Based on stories like this one in the LA Times about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts, they’ll soon be drawing cartoons like the one below for California.
From the pen of David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
On May 15, 2010,
in Europe,
by Tim
On May 14, 2010,
in Europe,
by Tim
Not that my opinion really matters, but, I’m not sure if I like the picture of younger, smirking Ambrose or older, frailer Ambrose better. Or, for that matter, worse.
It’s always funny when you see photos like these updated because the changes usually happen many years apart and, all at once, readers are confronted with a much older writer behind the words they are reading. That’s why I don’t ever plan to update my pictures here at the blog that are now about five years old…
Anyway, one thing that hasn’t changed about Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is his dour view on the prospects for the euro, his latest thinking distilled in this story at the Telegraph.
Europe’s fiscal Fascism brings British withdrawal ever closer
The European Commission is calling for EU powers to vet budgets of the 27 member states before the draft laws have been presented to the House of Commons, the Tweede Kamer, the Folketing, the Bundestag, the Assemblee Nationale, or other national parliaments. It applies to Britain even though we are not in EMU.
Fonctionnaires and EU finance ministers will pass judgement on the British (or Dutch, or Danish, or French) budgets before the elected bodies of these ancient and sovereign nations have seen the proposals. Did we not we not fight the English Civil War and kill a king over such a prerogative?
Yet again we are discovering the trick played on our democracies by Europe’s insiders when they charged ahead with EMU, brushing aside warnings by their own staff economists that monetary union was unworkable without fiscal union. Jacques Delors knew perfectly well that this would lead inevitably to a crisis, but it would be the “beneficial crisis” that would force sovereign parliaments to submit to demands that they would never otherwise accept.
It comes as no surprise that Club Med debt and obstinance of the already austere Germans are at the center of Ambrose’s most recent complaint about goings on in Europe.
The involvement of U.S. money in the European rescue package aimed at bailing out spendthrift nations like Greece is getting an increasing amount of press coverage stateside, having recently transformed into something of a red-meat issue for the party out of power.
From the talented pen of Nate Beeler of the Washington Examiner, this cartoon captures the more salient political issues that talking heads seem to overlook.
On May 13, 2010,
in Europe,
by Tim
Bloomberg reports that “Tall Paul” Volcker is a bit down on the prospects for the euro after the events of the last six months (a period of turmoil that seems like it’s been going on a lot longer than that) and the more recent $1 trillion bailout package announced on Sunday.
“You have the great problem of a potential disintegration of the euro,” Volcker, 82, said in a speech in London yesterday. “The essential element of discipline in economic policy and in fiscal policy that was hoped for” has “so far not been rewarded in some countries.”
European leaders pledged a rescue package of almost $1 trillion this week to counter a mounting debt crisis and restore confidence in the currency. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said this week the euro may need a common fiscal policy to survive, a comment echoed by Norman Lamont, who was U.K. finance minister when Britain opted out from the euro in 1992.
“Will economic and financial distress finally be resolved by looking toward more integration in a closely integrated Europe, politically as well as economically?” said Volcker, who chairs President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. “I do have my hopes, as a believer in the euro.”
…
Volcker expressed hope that the euro will survive. “There is strong opinion to keep it going,” he told journalists after his speech at Mansion House, the residence of the lord mayor of the City, London’s financial district. “That does require, I think, changes in the structure of European economic policy.”
The euro hit a new low for the year earlier today against the dollar at just above $1.25, the lowest level in about 14 months. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it touched the $1.60 mark in 2008, that is, just before all four wheels fell off the global economic wagon.
Of course, gold priced in euros continues to make new highs, yesterday threatening the €1,000 an ounce level before moving lower today to close at €984.
On May 12, 2010,
in Europe,
by Tim
Bloomberg reports that famed investor Jim Rogers and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini are none-too-pleased with the $1 trillion bailout aimed at rescuing wayward European nations.
Investor Jim Rogers said Europe’s bailout of indebted nations to overcome the sovereign-debt crisis is just “another nail in the coffin” for the euro as higher spending increases the region’s debt.
…
“I was stunned,” Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore. “This means that they’ve given up on the euro, they don’t particularly care if they have a sound currency, you have all these countries spending money they don’t have and it’s now going to continue.”
…
New York University professor Nouriel Roubini said Greece and other “laggards” in the euro area may be forced to abandon the common currency in the next few years to spur their economies. The euro will remain the currency for a smaller number of countries that have “stronger fiscal and economic fundamentals,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
…
All paper currencies are being “debased,” with the euro currency union at risk of being “dissolved,” Rogers said, adding that he continues to own the dollar, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and the euro.“It’s a political currency and nobody is minding the economics behind the necessities to have a strong currency,” Rogers said. “I’m afraid it’s going to dissolve. They’re throwing more money at the problem and it’s going to make things worse down the road.”
Not long ago, Rogers praised efforts by euro zone leaders to enforce budget restraint that is otherwise unheard of in the West. Now, it appears as though the ECB and the EU are no different than the U.K. and the U.S. in that more easy money is viewed as the solution to problems caused by easy money.
On May 10, 2010,
in Europe,
by Tim
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