Journalist Andy Carling in Belgium, on the dire situation there, where for 18 months now a caretaker government has been handling only routine business.
Now, Belgium, a nation that appears intent on geographical suicide is about to go under. A combination of EU dithering, narrow minded politicians and financial pressure has left the home of the EU without a government and none in sight. This means that there’s nobody to take any responsibility for the €11.2 billion of cuts needed for next year alone. This means that the markets are walking away and a Greece/Italy style collapse is imminent.
The project involves 19 countries looking for ways to convert non-food biomass to energy on a massive scale. One particular target is municipal waste. Imagine the savings if what once was dumped in landfills or burned became energy instead.
Interview with Financial Times chief economics correspondent, Martin Wolf.
From Wolf’s point of view, the choice is an easy one: Restructure now and force the private sector to at least share in the pain (for a change).
But the banksters never want to take a writedown on their dicey bond ‘investments’ and instead try to force the public to pay for it.
The solution to the EU debt crisis is for countries to default on their debt, allow insolvent banks fail, and arrest the criminals responsible. Then their economies will function rather than being strangled by banksters. That’s what Iceland did. And their economy is recovering.
“My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure,” [French President Nicolas Sarkozy] said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups.
“Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want… a society where communities coexist side by side.
“If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France,” the right-wing president said.
“The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women… freedom for little girls to go to school,” he said.
He has a point. An Islamist school might ban girls and also try to impose that view on the culture at large. This clearly comes in conflict with the more egalitarian views of the society at large.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar have also recently said multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants.
Cameron specifically said that allowing Islamists ito live in isolated clusters can foster religious extremism which could lead to terrorism.
Merkel in October said efforts towards multiculturalism in Germany had “failed, totally.”
Yes, these leaders tilt to the right. But this isn’t merely zenophobia or racism. Something has broken in the EU when it comes to multiculturalism.
The grid, which would become fully operational in 2020, would allow the EU countries to share renewable electricity throughout the continent and the British Isles.
Meanwhile, here in the supposedly United States, we’ve been squabbling for years about whether or not to have offshore wind power at all. We still don’t have one single, solitary offshore wind turbine. That’s right, not one. God forbid a Kennedy should have to look out a window and see a turbine fifteen miles out in the ocean. Oh the horror. And if it’s not environmentalist NIMBYs (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) then it’s lunatic right wingers who would prefer we choke on coal fumes or squabbling states afraid someone other state might get one up on them so better kill the whole thing instead or bury it in endless bureaucratic hogtwaddle.
Europe has large amounts of renewable energy with more coming every day. Countries there are joining together to build more. But here in the good ole US of A we are so polarized we seemingly can’t even accomplish simple tasks. I mean, WTF is wrong with this country? Seriously.
The problem is not debt incurred by the government but rather that the banksters, who knowingly bought garbage bonds and made flaky loans, are demanding to be paid back at 100% on the dollar by the government and that the Irish taxpayers foot the bill for banker’s plunder, greed, and recklessness. This is criminal. Ireland should default. And it it doesn’t do so immediately then I expect the new government will probably disavow any agreement and default. Or Spain, Portugal, or Belgium will. It will happen.
The criminal banking class must be stopped. A public bailout of private greed is precisely what Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, Rubin, and Paulson forced upon the American public too. We’ve had enough of this Too Big Too Fail rubbish. These entities are Too Corrupt To Live. We need massive defaults, figurative baseball bats against the heads of the bondholders, and an end to taxpayers being forced to subsidize the sins of the wealthy against the interests of the rest of us.
The only people who benefit from our not burning the senior bondholders are the states, banks and big investors who are owed money by our banks. The Irish people however, have no interest in paying to rescue these bondholders for decades to come.
The most obvious answer is: Ireland’s European partners do not want this to happen, because it would expose the really bad decisions made by pan-European banks and their regulators over the last decade and create potential fiscal risks in other euro-zone countries.
Thinking about the future state of Ireland’s finances now, we can easily start to envision something even more shameful than default. The shameful image begins with the Irish population devoting almost every cent of its tax revenues for the next six years towards propping up parasitic lenders such as Anglo Irish, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks.
Haircuts for all as vexed Germany takes a firm grip on the clippers.
Alan S. Russet Posted on Sun Nov 28, 2010 9:11 am. Tags: EU, Ireland
31 billion euros for Irish bank capital capital aid … Out of 31.5 billion euros total tax revenue for the year! Leaving 0.5 billion euros for the rest of the government. And please note that 31 billion is a *voluntary* contribution to the banks by the government. … Mortgaging the people of Ireland for at least a generation, to bail out a criminal banking system so that they don’t have to face the consequences of their actions.
Cap and trade is mandatory in the EU for large corporations. They must participate. And guess what, it is successful. Unlike in the US where a a timid little voluntary cap and trade system was tried and predictably failed, the EU system has demonstrably lowered emissions and increased the use of clean, renewable energy.
More wind power capacity was installed [there] last year than any other electricity-generating technology. What’s more, new wind capacity replaced fossil energy.
In 2009 Europe actually decommissioned more coal, nuclear and gas plants than it built.
A whopping 61% of all new power generating capacity added in 2009 was renewable energy
This shows what can happen when governments genuinely support clean energy.
Ireland should default on their debt and force the banker thugs to take a haircut on their investments. And that’s precisely what might happen after their craven and corrupt government falls. The new government will be much more militant and should simply repudiate the debt.
These debts were incurred, not to pay for public programs, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but their own profit. Yet ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of those debts.
And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.
Ireland is being asked to cut to social services, slash wages, renegotiate contracts, and dismantle the welfare state so that undercapitalized banks in France and Germany can get their pound of flesh. But, why? They’re the ones who bought the bonds. No one put a gun to their head. They knew they could lose money if Irish banks went south. That’s the risk they took. “You pays your money, and you takes your chances.”
Why the average Irish citizen should have to bail out foreign bondholders is beyond me, but I do note that the same happened in the US with taxpayers footing an enormous bill for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG.
At least in Europe they are fighting back, with major protests in Britain, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. That’s what the Tea Party is about here. Our current international banking system is rotten and corrupt at the core. It needs to be dismembered and replaced with something more equitable. The first step is for European countries to default on the debt made by private bankers and institutions.
“The euro game is up… Just who the hell do you think you are? You are very dangerous people”
Famous euroskeptic Nigel Farage in just under 4 brief minutes tells more truth about the entire European experiment than all European bankers, commissioners, and politicians have done in the past decade.
Just who the hell do you think you people are. You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this European state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions will suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won’t work, cause its Portugal next with their debt levels of 325% of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain will be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money will is gone – there won’t be any more. But it’s even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.”
Rather than more bailouts to save corrupt banks that knowingly made garbage loans and bought dicey bonds, the debtor countries of the EU should default on their debt and force the bankster slime to take pennies on the dollar. If that causes the banks to fail, well, the world will be a better place once we clean up their mess and imprison those who created the crisis. But the mess can not be cleaned up if governments (who are beholden to the banks) continue to bail them out with taxpayer money.
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