans-Pritchard has bequeathed us a book, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," just published by Regnery ...

The real energy in this opus, however, is devoted to the more traditional themes of Clintonphobia: sex, drug-smuggling, money laundering and murder. Of the many homicides he lays at the president's feet, "the Rosetta Stone" is what Evans-Pritchard calls the "extra-judicial execution" of White House counsel Vince Foster. He sees in this "murder," allegedly carried out at the behest of the White House inner circle and possibly on the direct orders of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a sign of "incipient fascism" in the United States.

Never mind that the sprawling, Arkansas-based criminal conspiracy Evans-Pritchard purports to have uncovered would require the complicity of the Little Rock Police Department, numerous county sheriffs and district attorneys, the Arkansas State Police, the FBI, DEA, CIA, several Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys and federal judges, Arkansas Sens. David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, not to mention Oliver North, the late William Casey, Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and Whitewater independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr (dubbed by Evans-Pritchard the "Pontius Pilate of the Potomac"). His methodology remains everywhere the same. If two dozen witnesses, crime scene photographs and an autopsy attended by a half dozen investigators confirm the existence of, say, an exit wound made by a .38 caliber slug in the back of poor Vince Foster's skull, this intrepid reporter can be counted upon to track down an ambulance attendant who failed to see it, and from that failure deduce that all the others have perjured themselves and the cover-up has been exposed. In the footnotes, that source turns out to be a "confidential informant" ...

http://www.salon.com/news/1997/12/23news.html

In short, the man is a fruitcake

[LeftishBrit]

33. This is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who is an absolute lunatic

Even by the standards of the Torygraph, he's exceptionally dodgy. He is a RW British nut, who has spent time in America, and combines the typical far-right British paranoia ('blame the EU for everything!') with the typical far-right American paranoia ('blame Clinton for everything')! This is an example of the first type of paranoia.

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. Alternative view: Euro membership is saving small countries

It's no wonder that so many Icelanders are angry. They live in a country bankrupted by the excesses of their bankers, who took on liabilities 10 times the nation's GDP, betting billions in Britain's property bubble. Bailed out only by a jumbo IMF loan, inflation and interest rates are now 18% and rising. Many are considering emigration. Only membership of the euro, if it can be secured, offers a lifeline.

Ireland made the same bet, and on Friday the government had to nationalise its third biggest bank - Anglo Irish. Like the Icelandic banks, it had been speculating in Britain's property bubble. The joke across the Irish sea is that the only difference between Ireland and Iceland is one letter and six months. But there is another, more crucial, difference. Ireland is in the euro; otherwise, like Iceland, it would be bust.

After what happened to the world's banks last week - and to Barclays Bank in particular, whose share price collapsed 25% in an hour on Friday - it's clear that Britain is at risk of being next in line. We too have a banking system that is huge in relation to our GDP, but, like Iceland, we are not in the euro. Unless we act quickly, decisively and cleverly, the difficulties of our banks could overwhelm us, triggering an enormous run on the pound. Britain, in short, risks bankruptcy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/18/recession-banking

It has to be said, Will Hutton has a lot more credibility on financial matters, and is far less ideological, than Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

[mia]

37. Glad to have more credible information.

Thanks to you and the others who have posted on this thread, I'm a lot better informed.

[Dirk_H]

38. new propaganda from A. E.-P.

If extremist Euro-hater Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says something about the EU or the EURO, you can be quite sure, that the exact opposite id the truth.

[LeftishBrit]

39. You are right there!