The economy is beyond Merkels control and she can never guarantee that. She said what people wanted to hear. True that many Eurosceptics would like to see the Euro collapse but you are repeatedly saying it as though that is the only crowd who would like to see the demise of the Euro.
Eh? Merkel and her government are in almost full control of the German economy.. Just as the Cameron is in control of the British and so on.
As i stated already, if the Euro continues on its free fall, if the bail outs can only provide a short term solution for the PIGS and the currency ends up inhibiting Germany's performance as an economy, then it is not unrealistic to suggest that country-loving Germans, Eurosceptic or not, would like to see the government enact a plan-b to slowly implement plans to finally turn to a domestic currency. Surely your not suggesting this is an unrealistic and impossible notion?
Well the Euro is rising yet again... and noting is impossible as I said.. just unrealistic. All parties in Germany back the idea of the Euro.
Perhaps it wont even take a Euro tragedy. The EU is clearly unable to exert any form of pressure over the finances of each government properly and thus it would be realistic to expect Germans to have a currency whose value is dependent on their own performance.
No no no, you dont understand. The EU is not allowed to exert any form of pressure over the finances of each government. It has never been its job. It seems you are giving the EU far far far more power than it actually has..
I find it bewildering that the EU should subject its nations to strict market integration rules,
Again, you are seriously twisting how the EU works. The EU does not subject anyone to anything since all nations governments are involved in the market integration rules.
Only the Eurozone and only in a limited fashion.
and even establish a foreign policy chief
That position has been there for over a decade if not longer.
yet completely fail short of warning European governments about their financial excesses
Not their job... and frankly they do warn them by being critical of countries that are over the 3% deficit limit.
Irrelevant to this discussion.
and then make out it is not their area of economic "jurisdiction".
In many cases it is not.
Surely a government borrowing way more money than it can pay back in the foreseeable future puts the entire union at risk?
Yes and no.. and again it is not the job of the EU to deal with such things. Italy and Belgium have had very high debt vs GDP for decades.
Thus i find it odd the EU would not take steps to warm governments of the issue.
And what would that change? Dont you think the governments are aware of it before the EU?
They need not have any authority over regulating banks to ensure steps where taken by member nations to act more responsibility and be more accountable.
If the EU had gone in and done what you are saying then you and the Eurosceptics would be up in arms over the wide reaching EU bla bla. Like it or not the EU has nothing to do with bank regulation.
Merely raising the issue and pressing it could have made a difference, yet no such mention of any problems occurred.
They did and do all the time. Does not mean the countries listen. The EU voices its opinion on many things and the Eurosceptics slam them on it for trying to force more regulation on Europe.. and in many cases it is just opinion.. go figure.
Yet it took a financial meltdown before European officials decided they should investigate Greek expenses.
LOL no, get your facts straight. It took a new government in Greece (a socialist one) to out the previous government (a right wing on) for lieing about the state of the finances. They admitted they had lied to the markets and the EU statistic office. That brought in the EU investigators. The Greek situation had in principle nothing to do with the crisis.
I dont care if Ireland/Portugal did or didn't lie. Imagine they had. You would have been none the wiser. "Trust but verify".
Yes.. that goes for anything in life. Like it or not you do NOT have full information and any illegal activity is only found out when either someone admits it or they are caught doing it.
Its job is also to ensure this can sustain itself. This is why all sorts of anti-competitive laws are in place as well as rules on GDP/debt. In this instance it fell short. And as we know from the lisbon treaty, this cover that the EU is merely an economic union is a lie, it has not been so since the early days of its existence as the European Community.
Disagree and your comments are factually incorrect.
I was talking about the EU.
And as I stated, the EU does not have that power on the individual countries.
Yet the EU had done nothing to persuade the governments of said countries to enact some change.
Because it is not their job.
The EU applied no pressure whatsoever.
Actually it does regularly under normal economic situations.. Germany and France have both been criticized for too high deficits during the last decade. But as usual, economic matters of member nations is the sole responsibility of said nations, not the EU.
The EU had not bought up the issue, not once.
And you read every EU communique that comes out? And again, it aint their job to bring up the issue since the economy of a country is the prerogative of said country.
The EMU didn't even bother checking Greece statistics for themselves and instead decided to naively trust their word and now they pay for the consequences.
Again.. it is the ECB or Eurostat.... EMU is something entirely different and only a piece of paper. And they did check the Greek statistics, just as they check all the other statistics. Problem was that the Greeks were cooking the books and were very good at it.
The EU has the ability to bring up its concerns with said nation, its their job.
NO, it is NOT their job.. for god sake..Read the treaty, where does it say that the EU has the job of playing nanny to the member nations over economic matters?
They have the ability to indirectly influence decisions but they decided to sit and wait instead.
Yes that is another matter.. indirectly they can and have voiced concern many times over economic policies in some countries, but that is about it. It is not their freaking job to babysit individual countries governments on economic policy. It NEVER has been.
The EU as you said is there to ensure and sustain economic prosperity. It failed to highlight concerns of boom and bust in the PIGS country during the run up to the crises. It may not have direct control over member nation budgets - and it shouldn't - but this is no an excuse.
Again.. you are cherry picking things big time and do not have a understanding of the EU and what it can and can not do. The "ensure and sustain economic prosperity" is only within the framework of what the EU treaty allows. This does not include babysitting individual countries on their economic policies.
As for failing to highlight the concerns of the boom and bust of the PIGS. Each country has different problems and some not even related to the "boom and bust" years. Portugal for example have structural problems (which the EU has brought up for decades), and did not have a boom or bust period when the others had. Greece did not have the same type of boom as the Irish, but had a corrupt government and massive structural problems. Spain had a freaking surplus and the lowest debt vs GDP (and still has a very low one) up to the crisis and anyone with a pair of eyes could see that the building boom and rising house prices would not last. Same goes for Ireland. So not sure what on earth the EU could have done since IT IS NOT THEIR JOB to babysit member nations economic policy.
Greece's vast deficits caused it to fail the criteria for joining the single European currency in 1999, but it succeeded in 2001. Did the EMU not find it odd in the slightest that Greece managed to trim its debt to acceptable standards in such a short amount of time without enacting any known cuts to government expenditure?
Again.. not EMU. And maybe, I dont know. But again, if the Greeks cooked the books with the help of the American financial institutions, then well how on earth do you expect people to find out that they are cooked?
On a side note, maybe you can explain this to me since i do not fully understand it, but Greece and Goldman sachs managed to hide debt through a process known as a "swap deal" which is permitted under EU law.
Not permitted for countries per say.. especially the way they did it.
There where numerous reasons why nations would join the Euro, but becoming more "responsible" was not on the top of this list. The Irish found the idea of cheaper loans appetizing; the perfect adrenaline for their booming economy. Clearly they took advantage of this fact to the fullest.
That was not the primary reason for the Irish to join. Loans were not "cheap" when they joined.... that came later. There were many more, more important reason for them wanting to join.
Okay i dont get how you can say no to Spain and Portugal. Spain and Portugal had a rapidly expanding tourism and construction sector. They maintained top places in Europe for holidaying and people went their to buy buy villa's. Much of the demand came from Britons immigrating and houses where being built everywhere. This was funded by loans from banks. Italy has always had debt.
Spain and Portugal has had huge tourism industries long before they joined the EEC/EU and the Eurozone. The building boom was in Spain, not in Portugal (relatively speaking). Brits bought houses with loans from British banks more than from Spanish banks.
The housing debt is in France, Britain and so on.. not in Spain.
I refer to it as the Economic Monetary Union since thats technically what it is but i know the term is not correct and is outdated. :2razz:
It is miss-leading.
Look above when i refer to the EU placing pressure on governments and bringing up issues with them they find troubling (as is their duty, surely, since it is part of the point of the union) rather than exercising direct political authority.
And again.. no you have it wrong.
Then maybe the EU should set up its own independent financial commission?
It has been floated. But as usual the Brits were against it.
and cant believe I kept this within the max number of characters!
