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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » There’s a Sheffield rally style hubris around Jeremy Corbyn and Labour should be afraid
Picture: From Saturday’s Times
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On-topic: this could be a good thing for Labour. Better to find this out now than six minutes before the polls close.
Corbyn is beginning to resemble Thatcher in the late 80s though.
That is also why I think when last comes to last a way forward will be found, but it may be at an unsupportable cost to the EU itself.
Never have I felt more the truth of John Wyndham's caustic observations:
'They created vast problems, and buried their heads in the sands of idle faith...there are times when one wonders why God thought it necessary to invent the ostrich.'
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article176799738/Italien-Bundesregierung-verhaelt-sich-ruhig-Parteien-zunehmend-besorgt.html
have the Italians just put the brakes on the project ?
FPT
When @Hunchman starts quoting Armstrong overnight as evidence that the Euro is about to collapse we can surely all see that the talk about a Euro crisis is being seriously overblown. What we have seen so far is modest increases in the spread for Italian bonds. We have also seen substantial capital flows out of Italy and some other southern European countries to "safe havens" in northern Europe. So far the ECB has been willing to replace that capital by allowing banks to draw sufficient Euros to trade normally.
To get to a crisis point it seems to me that several things have to happen.
Firstly, the populists whose Finance Minister was rejected are going to have to do better in another election that won't be held until September at the earliest. That seems possible, even probable but it is not certain.
Secondly, that government when elected has to threaten to default on the country's debts to the ECB. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do given the power the ECB has over the Italian banking system.
Alternatively, they may conclude that they should simply leave the Euro. See above with brass knobs on.
Alternatively, the ECB may decide/be forced by Germany into either winding down or at least capping the Target2 imbalances. This would effectively cause liquidity shortages in Italy and elsewhere causing a serious recession. It would also be an incredibly stupid thing to do and inconsistent with the existence of a single currency bloc.
No doubt there are other scenarios or stupidities that could cause a crisis but they are all ever more unlikely. What I think is clear that even in a worst case scenario this is a story which will evolve slowly over a period of months, not days. Although I am a Eurosceptic and a leaver I don't think it is sensible to anticipate people acting like idiots or gloat over some hypothetical crisis which might seriously damage our largest trading links. There are real problems caused by Italy's lack of growth and very high debt. The lack of the former is making the latter ever harder to bear. But we are a very long way from Armageddon.
And the Bank of Italy can't prop up banks, without recourse to the ECB. So, the likely consequence of doing it right is a collapse of the Italian banking system half way through. Now, that might be a price worth paying, if - on the other side - Italy is free to pursue a sensible economic strategy.
However, there are two things that make this particularly hazardous for Italy.
Firstly, if you have a contract with an Italian company (and you are not Italian), then it will not be governed by Italian law. And this isn't because Italians are venal, but because their legal system is incredibly tortuous. Good luck even ending up in court in 18 months. So, for British, German, Spanish, etc. companies doing business with Italian ones, they all (or 99.9%) use the legal system of the other country. This means that an Italian law converting all contracts to the Legal Italian Resurrection Asset (L.I.R.A.) will not reduce firms overseas liabilities. Indeed, in a 25% devaluation world (and I suspect the real number would be nearer 40%), you would see the foreign liabilities of Italian firms jump by a fifth.
Secondly, investors don't seem particularly keen to give M5S in particular, and (to a lesser extent) LN a chance. The best way to leave the Euro is with a sensible economic policy, based upon fiscal rectitude and liberalising Italy's scloretic labour market. It also requires a recognition that Italy has endemic corruption and the worst demographics in Western Europe (and only a hairs breath better than Japan's). Neither of the two populist parties is willing to recognise that a large portion of Italy's problems are its own.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/italian-voters-brace-for-euro-showdown-ahead-of-snap-elections.html
If there is a new Italian government in August while most politicians and financiers are on holiday, the potential for things to spiral out of control quickly is there.
Does the frog stay in the water and cook or does it jump ?
Would it be economic suicide for Italy to leave the euro in its present state? Of course. Do the majority of Italians feel that would be a price worth paying given the dreadful damage the Euro has already done? That's the unknowable part.
Festivals not infrequently go broke, and are not for the inexperienced to arrange! better to sponser a stage at one of the established festivals with a sympathetic audience.
Indeed, has either the League or 5SM actually expressed a desire to quit the Euro in recent times, rather than merely tried to re-order it?
1. Fast.
Just get it done. Don't tell anyone and then attempt to do it over a week of bank holidays.
The problem with this is that people who didn't know you would do it feel very aggrieved. Old people and those on fixed incomes feel they have been particularly screwed. (And there are a lot of old people in Italy.)
Also, what happens if you haven't managed to get IT and accounting systems at Italy's 800,000 or so firms sorted after a week? What currency will people be pulling out of banks (if they are allowed to at all)? Can you provide food for those who don't have enough physical cash? And how do you deal with bank redomination and firms (and individuals) with Euro exposure to non-Italians?
2. Slow.
Allows time for planning. Allows it to be a democratic decision. Unfortunately, results in the destruction of the entire banking sector in the 48 hours following the announcement.
3. A Parallel Currency.
Everyone loves this idea. But it's stupid.
Imagine that the Italian government created a parallel currency called the Lira. It then announced that all civil servants would be paid in Lira. The Lira - of course - devalues 25% against the Euro. But all those civil servants still have Euro rent. They would regard it (correctly) as a 25% pay cut.
Who would accept payment in Lira, over Euros?
Italy has found themselves in a very difficult hole. The issue they have is this: if they want to escape the Euro, they need to implement sensible policies first. But those policies are the exact opposite - labour market liberalisation, for example - of what is demanded by their supporters.
No mention of Islam, him being Muslim, or the cry made it onto the news, despite being known. The term used was 'radicalism'. That kind of wilful omission why people like Tommy Robinson here and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands have a willing audience.
It's quite incredible. Imagine a story from the 80s or 90s about Irish terrorism which didn't mention the IRA (or other groups). It's laughable.
That's a great aphorism, a Confucian truism for the 21st century.
Also, this "Vanilla" is very strange. It said 24 comments, but I had to sign in to see any of them.
It'll be a hit.
If as polls project the two parties combined get 55 to 60% combined that programme poses a threat to the core values of the EU and the fiscal discipline of the Eurozone whether indirectly or directly and both parties have made clear they will put their programme before the Euro if the EU will not compromise
Which terrorist group that the attacker was a member of do you think was omitted from BBC reports?
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1001728414288613376
For what it's worth, I reach the opposite conclusion. Submission to the EU comes in a series of small steps, whereas breaking from it (or the eurozone, specifically) is one massive leap. Psychologically, it's easier to travel a long way through a series of small steps rather than one massive one. It's why controlling boyfriends/girlfriends tend not to open the first date with financial coercion and physical abuse. The slower the process, the longer the journey can be from the individual's (or nation's) desired position.
5star and Lega wanted a Finance minister who amongst other economic positions supported leaving the Euro - hardly the same as saying by appointing such a person Italy would start plans to leave the Euro on day one. Any such change would need to be approved by the elected Italian Parliament at the very least and almost certainly a referendum would be held to approve it too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44295397
Though I agree the new council leader Elizabeth Campbell is working very hard to learn the lessons from.the tragedy and make the changes required
If we're going to have a pop at political parties losing or wasting money, I wonder how much the Conservatives threw away on the 2017 GE campaign to go from having an overall majority to not having an overall majority ?
Far more than anything Labour might lose on its "festival".
Slightly more seriously, there is a glut of these "festivals" now and it seems every weekend you have the opportunity to spend a large amount of time listening to music in a muddy field. Add on the large number of more civilised outdoor music events at race meetings, parks, large historic houses and there's simply too much and the bubble on this one is about to burst and especially so if we get a wet summer.
Even one hundred billion dollars, or a hundred billion pounds, would be an improvement. The equivalent of a hundred billion pounds (lb) of gold would be more like it.
Mr. Divvie, you're right that the BBC website included the "Allahu Akbar" phrase, which made the omission from a relatively long segment on the news even odder. But then, the BBC website included an excellent break down of migrant numbers (during the height of the so-called Crisis) by Mark Urban, which concluded most were economic migrants. That also didn't exactly feature heavily on the broadcasts the organisation made on the subject.
At the risk of repeating myself or banging my own drum, I have repeatedly warned that there's a small but credible path to the far right rising in this country. Part of that is if people, in significant numbers, lose faith in the politicians and media in the mainstream because said groups are unwilling to be open and honest. A Dutchman summed this up well with the elections there a year or two ago. He didn't especially like Wilders, but he felt the Netherlands was sick and the other parties proposed to do nothing about it. The voter said he would take 'strong medicine' over nothing, to try and make his country better.
As for the young, I quite agree - f**k 'em. We'll make a rural Tory of you yet, Nick.
Since the inquiry has yet to start on the evidence it seems to me too early to attribute blame definitively or exonerate any group.
Of course we saw what happened when May got caught up in her hype.
We saw hysterical screeching on here from several posters who ignored responses from informed people.
It's a trap we all fall into at times, but it's particularly important to avoid it when we're discussing such important and emotive topics, especially when it means that trials might collapse and the hopes for justice avoided.
That's what matters here, and it's what the defenders of Robinson care f'all about.
OTOH financial crises do tend to happen - or start - in the summer - Russian bond crisis, LTCM, the credit default swap problems etc.
Always plenty to see there.
The breach of the peace/terms of suspended sentence strangeness coupled with initial reporting restrictions only made that worse.
[For the record, I do find the arrest terms and charge terms being seemingly different rather peculiar, but am persuaded by the chap (Nazir Ali?) who has performed successfully in prosecuting similar crimes and who was less than sympathetic to Robinson].
Plus, we never really see the train coming until it's too late. If it were otherwise, we'd always be prepared to leap out of the way.
Are French and German retail companies shutting down as fast as British ones ?
I ask because French and German retail sales growth is lower than in the UK.
Other times (like the crash of 2008-9) people have been pointing out growing problems for years, but we've kicked the can down the road for so long that most of us assume we'll just muddle through. Italy is an example of this. Italy should never have been part of the Eurozone, and the country won't endure zero economic growth forever, but we still assume they'll muddle through.
The more time transpires the greater the pain in diverting from The Project. It's one reason I decided to vote to Leave. The longer it takes, the tighter the grip of the bureaucrats.
A lot of Italian debt is held by Italians themselves. So departure from the euro would hurt Italians very significantly. That is likely to be a factor in what happens next.
Obviously, anyone willing to end up becoming a terrorist has to be (or become) a madman or a thug, but (returning to the small steps argument from above) slow journeys can lead to heading that way.
It'd be interesting to have some percentages of converts to Islam in the general population of that religion and compare that to the percentage involved in terrorist attacks. Foreign fighters, of course, played a major role in the rise of ISIS.
It was obviously a huge "labour of love" for him to have spent such time on such a project.
Then again, taking the easy way out isn’t new. I’m reading a book about the Easter Rising, and it’s telling that army officers who announced they would refuse to uphold Home Rule were let off, when by rights they should have been court-martialled, and if found guilty hanged.
But would it have been remembered as such had the result in fact been a Tory majority of (say) 80 or more? The Tory campaign of 1987 wasn't regarded as being of much use at the time, but of course the Tories ended up with a three-figure majority so their campaign's quality was swiftly brushed aside.
If, that is, they cared.
Yes - that's all Maggie did - spend a few Mcpetro dollars - the massive structural reforms that happened were all down to the unions, the public sector and hard working NHS staff.
It was understandable that emotions were very high - but mob judgment rarely helps. Unfortunately, if you say this and ask people to wait for the evidence, not make assumptions and not assume that the amount of tears shed is a measure of the quality of analysis or knowledge of the facts, you are seen as callous and uncaring.
I'm all for understanding the human element when investigating matters. But too often we don't have that. We have a soppy emotive emotionalism and often bogus sentimentality which obscures rather than helps.
I think MD, as so many do, confuses journalistic caution with bias. The number of times similar comments are made regarding breaking news - as opposed to reports the following day - is notable.
In fact the only thing the Italian President has done is to exacerbate the issue which at least brings the final decision forward
Those civil servants (and pensioners and suppliers to government) would regard their rent (and food) as having risen by 25% (or is it 33%?) if charged in Euro and would resist paying that price.
People would hoard Euros (for use overseas) and most transactions would be in Lira. (Gresham's law).
The Government could mandate dual pricing and impose a rent freeze.
There are ways to make it work. I wish Greece had done it.
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/971746437951352832