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You seem to know less than nothing about it.

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ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

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You seem to know less than nothing about it.

That's pretty much the case with him no matter what he's posting about.

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ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

I know very little really, but I know more than you do.

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Merkel won a victory last month in getting the EU to consider amending the Lisbon treaty, which took more than eight years to negotiate, arguing it was necessary if the bloc was to set up a permanent system for handling financial crises.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, is due to report back in December on how limited treaty change proposals might be carried out. The initial aim was to get the amendments ratified by all member states by mid-2013. Now Germany wants concrete proposals to be ready at the latest by spring 2012, so that a so-called government convention can be agreed.

"The government is pushing for a limited amendment to the treaty to allow greater influence over states that bust budget rules and agreed obligations on stability and consolidation," a source told Reuters. "This should be done and dusted by the end of 2012."

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Many of the EU's 27 member states are opposed to altering a charter which they struggled to ratify and fear difficult referendums on further change.

Some states also believe more stringent action can be taken against profligate euro zone members without changing the charter. Merkel has suggested she would like to see the EU have the right to interfere in national budgets in extreme cases where euro zone stability is put at risk. But Germany has stopped short of that in its proposals and asks rather for sanctions for those that breach deficit rules to be written into the treaty.

This would involve the right to challenge states at the European Court, to have their budgets declared void, without meddling further in the details.

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Good perhaps you should go to Ottawa too.

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ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

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Good perhaps you should go to Ottawa too.

I'm already there silly boy. [:D]

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Since you're an expert on everything, why don't you go give him advice. Surely the opinions such a universal genius would be welcome.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed signs of an end to the weeks of uncertainty in Italy, saying the approval of a reform package in parliament on Saturday was "heartening."

She also urged euro zone states on Sunday to give more powers to Brussels and push toward closer fiscal union. She told Germany's ZDF television: "We want to keep the euro, along with all the other states that have it. But that requires a fundamental change of our policy and 'more Europe'."

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As I long feared, the flood of cheap credit into Southern Europe and the slow death of Club Med industry by currency asphyxiation have together created such a dangerous situation for world finance that informed opinion is willing to turn a blind eye to EU sovereign trespass. Some even applaud.

The Greeks were ordered to drop their referendum on measures that reduce their country to a sort of Manchukuo, with EU commissars "on the ground", installed in each ministry, drawing up lists of state assets to be liquidated to pay foreign creditors. Europe had the monetary and fiscal means to contain the EMU debt crisis long enough for Greeks to give or withhold their crucial assent to this ultimatum in December.

It chose - under German-Dutch pressure - not deploy those means. Instead it forced Greece to capitulate by cutting off an agreed loan payment.

In Italy, the European Central Bank has engineered the downfall of Silvio Berlusconi by playing the bond markets, switching purchases on and off to enforce compliance with its written dictates ("La Lettera"), and ultimately allowing 10-year yields to spike to 7.45pc to drive him out.

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Imagine twenty-seven Eurocrats sitting in a Euro-tree, each one sitting on the end of a branch facing the trunk with his or her back facing outwards, a saw held eagerly in hand, all meowing Eurocratic phrases such as: "The perfect progress of the people in the exciting European economic space", "Together we saw, like never before" or "Cutting wood and cutting costs, we build a common future and cut out loss", as they all saw the trunk in front of them.


Suddenly there is a massive crack and many of these leaders lurch downwards as the branches upon which they are sitting start to sag and snap. "Oh lá! lá! Mon Dieu!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Gosh! I say, eh what?" you can hear, among a cacophony of other languages as the Italian tries to scramble up the back of the Slovenian, who in turn grabs the leg of the Austrian, who tries to hold onto the shoe of the German at the top, who unceremoniously gives him a kick.

"We tried the Anschluss before," says the German. "This time we will buy you out but you have to pay back!" and thereupon the German calls in an army of carpenters who set about mending the branches before they fall. The British member has climbed to an off-shoot from the main truck, a graft, basically a separate tree with the same stem, from where he launches from time to time tirades against his hapless neighbours scrambling around below him. "Look! You've simply got to get your house in order, you Continentals!".

"Taisez vous!" says the French leader, his feet flailing below him as the carpenters shore up his branch with Super-Glue Three made in China. "You are not a member of the Euro-tree, your branch is different! Allez vous en!" A spat ensues between the British and the French member.

Further down, the Portuguese leader is cheesed off because the Euro-tree members prohibited his people from eating pig's ear salad and from killing pigs in back yards, while the Spanish one is equally livid because Euroland's Eurotocracy stipulated that throwing goats from church bell towers is bad form, the Belgians were banned from farming mussels because their moules broke the rules, the Italians were forbidden from claiming to be the homeland of pasta because it was in fact invented by Libya and in the Baltic States, Estonian vodka was labelled as downright dangerous, Latvians were told to stop behaving like Fascists and worshipping the Nazis and the Lithuanians could not find anyone to buy their picked herrings with soured cabbage in rusty tins.

The German leader told them all to shut up and listen. Germany would pay for their branches to be saved, and would pay for them to sit there without using their saws on condition that that did not saw anything. They paid the Portuguese to destroy their industry, fisheries and agriculture, a proposal which the Portuguese Prime Minister accepted on condition he be called a "good student" and be patted on the head at regular intervals, a behaviour adopted by all the other Eurocrats up the tree. Since the German paid, he called the tunes and imposed his or her, in this case, rules and rates and parameters on the other members.

Some time later, bedlam broke loose in the Eurotree. The Greek Eurocrat fell onto the Irish member, who decided to break his fall by opening his arms and legs, catching the Italian, Portuguese and French as he plummeted earthwards. The German member called the Fire Brigade. "Allo! Allo! Achtung! Achtung! Ve haf many Eurocrats up tree, zey are falling!"

The Fire Engine was a Mercedes, of course and it purred to the base of the tree. A stern-looking German sergeant with a scar instead of lips, barked: "From now on, all lands will use 1.75 millilitres of Euro-pest control liquid per three point eight slugs!" This created problems in southern Europe, because there were too many slugs for the people to be able to afford so much pest control liquid, so they asked Germany for German salaries.

The Germans then gave them a special package, the Super Slug Pellet, destined to save 70 per cent of the cabbages, on condition they receive a payment of 80% of the cabbages produced and a reduction in the workforce of 80 per cent. This meant that there were no jobs for people to go to and an insufficient number of cabbages to sell.

At this moment, the entire tree is in uproar because the southern Europeans say they want German salaries if they are to implement German solutions, while the Germans tell them they should implement German solutions with southern European salaries, the British and French members are kicking each other, the Greek is almost falling off while his people try to set fire to his shoes and all hell has broken loose on the western side because a new kind of caterpillar has appeared which cannot be classified because it came from outside the Eurozone.

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ORIGINAL: Arpig

Oh my goodness, aren't you just the ignorant little douchebag?

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What do you think is going to happen ?

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Talking to yourselves are you, Pommy?

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Complain to the moderators if my posts bother you that much..

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Is the European Union’s supposed “democratic deficit” now spreading to individual European countries in the wake of the sovereign-debt crisis? The rise of unelected technocrats to political power in Greece and Italy suggests, at least superficially, that the old taboo against technocratic governments pursuing an EU-dictated agenda has been shattered.
Consider Italy. Most Italians breathed a collective sigh of relief that three-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is being replaced by a technocrat par excellence, former European Commissioner Mario Monti, a respected economist. Greece, too, is turning over the reigns of government to an unelected, and supposedly apolitical, technocrat, Lucas Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank.

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According to an alarming poll published recently by the leading Italian newspaper La Repubblica, more than 22% of Italians find no great differences between an authoritarian and a democratic system of government. Another 10% believe that an authoritarian regime is better and more effective than a democratic political system.

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One objection to delegating political authority to technocrats is that such appointments amount to a humiliating constraint on sovereignty. In normal times, that is unacceptable to most citizens. But in times of crisis, the voice of the neutral technocrat gains greater legitimacy.

Monti, for example, was among the first to sound the alarm about Italy’s dire finances. But, attesting to the technocrat’s neutrality, back in August he also warned about the implications of demands by non-elected international institutions (in this case, the European Central Bank) for particular policies in exchange for support of Italian bonds in international markets. Monti called this podestà forestiero, something of a foreign overlordship based in Brussels, Washington, and Frankfurt, as well as Berlin and Paris.

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ORIGINAL: Arpig

They don't bother me, I find them quite entertaining, in a sort of Pythonesque way.

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It looks as though, by Monday, both Greece and Italy will be ruled by so-called ‘technocratic’ governments. Even though both Greek prime minister George Papandreou and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi were elected comfortably in parliamentary polls and were never defeated in any vote of confidence in parliament, they have been ousted – to be replaced by unelected ex-central bankers and former executives of hedge funds and investment banks. From now on, financial markets will rule directly over the lives of the Italian and Greek people.

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But at least Berlusconi was elected. Now he is to replaced not by new elected leader but by central bankers and investment bankers. They will take orders from the EU, the ECB, and the IMF, the dread Troika. The IMF is led by ex-French finance minister Christine Lagarde. Lagarde used to head up a global law firm that advised on ‘creative accounting’ schemes for government debt and her deputy David Lipton used to work at Moore Capital, a global hedge fund. The EU body that will oversee the Greek bailout package and may buy Italian debt is the EFSF. Its headed by Klaus Regling, who worked at hedge fund Moore Capital! In 2009 he lectured: ”The monetary union will work better in the next ten years than in the last ten years, considering the overall scheme of things.” Fees from EFSF bond issuance will be worth 1 per cent of a likely $100-billion of issuance to the big European banks and the likes of Goldman Sachs. So they will be making good money out of the ‘bailout’ funding.

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Though Monti, a former advisor to Goldman Sachs, is heavily championed by the country's respected president, many in parliament have spent the week whispering that Berlusconi's ouster amounts to a "banker's coup." "Yesterday, in the chamber of deputies we were bitterly joking that we were going to get a Goldman Sachs government," says a parliamentarian from Berlusconi's government, who asked to remain anonymous citing political sensitivity. With less than 24 hours until Berlusconi's expected resignation, other names, closer to the outgoing prime minister, were beginning to be floated. If the markets object, the world will find out as soon as the opening bells ring on Monday.

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We've seen the Arab spring - now we confront the bankers' winter. In the first, the people rose up with the intention of replacing dictatorship with democracy. In the second, we witness the replacement of democratically elected leaders with bankers imposed by the bond markets.

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Perhaps you should run Ontario with bank appointed mandarins, since that style of government appears to appeal to the lot of you..