Nigel Farage MEP

NAP123 wrote: »

The current crisis was always a banking crisis, not a sovereign debt crisis.

The reason it became a sovereign debt crisis was because of the decision by the ECB, to save every bank in the EU with tax payers money, rather than printed money.

The banks were, are and will continue to be the problem.

No. The crisis is both a banking and a sovereign debt problem, with different combinations in different countries.

For instance, in Ireland we have three main problems:

1. The sovereign problem caused by the collapse of a bubble which hid the fact of our structural budget deficit, which was high before the C****c T***r and has returned with a vengeance. At the core of our sovereign debt problem is the construction of a massive public sector apparatus which has become impossible to feed. Not to mention social welfare and future pension commitments.

2. The financial problems in our systemic banks. These are banks that should service the needs of our real economy. But they became so compromised by their poor practices and lack of parliamentary/regulatory oversight that they had to be saved at huge costs to the public purse.

3. The financial problems in our pirate banks - Anglo etc. - which took on debt of unimaginable proportions and which our idiot government chose to privatise.

Spain has a mostly financial crisis. But also it's economy rested on a bubble as well. People overcommitted to property purchases on the basis of unreal earnings expectations. At least they don't seem to have an Anglo-style problem.

Italy's main problem is an outsized and still growing *sovereign* national debt, double the Maastricht recommendation.

Greece's problem is a *sovereign* one resting mainly on its inability to collect taxes. On top of this there was a banking crisis. But the worst of Greece's problems is its failure as a sovereign state.

What EZ policy hopes to achieve is to get members to bring their sovereign debt down to really low levels, and to introduce EZ-wide regulation of the financial sector. I think policy-makers fundamentally understand the complexity of the problem, and that it can't be blamed entirely on banking and finance.

McDave wrote: »

No. The crisis is both a banking and a sovereign debt problem, with different combinations in different countries.

For instance, in Ireland we have three main problems:

1. The sovereign problem caused by the collapse of a bubble which hid the fact of our structural budget deficit, which was high before the C****c T***r and has returned with a vengeance. At the core of our sovereign debt problem is the construction of a massive public sector apparatus which has become impossible to feed. Not to mention social welfare and future pension commitments.

2. The financial problems in our systemic banks. These are banks that should service the needs of our real economy. But they became so compromised by their poor practices and lack of parliamentary/regulatory oversight that they had to be saved at huge costs to the public purse.

3. The financial problems in our pirate banks - Anglo etc. - which took on debt of unimaginable proportions and which our idiot government chose to privatise.

Spain has a mostly financial crisis. But also it's economy rested on a bubble as well. People overcommitted to property purchases on the basis of unreal earnings expectations. At least they don't seem to have an Anglo-style problem.

Italy's main problem is an outsized and still growing *sovereign* national debt, double the Maastricht recommendation.

Greece's problem is a *sovereign* one resting mainly on its inability to collect taxes. On top of this there was a banking crisis. But the worst of Greece's problems is its failure as a sovereign state.

What EZ policy hopes to achieve is to get members to bring their sovereign debt down to really low levels, and to introduce EZ-wide regulation of the financial sector. I think policy-makers fundamentally understand the complexity of the problem, and that it can't be blamed entirely on banking and finance.

It is a banking crisis.

Any sovereign crisis was because of the policy of the banking system.

McDave wrote: »

I'm afraid you're wrong to assert the crisis is simply a banking one. It's obviously a major component. But it's not the sole factor. Depending on the country, it is a combination.

It's obvious that some countries have encountered problems rolling over existing bonds and paying for new borrowing because investors have had doubts about their ability to pay.

Ireland has a clear and obvious sovereign debt problem based on the gap between its revenues and its expenditures, even leaving the promissory note repayments out of the equation.

Ireland has a sovereign debt crisis because of a private banking crisis.

The EU has a banking crisis. The world has a banking crisis.

The penney will drop eventually, but most likely after all the banks have been remunerated with taxpayers money.

NAP123 wrote: »

Ireland has a sovereign debt crisis because of a private banking crisis.

Grand, we'll just ignore that the IMF reckoned we needed a 50 billion bailout to cover our government expenditure deficit and a "mere" 17.5 billion bailout (in addition to the NPRF monies) for the banks.

Sure, what do they know about debt crises?

McDave wrote: »

Ireland has a sovereign debt crisis because of:

1. Massive annual budget overspend; and

2. Commitments to cover private financial losses.

The first part is down to our government overspend and is a crisis in its own right. It's there for all to see. There's no point in denying it.

Nobody is denying that we have a deficit.

How we deal with that deficit is the problem. Dealing with a deficit when you have incurred 70 billion of private bank debt and have had your hands tied by a Central Bank not of your making is the problem.

We had a 40 billion of sovereign debt before the banks collapsed.

We could have borrowed from the sovereign bondmarkets and cut at the same time, if we did not socialise private bank debt.

Everything about our deficit was manageable without the banking crisis, the ECBs insistence on not letting any EU Banks fail and our forced bank reparations deal with the EU/ECB/IMF.

Our current deficit is caused by unemployment and waste within our public servive.

It won,t be solved by austerity, it will be solved by investment.

The bank reparations deal caused by our private bank collapse has prevented us from making our own decisions and hence added further to our problems.

NAP123 wrote: »

Everything about our deficit was manageable without the banking crisis, the ECBs insistence on not letting any EU Banks fail and our forced bank reparations deal with the EU/ECB/IMF.

Our current deficit is caused by unemployment and waste within our public servive.

Easier said than done. It was very easy for FF to shovel money into benchmarking, bloated PS numbers, pensions, social welfare payments and lazily conceived projects like PPARS, electronic voting, etc. etc. etc. All on credit.

And of course that's not taking into account FF's banking and finance non-policies, their bank guarantee and loading of the Anglo/INBS debts onto the taxpayer. The coalition has undone some of the damage here, but dealing with the shortcomings of our so-called systemic banks is another matter.

Nope, it'll take quite some time to undo 14 years of FF profligacy and wind our deficit down to manageable proportions. With luck the coalition can do it by 2015. But at what opportunity cost.

NAP123 wrote: »

The bank reparations deal caused by our private bank collapse has prevented us from making our own decisions and hence added further to our problems.

The sovereignty we lost was down to our own poor domestic politics. Our government wasn't obliged by anybody else to pursue pro-cyclical policies, or to turn a complete blind eye to the chicanery of the financial sector.

No. Running a successful economy means taking the right decisions, including hard ones. Not pleasing a credulous electorate as Ahern & Co did.

There's a reason we're in hock. It's because we goofed up, and we're now borrowing money from entities who have got their act together. Maybe in de course we can learn the lessons and get ourselves into the position that our economy is in the black, and that we are one of the countries which is in a position to lend to others. And reap concomitant rewards.

CKonetheonlyone wrote: »

Saw Farage slated to sustained applause by a speaker in the EP on Thursday in relation to what the speaker criticised as the aforementioned's objectionable racism towards the newer accession states.

Any link to a clip or report? Could be interesting.

Farage has form with disparaging behaviour. Like Belgium not being a proper country back in Rompuy's early days: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/25/nigel-farage-herman-van-rompuy-damp-rag

What a weasel Farage is.

Deleted User wrote: »

Farage says some things that need to be said. He's a good orator too but, typical for a leader of a 'protest party', finds it easy to criticise but useless at being constructive.

He has identified problems correctly in the UK but his diagnosis is incorrect and his solutions, no imigration and exiting the EU are not the right ones.

I personally have no objection to keeping 'the establishment' honest. And representative politics at EU level is crushingly boring.

But AFAIC there's no call for personal insults and making fun of countries or cultures as gratuitously as Farage does. It really is a measure of the man. And to me he doesn't measure up to much.

McDave wrote: »

The sovereignty we lost was down to our own poor domestic politics. Our government wasn't obliged by anybody else to pursue pro-cyclical policies, or to turn a complete blind eye to the chicanery of the financial sector.

No. Running a successful economy means taking the right decisions, including hard ones. Not pleasing a credulous electorate as Ahern & Co did.

There's a reason we're in hock. It's because we goofed up, and we're now borrowing money from entities who have got their act together. Maybe in de course we can learn the lessons and get ourselves into the position that our economy is in the black, and that we are one of the countries which is in a position to lend to others. And reap concomitant rewards.

You can convince yourself of the lack of responsibility of the ECB and individual countries and private banks within those EU countries, for our banking crisis, all you want.

You can also refuse to acknowledge their part in the stoking of our property bubble, but you will never convince me, that if we were not forced into a private bank reparations deal by the ECB/EU and Germany, we would not have had the capacity to correct our budget deficit with cuts and investments.

As for where the investment would have come from, it would have come from the 24 billion worth of investment we could have borrowed from the pension reserve fund, if we were not forced to repay 64 billion of private bank debt.

Meanwhile in Russia, journalists often die by falling down a flight of bullets.:eek:

Any chance you could link to something that verifies what he is saying? Is it by any chance the similar process that saw the "EU" "correct" this very forum through TalktoEU? Also, putting up just videos is against the charter which I thought a Mod should read/know.

NAP123 wrote: »

You can convince yourself of the lack of responsibility of the ECB and individual countries and private banks within those EU countries, for our banking crisis, all you want.

You can also refuse to acknowledge their part in the stoking of our property bubble

The ECB had zero responsibility for our property bubble. Our property bubble, and its subsequent collapse, was down to FF's dire procyclical and 'light-touch' regulation policies, the unethical behaviour of our banks, and to an extent the credulousness of our electorate who never sought to put the brakes on Ahern-McCreevy's self-serving profligate ways.

No matter how much the likes of Farage sneer at EU institutions, our fate as a *sovereign* state was in our own hands all the way through the Ahern-McCreevy-Cowen-Lenihan years until the bank guarantee and the promissory notes. We blew it. Ourselves alone.

The proof? Plenty of other EZ and non-EZ countries behaved quite prudently in the face of the availability of cheap money, and didn't allow bubbles to dictate their economies.

NAP123 wrote: »

As for where the investment would have come from, it would have come from the 24 billion worth of investment we could have borrowed from the pension reserve fund, if we were not forced to repay 64 billion of private bank debt.

That sounds suspiciously to me like classic government borrowing.

I, for one, would prefer to see the NPRF dedicated to its original purpose, not gambled on investments.

NAP123 wrote: »

Of course it would. Sure we are just against everything Europe.

Would that experience come from the failure to force your opinion on others?

Why would you spend money tracking down Eurosceptics?

Why would you label eurosceptics, trolls?

Sadly, I don't think any of that really requires an answer.

regards,
Scofflaw