Is there any reason why my use of sh** should be starred out? I simply highlight what David said at the start of his post, and yet his shit still stands!
David, I disagree to a point. It goes both ways. I had plenty of economics stuffed into my head as a student, hated it but when I began to teach realised I had to run after myself to catch up and in the other work I have done in research, particularly when I have worked in such areas as child labour (really) it was an important tool. So some decades of watching the world gyrate around the dollar, then switch to a dual currency situation and almost a triple if the yuan had held its own (which it still might if debts are called in and the USA holds 15 trillion dollars worth of that alone) has been a revelation. I am not so negative or as biassed and go with Jim on my own ancestral land having had enough and potentially Ireland reuniting for economic reasons but the UK economy is up to its neck in problems. A few newspapers have been trumpeting the downfall of France but are those that support the right and leave-EU segment of the population who will never turn the spotlight on the UK, unless they can have a dig at the so-called left that is. They consistently support the smallest rumour from the big three ratings agencies, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. Ironic then that the three agencies and two finance rags did not see Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going to the wall and were seeing good things happening for my pals Lehman Bros as little as 24 hours before they went pop! Remember propaganda has started wars, indeed Iraq is a recent example we dare not forget. Can we trust propagandist rumours? Until the fireworks explode there are no bangs just the whimpers of those impatiently waiting.
I think much of the EU is a mess, misrule puts it lightly. Sarkozy is as culpable as Berlusconi or indeed Blair into Brown into Cameron (albeit this coalition thing appears to be attempting their best to drag the UK into the gutter to the benefit of a few individuals). Why do English 'experts' tell us the USA is so anti-EU/Euro when all of the serious economic statements coming out of the USA support both and politics on both sides of the Senate would support it all if they could afford to? I have spent a lot of my life in Germany, I am bilingual in English and German and my other languages are the ones I have learned since, I understand every nuance. I have also spent professional years there on a yoyo string between Berlin and Cambridge and one of my closest friends is a well known Hayekian economist and shares the Hayek and Myrdal interest in economic fluctuations. He does not believe the Euro will go down. Under his influence I have learned and share his repugnance for the idea of a two track Euro which is the most likely outcome of the present crisis. He also sees Sterling as a declining economic force as the dollar and euro become the two main trading and exchange media. It is that world and the industrial wealth of his country that drives that force, not the elected politican everybody seems to be accusing of being some kind of dominatrix with imperial ambitions. She will eventually lose or step down, she is but a human being with a limited capability that does not match those who rule economically and thus steer politicians.
In that sense Jim is so much closer to reality albeit I have no idea what the simile with American history means because it seems rather a diversion based on no substance, thus an irrelevance to me. Where is the world going economically? Well that is the problem and because economist, finance experts and the bankers and other 'owners' do not agree or even align with each other there can be no (safe) predictions. Or?
Hi David,
I'm not much on economics. My interest only piqued at your mention of Britain, and the idea of Britain meaning a certain independence of thought. There is no Britain David. I suspect there never truly was, except in the sense of a united crown and a wide diversity in everything else. That unity is about to fracture over the next few years, as indeed did the Commonwealth, the Empire, and dare I say it, the far flung colonies like The Falklands which have drained our very limited resources. Scotland has had enough. Ireland will eventually see the absolute necessity of a united island. The bubbles and rumblings of this year's riots are a dagger at the heart of "Great" Britain.
You talk of shit in your preamble David. The only shit I see is the male cow variety implicit in your statement:
The very idea of Britain means a certain independence of thought.
British History is only as old/young as American History. How's that for independent thought?
A bit of sh1t stirring by the embattled french government is trying to deflect attention away from the financial and political difficulties Sarkozy is in. It's convenient to blame the Anglo Saxon bankers (actually alot of the worst offenders are the French banks). There are apparently 300000 french many in the financial sector working in London. If that lot have to go back to Paris they'll be in trouble as Paris has no significant world status in that sector. So the overblown state and the high cost of employment have nothing to do with the French government? Their own nationalised industries are manufacuring away from France to save cost. Look also at the defence issues- we have no carriers, France has 1 and we are meant to share with them in due couse (2020). Germany has an angst in the defence area, and the rest won't have any real credibility together. No Sarkozy, the "anglophone" Fillon will after Christmas undo some of the waves they have made. I've always supported the idea of Britain in Europe (more so than most people I know in the UK) but at the same time realise that the very idea of Britain means a certain independence of thought. It seems that Merkel, Sarkozy and that dreadful puffed up bouffant witch from Latvia know nothing of British history.