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Why Europe Keeps Failing........ merged with "EU Seizes Cypriot Bank Accounts"

A look at how per capita income and "inequality" in the UK stacks up against the US. Several charts embedded, follow link:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/why-britain-is-poorer-than-any-us-state-other-than-mississippi/

Why Britain is poorer than any US state, other than Mississippi

Now and again, American inequality is on display to the world. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina and we have seen it again in the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white police offer shoots dead a black man, after having stopped him for jaywalking. Britain’s police don’t have guns, so these scenes are unthinkable. But American-style inequality? We have plenty of that too, we’re just better at hiding it – as I say in my Telegraph column today.

I came across a striking fact while researching this piece: if Britain were to somehow leave the EU and join the US how would we rank? The answer is that we’d be the 2nd-poorest state in the union, poorer than Missouri. Poorer than the much-maligned Kansas and Alabama. Poorer than any state other than Mississippi, and if you take out the south east we’d be poorer than that too.

I’ve been asked (on Twitter) to link to my source, but I’m afraid there’s no study to point to. It’s original research. But it’s also a fairly straightforward calculation. You take the US figures for GDP per state (here), divide it by population (here) to come up with a GDP per capita figure. Then get the equivalent figure for Britain: I used the latest Treasury figures (here) which also chime with the OECD’s (here). A version of this has been done on Wikipedia, but with one flaw: when comparing the wealth of nations, you need to look at how far money goes. This means using a measure called Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). When this is done, the league table looks like the below. I’ve put some other countries in for comparison.

Chart

It’s not surprising that America’s best-paid 10 per cent are wealthier than top 10 per cent. That fits our general idea of America: a country where the richest do best while the poorest are left to hang. The figures just don’t support this. As the below chart shows, middle-earning Americans are better-off than Brits. Even lower-income Americans, those at the bottom 20 per cent, are better-off than their British counterparts. The only group actually worse-off are the bottom 5 per cent. Here are the figures:-

Chart

In America, poverty is more obvious due to White Flight – a phenomenon we just didn’t have. In the era of the motor car, the middle class (who tended to be white) worked out they could buy a plush house in the suburbs and commute. The population of St Louis, where Ferguson is a neighbourhood, has halved since 1970. And back then, Ferguson was 99 per cent white. Now it’s 67 per cent black. Any Brit who has walked the streets of Detroit will have been stunned: this supposed city looks like a bombed-out ghost town. But 45 minutes up the I94 lies the gorgeous sprawl of Ann Arbor, and some of the loveliest spots on earth. America’s White Flight created a lasting visual spectacle which has no equivalent in Europe, and when urban trouble kicks off this spectacle is there for all to see.

Britain has no space for white flight, we’re forced to live closer together. And we fool ourselves into thinking that proximity has brought cohesion. In fact, we have developed a new kind of segregation: keeping the poor cooped up in council estates, a stone’s throw from the posh parts – yet creating a very high welfare barrier which stops them properly breaking out. Brits may be appalled at America’s gap in black-white life expectancy. But our Liverpool-SW1 life expectancy gap is just as big; we just don’t get upset about it. When you walk south over Westminster Bridge from the House of Commons, life expectancy drops five years.

No one beats up America better than Americans. They openly debate their inequality, conduct rigorous studies about it, argue about economics vs culture as causes. Their universities study it, with a calibre of analysis not found in Britain. Americans get so angry about educational inequality that they make films like Waiting for Superman (trailer below). And the debate is so fierce that the rest of the world looks on, and joins in lamenting America’s problems. A shame: we’d do better to get a little angrier at our own.

PS If anyone hasn’t seen Waiting for Superman, I can’t recommend it highly enough: it’s on iTunes.
 
An sea change may be taking place in the UK. One can only hope that this sort of thing will bring about positive changes for the British voters:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100284247/douglas-carswells-defection-is-a-seismic-shock-to-the-british-political-system/?fb

Douglas Carswell's defection to Ukip is a seismic shock to the British political system
By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: August 28th, 2014
5318 Comments Comment on this article

Douglas Carswell has defected from the Conservatives to Ukip

There are very few MPs I admire more than Douglas Carswell. He is principled, decent, and has gone into politics for all the right reasons. He believes in all the things to which ordinary politicians pay lip service, but in reality frighten them to death. Above all, Mr Carswell is an advocate of popular democracy: that is, that politics is an activity which concerns ordinary voters and not the views of the Westminster elite. He is a fountain of original ideas, many of which are to be found in his very important book The Plan: Twelve months to renew Britain. It is very interesting to note that the book was co-written with the brilliant conservative MEP (and fellow Telegraph blogger) Daniel Hannan.
But Mr Carswell cannot be dismissed as a naive or out of touch intellectual. Let us remember that it was five years ago that it was Carswell who set in motion the movement which swept Speaker Martin from office in the wake of the expenses scandal.

This is why I believe that Mr Carswell’s decision to quit the Tory party and join Nigel Farage’s Ukip is a seismic political event. He cannot be compared to the ordinary self-interested political defections, for instance Shaun Woodward or Quentin Davies’ departure from the Conservatives to New Labour, in 2001 and 2007 respectively. Mr Carswell, and this is completely terrifying for David Cameron, is acting out of conviction rather than self-interest. It is greatly to the credit of Mr Carswell that, in striking contrast to Woodward or Davies, he has called a by-election to fight his Essex constituency, where he may even stand a chance of success. If he wins, he will have broken every known rule of politics. It has always been assumed that the individual vote which an incumbent MP can attract is a fraction of that commanded by the party which he represents. If Mr Carswell carries Clacton, a political convulsion will have taken place.

There are many disgruntled Right-wing Conservative politicians who must have pondered the course which Mr Carswell has taken: Liam Fox, David Davis, John Redwood, and others. But Mr Carswell has shown superlative daring. David Cameron will not thank him for it, but Mr Carswell has done a service to everybody in Britain who believes in parliamentary democracy.
 
Thucydides said:
A look at how per capita income and "inequality" in the UK stacks up against the US. Several charts embedded, follow link:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/why-britain-is-poorer-than-any-us-state-other-than-mississippi/

If I've done the math correctly using the same metrics, we come out roughly equivalent to Norway.
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Wall Street Journal is a gloomy report about a equally gloomy IMF report on the trend in Italy's finances:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/09/18/italys-growing-debt-looms-over-european-and-global-economies/?mod=WSJBlog
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Italy’s Growing Debt Looms Over European, and Global, Economies

By  IAN TALLEY

Sep 18, 2014

Looking at Italy’s ballooning debt, Germany’s reluctance to allow the European Central Bank free rein on the cash lever makes some sense.

The International Monetary Fund on Thursday cut its outlook for the Belpaese again, forecasting a 0.1% contraction instead of 0.3% growth this year.  That means a third consecutive year of economic shrinkage.

Absent Teutonic market pressures that ECB action relieves, Rome may keep on its current path. (The failure of the government to move ahead with needed policy adjustments has led to a short term for Carlo Cottarelli, the IMF’s former Fiscal Affairs chief, as Italy’s budget watchdog. He’s announced an October departure.)

Perhaps like others in Europe, the IMF has consistently been optimistic about Rome’s ability to make the tough economic changes necessary to spur growth and cut debt levels. As a result, the fund’s also been consistently wrong. Its median forecast error for the past eight years is 1.6 percentage points above actual gross domestic product growth.

ItalyIMFForecastError.png


“While growth outcomes in Italy have sometimes tended to be worse than projected, the current growth projections are in line with consensus but below the authorities’ forecasts,” the IMF said in its latest annual economic review of the country.

At least for now. But the fund is honest about the risks. Deep structural changes—such as simplifying labor contracts and a more efficient judicial system—are urgently needed to secure a recovery and spur growth, the fund warns.

“The risks are tilted to the downside,” it adds. “Italy’s high public debt, large public financing needs and elevated [nonperforming loans] leave the economy vulnerable to financial contagion and/or low growth and inflation.”

Three years of Europe’s third-largest economy shrinking has pushed debt levels dangerously ever higher. It’s not a negligible risk for the rest of the continent, or for the global economy.

The IMF has had to repeatedly push its forecasts of peak debt higher and farther into the calendar, a mountain of obligations that risk overwhelming the country’s ability to pay in the years ahead, especially if the government can’t generate the political momentum for a raft of economic policy reforms.

BN-EP420_italyd_G_20140918134324.jpg


Without structural changes to the economy, the fund projects Italy’s debt will continue to rise:

ItalyDebtRise.png


And so will the country’s need to raise more cash:

ItalyGrossFinancing.png


Italy has been somewhat insulated. First, by Europe’s bailout facilities and the ECB’s vows to “do whatever it takes.” Secondly, Italy’s debt has a long-term structure, meaning there aren’t immediate financing needs.

But, the IMF warns, the country remains vulnerable to a loss in market confidence given the size of its refinaning needs, which would push up borrowing costs. As the past several years have shown, it’s also exposed to growth shocks such as those that could come from the Ukraine/Russia crisis.

“In addition to being a drag on economic growth for the region and beyond, further unrest could also trigger large spillovers on activity in other parts of the world through a renewed bout of increased risk aversion in global financial markets, higher public spending or revenue losses, or disruptions to commodity markets, trade, and finance,” the IMF told global finance leaders Wednesday.

In stress tests, the IMF estimated that Rome’s debt trajectory could hit nearly 150%—up 15 percentage points from current levels—if Italy’s economy were to contract by an average of 1.3% over the next couple of years or if a banking crisis forced the government to bail out the financial industry.

Given that such a scenario would likely send shockwaves around the world, Italy’s sluggish efforts to restructure its economy are likely to be a topic at the Group of 20 meeting this weekend in Australia.

A senior U.S. Treasury official recently told reporters Europe’s lackluster growth would be a top priority at the meeting. “We’ve emphasized the need to boost domestic demand in Europe, and we’ve underscored that it will require implementation of more accommodative measures across the full range of macroeconomic policies,” the official said.


Italy is a major global economy, it's GDP (PPP*) is, according to the IMF, $1.8 Trillion compared to America at $16 Trillion, China at $13 Trillion, France at $2.3 Trillion, Canada at $1.5 Trillion and Australia at $1 Trillion. Italy accounts for over 10% of the EU's total GDP. What happens in and to Italy will have a global impact.


_____
*  "Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in total economic output between countries because PPP takes into account the relative costs and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using just exchange rates which may distort the real differences in income. Economies do self-adjust to currency changes over time, and technology intensive and luxury goods, raw materials and energy prices are mostly unaffected by difference in currency (the latter more by subsidies), however this is taken into account by the price comparison surveys, such as the International Comparison Program, which are used as the basis for PPP calculations. These surveys include both tradable and non-tradable goods in an attempt to estimate a representative basket of all goods." Source: http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/4-Applications%20and%20Limitations%20of%20ICP%20Data.pdf
 
Europe is failing because bloody stupid people are letting magical thinking guide their actions. We have seen this in their economics (as Edward says, many of the nations in the EUZone wouldn't actually quaify becasue they lied about things like Debt to GDP ratios, and the Eurocrats let them), and now the full costs of Germany's Green fantasies is coming home to roost. Of course we have also been learning that lesson here in Ontario...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/09/27/when-green-dreams-beget-brown-nightmares/

When Green Dreams Beget Brown Nightmares

Germany’s energy revolution—its energiewende—was supposed to blaze a trail, and show off a new way countries could meet their energy needs without wrecking their environment or the climate. It was an audacious experiment, but it’s hard to read much success out of it these days.

Yes, renewable energy is booming in Germany, after guaranteed long-term above-market rates called feed-in tariffs were offered to wind and solar power producers, but the costs of those subsidies have been passed along to consumers in the form of green surcharges. For businesses, that affects bottom lines, and many German firms are looking to site production abroad, where energy is cheaper (in the shale gas-rich United States, for instance). For households, that’s been a kind of pernicious regressive tax, as the poor are more likely to notice their ever-rising electricity bills.

But accompanying the growth of renewables in Germany’s energy mix has been a renaissance for a decidedly brown energy source: coal. In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany began phasing out its nuclear reactors. Berlin took from that crisis that it ought to eliminate nuclear, an effectively zero-carbon energy source, from its energy mix, despite the fact that Germany is situated far away from the fault lines that threaten Japan’s reactors. Solar panels and wind turbines can’t replace nuclear energy; they supply two distinct kinds of energy. Nuclear can be relied on to supply grids consistently, 24/7, 365, while solar and wind can only contribute when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. To meet its baseload energy needs, Germany turned to its domestic deposits of lignite, an especially dirty form of coal. As the Wall Street Journal reports, that’s how the supposedly green-minded energiewende has rejuvenated German coal use:

Berlin’s “energy revolution” is going great—if you own a coal mine. The German shift to renewable power sources that started in 2000 has brought the green share of German electricity up to around 25%. But the rest of the energy mix has become more heavily concentrated on coal, which now accounts for some 45% of power generation and growing. Embarrassingly for such an eco-conscious country, Germany is on track to miss its carbon emissions reduction goal by 2020. [...]

Ordinary Germans foot the bill for these market distortions, having ponied up an estimated €100 billion ($129 billion) extra on their electricity bills since 2000 to fund the renewable drive. The government estimates this revolution could cost a total of €1 trillion by 2040.

Berlin is scaling back some taxpayer subsidies for green power. But Germans still also pay for the energy revolution when job-creating investment goes to countries with lower power costs, as happened earlier this year when chemical company BASF said it would cut its investments in Germany to one-quarter of its global total from one-third, and when bad incentives skew generation toward dirtier coal instead of cleaner natural gas.

Is this what greens envisioned when they hailed the start of the energiewende as a major policy success? It’s hard to imagine a worse set of outcomes for Germany—higher electricity prices, a rising reliance on the dirtiest fossil fuel around (coal), an accelerated phase out of one of the only zero-carbon baseload power sources around (nuclear), and a less diverse, less secure energy mix that leaves Germany exposed to the machinations of exporters like Russia.

Trail blazers are meant to provide examples for followers, and in this respect Germany’s energiewende has been a success: policymakers around the world can observe and learn from Berlin’s mistakes.

and for the Twofer: the EU wants a slice of Apple's Dragon's horde. We should just drop our tax rate to 5% and invite Apple to become a Canadian company:

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2014/09/29/the-eu-vs-apple/

The EU vs. Apple

September 29th, 2014 - 1:05 am

London. A story in The Financial Times today reveals that the EU, in its hyper-regulatory wisdom, has set its sights on Apple, which it accuses of profiting from “illegal” deals with Ireland.

I put quotation marks around “illegal” because the case is far from proved. But as far as Brussels is concerned, Apple’s real sin revolves around the word “profiting.” “Profits” are what Brussels rakes in from its satraps around Europe. They are not something any individual state, let alone an individual company, is allowed to enjoy, especially if that company is as wildly profitable and innovatory as Apple.

Apple’s tort is compounded, of course, because it is American. (The EU is also going after Starbucks, Amazon, and other companies.) “EU investigators,” the article explains, “rest their case on whether Apple negotiated special tax treatment in Ireland that other companies do not enjoy.” Apple naturally denies all wrongdoing, just as it did when investigated by the U.S. Senate last year. All those billions of dollars — Apple apparently has something like $137 billion parked offshore — and the U.S. tax collectors can’t get their grubby hands on a penny! The really galling thing, for the bureaucrats who need more of your money to spend, is that Apple’s behavior, so far as has been determined, is completely legal.  They got the best deal they could, and did so legally. That really steamed the bureaucrats. Suffering from an inadequate appreciation of the distinction between meum and tuum, they just cannot contemplate a stack of cash without wanting to help themselves to a large bit of it.

Apple keeps so much money offshore because, since the U.S. corporate tax rate is so high, it costs them less to do that.  It is not illegal to do this. Nor is it unethical.  It is simply rational. They are responding to incentives. Perhaps the U.S. should trying lowering its corporate tax rate to something that is competitive on the world stage.  I offer that startlingly original idea free and for nothing.

The EU is indulging in a snit similar to what motivated the U.S. Senate. Apple is the world’s richest company. Why aren’t their riches lining the pockets of Brussels bureaucrats?  That is the real, though unstated, question here.  Let’s see what the EU inquisitors — er, “investigators” — turn up.  I suspect it will be either be nothing or will be filed under the rubric “trumped up.”

Apple is as aggressive in its business dealings as it is innovative in its technology and marketing.  It is also very careful. It finds out what the law allows and it endeavors to take advantage of all that it can. All those qualities explain why it is so successful.  The last time I checked, being successful was not a crime in the EU. But perhaps I missed something. Maybe, buried in the tens of thousands of pages of productivity-blighting regulations, there is a clause forbidding conspicuous success.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

The EU’s campaign against Apple is just the latest example of its outdated guild mentality on parade.  Europe is slipping into economic irrelevance even as it courts demographic catastrophe. It no longer has enough red corpuscles even to reproduce. So it sits around in drooling geriatric senility endeavoring to penalizing anyone and anything that exhibits the lusty vitality of young life. No wonder more and more Brits want out of the EU.
 
The EU isn't even a "paper tiger" (perhaps PowerPoint Tiger is the appropriate metaphor now). The notional troop and equipment strengths of their military forces might actually highly overstate the real capabilities they can offer. This isn't a very good sign in a era where Russian adventurism, Chinese sabre rattling, Islamic fundamentalism, pandemic diseases and global financial instability all challenge the current global order:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/10/02/german-troops-stranded-in-afghanistan/

German Troops Stranded in Afghanistan

150 German soldiers are stranded in Afghanistan after another plane suffered an equipment failure, and commanders are so strapped for functioning aircraft that they are considering using “a military VIP jet normally reserved for Chancellor Merkel”, as Der Spiegel reports, to get them home. The Telegraph has more:

Der Spiegel online reported that the Bundeswehr soldiers had expected to be flown home from a tour of duty in Afghansitan, but had become stuck in the town of Masar-i-Sharif on Tuesday because their Airbus 310 transport plane’s emergency oxygen masks were defective. [...]

The breakdown comes as a further embarrassment for German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who has admitted that the military is facing severe equipment shortages which are hampering Germany’s efforts to meet its NATO commitments. [...]

The equipment defects have led to calls for increased defence spending. But Ms Merkels’ Social Democrat coalition partners have said they object to more funding for the military.

This is the fourth air-related embarrassment for the German military in the last few weeks. First, a team of military advisors en route to Kurdistan was stranded in Bulgaria for a few days when their plane broke down; then, the Germans actually had to borrow a plane from the Dutch to carry a shipment of arms to the Kurds. Farcically, that plane also broke down. On September 30, another plane malfunction forced a plane carrying aid intended for Ebola victims in Africa to land in the Canary Islands, where the aid is still stuck.

As we wrote yesterday, it is admirable that postwar Germany confronted its past, embraced non-aggression, and transitioned to democracy. But part of being a mature democracy, as well as being a member of a defensive alliance like NATO, is being able to defend yourself. Like many European nations, Germany may have fallen below that threshold—and these stories increasingly suggest that, in a world on fire, even its low, on-paper strength may mostly be nominal.
 
Here, reproduced under there Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Telegraph Blogs is a very interesting takes on what David Cameron said at the Conservative Party Conference:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100028209/david-cameron-promises-to-withdraw-britain-from-the-european-union-yes-i-mean-it/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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David Cameron promises to withdraw Britain from the European Union (yes – I mean it)

By Andrew Lilico
Politics and society

Last updated: October 5th, 2014

In his speech to Conservative Party Conference, David Cameron said this:

    But we know the bigger issue today is migration from within the EU.

    Immediate access to our welfare system. Paying benefits to families back home.

    Employment agencies signing people up from overseas and not recruiting here.

    Numbers that have increased faster than we in this country wanted … at a level that was too much for our communities, for our labour markets.

    All of this has to change – and it will be at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe.

    Britain, I know you want this sorted so I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer and when it comes to free movement – I will get what Britain needs.

Free movement of people within the European Union flows directly from the concept of EU Citizenship. Indeed, more than that – prior to 1993 Europe was called the "European Community" and the switch to the name "European Union" was connected to the establishment of EU citizenship. We are citzens, with those red EU passports, of what the EU's official website refers to as a "political union" – hence "European Union" not simply "European Community".

The most fundamental feature of being a citizen is that one can move freely within the political union of which one is a citizen. A British citizen can move freely within the UK; a US citizen can move freely within the US; an EU citizen can move freely within the EU. EU citizenship has many other aspects, also – including rights to vote in certain elections, access to some benefits entitlement and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

To restrict the rights of EU citizens to move freely to the UK would be to withdraw the UK from the EU citizenship area – i.e. from the European Union (for that is precisely, both in fact and in origin of the name, what the "European Union" is). Perhaps, if someone agreed to this, the UK could continue to be part of a "European Community" (though free movement of persons was largely in place even before EU citizenship – for those with a taste for such expressions, EU citizenship is a "sufficient condition" for free movement but not a "necessary condition" for it) despite being outside the "European Union", but there is no doubt that Britain would not be in the European Union if free movement were abandoned and hence EU citizenship withdrawn for UK citizens.

Now this may all seem rather semantic – so, the Prime Minister would negotiate that Britain would be in a European Community, and being in that would be the "In" option in an "In/Out" referendum? So what? Isn't that just word games?

It is not just word games, for three reasons. First, the substantive point is absolutely clear. One of the "Four Freedoms" of the Single Market is free movement of persons – along with free movement of capital, goods and services. Having a Single Market means having free movement of products (goods and services) and factors of production (capital and labour). Saying the UK wants to restrict free movement of persons but stay in the Single Market makes precisely as much/little sense (and for precisely the same reasons) as would saying "The UK wants to impose tariffs on imports from Germany and France but remain in the Single Market" or "The UK wants to impose capital controls on investment into Italy but remain in the Single Market". Restricting free movement would, in substance, be withdrawing from the Single Market and hence in substance withdrawing from the EU. The substantive question is unambiguous. The only thing left to consider is the semantic question – whether withdrawing from free movement would be called "withdrawing from the EU" or not. Since the EU is the zone of EU citizenship and EU citizenship means free movement, the answer must be "Yes – the UK would not be in the EU", though we might perhaps still be in some other form of "Europe".

The second reason it is not mere word games is that many schemes for "withdrawing from the European Union" involve continuing to participate in some other form of "Europe" – e.g. the "Norway option" of continuing to be in the European Economic Area. "Out" hasn't normally meant "no Europe", merely "exiting the European Union". But exiting the European Union is precisely what any form of restriction on the free movement of persons entails, by definition.

The third reason is that there are many folk to whom it will matter what it's called – on both sides. Many folk that would find an arrangement with our European friends perfectly amenable if its details were described would vote against it, if it were called "Being in the EU" and many other folk who would like that same arrangement would vote against it if it were called "Out". So let's be clear: whether one called the UK's arrangement that restricted free movement of persons "Being in Europe" or not, it certainly cannot be called "Being in the European Union". Cameron's promise to restrict the free movement of persons decides that point unambiguously.

Andrew Lilico is an Economist with Europe Economics, and Chairman of the IEA Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. He's also been a mathematical chemist, an opera singer, a philosopher, and a computer programmer.


I agree with Mr Lilico: what David Cameron suggests amounts to a fundamental redefinition of the EU, it really says, let's go back the EEC, a simple free trade area. My guess is that's what many, many (even most?) Brits want ... but not, I suspect, most Scots.  ::)

 
I wouldn't worry over much about the Scots ERC.  I think they would be quite happy to be in the EEC/EFTA rather than the EU.  The EU is a game for the socialists (SNP).  I think the half that voted to continue to be Brits would equally vote to leave the EU (kind of sort of as Lillico describes).

I take issue though with some of Lillico's points though.  While the text of EU agreements may conflate goods, services, capital and people I don't see any reason why in practice those things have to be conflated.  They certainly aren't here in North America and while the Union is not Perfect it appears to be a mutually profitable one for all the built in limitations.

Bring back EFTA.....

Any good control system operates by overshooting and then returning to a more stable state.  Lets just rack the EU up to the international version of the Peter Principle - a bureaucracy too far.
 
Here is an interesting and, I think, thought provoking article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2b3b3408-4997-11e4-8d68-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3FBoLIOmk
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Blinded EU can learn from one-eyed US
If you listen to German officials, their philosophy is hard to distinguish from Tea Party Republicans

By Edward LuceAuthor alerts

October 5, 2014xj

That noted economist, Groucho Marx, once said: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” Alas, Marx’s pragmatic sense of humour never crossed the Atlantic. Following years of “whatever it takes” firefighting by the Federal Reserve, the US economy is on the cusp of reasonable growth. Europe, on the other hand, is in danger of sinking beneath the waves. The cause of growing US-eurozone divergence is Marxian. Confronted by the failure of its principles, Europe insists it has no others. The US, on the other hand, has invented new ones as it goes along. Even the partially sighted can see the difference.

Europe’s deepest problem is institutional. Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, views the crisis in much the same way as Ben Bernanke or Janet Yellen, his successor at the Fed.

Unlike the latter, however, Mr Draghi’s ECB lacks de facto independence. The Fed confronts as many critics in the US as Mr Draghi does in Europe. But it has a clear mandate to ignore them. For the past six years, US monetary hawks have warned of the coming tsunami of big inflation. Those jeremiads have redoubled after Friday’s strong US payroll numbers.
Thankfully, Mr Bernanke was able to get on with his job. If he had listened to the scaremongers, America would not now be in recovery. But the battle is never won. Ms Yellen now faces a renewed chorus.

Europe would be in a much worse state than it already is without Mr Draghi’s heroic efforts. Two years ago, he arguably saved the eurozone from breaking up by issuing his “whatever it takes” pledge to keep pumping liquidity into the markets. But the ECB’s actions came later, and were less aggressive, than they could have been. Mr Draghi is hemmed in by much the same constraints today. Surveying a Europe paralysed between a periphery that would reflate and a core that would restructure – when it should be both at the same time – the ECB remains the only game in town. Mr Draghi is once again trying whatever he can. If it is allowed to go ahead, the ECB’s plan to buy up to $1tn of private asset-backed securities ought to be enough to keep the eurozone’s head above water. But it will still be too little.

The second is political. At the key moment in the financial crisis, Capitol Hill squeaked through a majority in favour of an $847bn fiscal stimulus. The result was less than perfect.
Economists are still debating whether the boost was enough – it passed in January 2009 after the US had contracted by almost 8 per cent on an annualised basis in the previous quarter.
It was also poorly designed. Too much was frittered on thinly spread tax cuts and too little on game-changing infrastructure. With hindsight, it was also too small. But it was enough to turn a recession into an anaemic recovery. It is astonishing that Europe is still unable to follow suit.

The US political edge was shortlived. It is America’s good fortune that the Tea Party had not yet gained a veto over the purse strings in 2009. US fiscal policy has hit an impasse since Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 2010. It is Europe’s misfortune that Germany, which is Europe’s equivalent to the Tea Party, has wielded a veto over eurozone budgetary rules since the start. It appears none the wiser today. If you listen to German officials, and their counterparts in other core eurozone economies, their philosophy is hard to distinguish from Tea Party Republicans. The Great Recession was a morality tale that we brought upon ourselves. We must pay for our sins by tightening our belts now. If you don’t like our principles, you can shove it.

What will it take for Europe to heed America’s lessons? The circumstances are hard to picture. Europe is too politically divided, and too institutionally hidebound, to be able to duplicate the Fed’s rule book. The danger, in fact, is that the inspiration might be going the other way.

Friday’s US jobs report has renewed calls for Ms Yellen to raise interest rates early next year. There are no signs of real wage growth and median incomes are still almost 10 per cent lower than before the recession.

The US has caught Europe’s disease of declining labour force participation. Much of the drop in US joblessness is a result of people ceasing to look for work altogether. Though there is no evidence of inflation, the hawks want action to pre-empt it. Early tightening could stop America’s recovery in its tracks – and deal a further blow to Europe’s recovery prospects.

Things being relative, Mr Draghi would swap his problems for Ms Yellen’s in a second. Viewed from outside of the west, however, the US and Europe share deep-seated problems posed by the rise of the rest of the world and a populist backlash against democratic norms.

The US, at least, has clawed its way to a point where it can consider structural reforms, even if they are politically unrealistic. Europe is not even close to that. At a minimum, it should look across the Atlantic for how to restore growth. As that other noted economist, Albert Einstein, pointed out: the definition of insanity is to keep trying the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.


Now, as a matter of principle, well grounded in theory, I agree with the Germans/Tea Part that "The Great Recession was a morality tale that we brought upon ourselves. We must pay for our sins by tightening our belts now. If you don’t like our principles, you can shove it ..." but that is not, really, a practical political position as the electoral fate of fiscal conservatives shows in America, Canada and Europe.

I opposed and still oppose QE, which I regard as being akin, at best, to just printing money and at worst, debasing the currency and fuelling inflation. It is odd, however, that inflation remains stubbornly low in the USA despite what i regard as too much "easing."

 
But surely the US has been engaged in Quantitative Easing since Bretton Woods?  They led the move from gold in the post-war years (WW2).  Nixon codified it.  Reagan took advantage of it. All Obama really did was take a gamble on the rate at which the world would allow him to print paper.  Apparently he has won that gamble.  For all the moaning and groaning and threatening that has gone on since then apparently investors can't find a better alternative to the US economy.  And that must say something.

It is as if the US owns all the gold and sits on top of an inexhaustible gold mine as well.
 
Kirkhill said:
But surely the US has been engaged in Quantitative Easing since Bretton Woods?  They led the move from gold in the post-war years (WW2).  Nixon codified it.  Reagan took advantage of it. All Obama really did was take a gamble on the rate at which the world would allow him to print paper.  Apparently he has won that gamble.  For all the moaning and groaning and threatening that has gone on since then apparently investors can't find a better alternative to the US economy.  And that must say something.

It is as if the US owns all the gold and sits on top of an inexhaustible gold mine as well.


Yes, well said, Kirkhill: Harry Dexter White won it all, didn't he? Game, set and match.
 
Europe is 'united' in the need for economic reform ...

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Source: http://www.cagle.com/
 
Why Europe keeps failing ...

... see this report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29686257
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French 'mess' threatens real civil strife
To grasp the extent of the shambles that is French politics today, take the story of the "eco-tax".

By Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris

November 4, 2014

It could be a case study in how to induce paroxysms of voter fury.

The eco-tax was a levy, agreed on by all France's main parties, which would charge goods vehicles for using the roads. The money raised would help fund infrastructure and encourage other, cleaner, means of transport.

But some French people decided they didn't like it. They tore down the metal bridges where cameras for road-monitoring had been installed. They threatened to march on Paris.

The Socialist government, whose ministers had previously extolled its virtues, suspended the eco-tax. Then they binned it for good.

The end result is this. The private company contracted to organise the tax is claiming 1bn euros in damages from the state. It has built a nationwide grid of electronic monitors - destined now to rust - and employs hundreds of people.

At the same time, the money that would have been gathered from the tax - some 400m euros a year - is missing from the budget.

To replace it, the government has ruled that the price of diesel will go up - for all drivers. In other words, ordinary householders will foot part of a bill that was intended for the big polluters.

As for the rest of the shortfall, the government is casting about for ideas. One day, Ecology Minister Segolene Royal calls for a tax on all foreign lorries that drive through France. The next, Finance Minister Michel Sapin scotches her proposal because it is against European law.

So there you have it - all the ingredients of a modern French mess.

A "noble" cause taken up by the Paris establishment, which then buckles with fear when confronted by the "street", reneges on its commitments and plumps yet another tax on ordinary folk - all the while publicly disagreeing about what on Earth to do next and invoking Brussels as a higher authority.

Widespread pessimism

As the Hollande presidency stumbles past its half-way point, it is hard to overstate the depths of pessimism in the country.

For the eco-tax fiasco was not an unlucky one-off. It typifies perfectly the melange of incompetence, powerlessness, timidity and indecision to which the country's government has fallen prey.

To be fair, just about every French government of the past 30 years could be accused of similar shortcomings. L'immobilisme - basically a pride in the French model and a resulting failure to react to the world outside - began under Francois Mitterrand.

But now the crisis is deeper. The public accounts are close to ruin and yet state spending is still not coming down in any significant way. Unemployment is at 11% and yet the labour market is still not being put through serious reform. The young and the ambitious continue to look abroad.

And to cap it all, France has in Francois Hollande a leader who is about as far as is possible from being the man-of-the-hour.

The president makes a boast of being "normal", when the times require exception. He invites ridicule, when France needs someone of stature. He vacillates, when France looks for steel.

President Hollande said he loathed finance, when that was the expedient thing to do. Afterwards, he discovered the virtues of business, and appointed a former Rotchschild banker to run the economy.

Foolhardy indeed to conjecture what the president actually believes in.

Writing recently, veteran political commentator Alain Duhamel described the crisis confronting France today as "the worst since World War Two". He is not the only one to feel that the country is heading for something very bad.

For Jean-Sebastien Ferjou, editor of the right-wing news website Atlantico: "The political situation today is completely unpredictable. Anything could happen."

On the left, Liberation newspaper's Daniel Schneidermann says: "The volatility means we cannot rule out trouble on the streets."

All scenarios, of course, centre round the far-right Front National (FN) - the party that has been by far the greatest beneficiary of both the economic crisis and the popular turning-away from establishment politics.

For Alain Duhamel, the possibility of FN leader Marine Le Pen actually being elected president - totally unthinkable a year ago - is now not beyond the realms of possibility.

His "devil's scenario" consists of President Hollande dissolving parliament early - next year some time - because of the economy's continuing slide. The centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) wins a majority in the assembly but predictably fails to make much difference.

With mainstream left and right "in it together", Ms Le Pen romps home in 2017.

An alternative version has Ms Le Pen facing up against the returned Nicolas Sarkozy in the decisive second round of the 2017 vote. Then some new judicial scandal - saved up for this moment by his many enemies - engulfs Mr Sarkozy, and he falls.

What would happen in the event of a Le Pen government is for most commentators too awful to contemplate. "The saying goes that in France you need 500 people to run the country," says Jean-Sebastien Ferjou.

"In other words every incoming government needs 500 loyal and competent place-men and -women to take over at the top of the administration. The FN has about 20."

But even if the country avoids this scenario, the omens are grim.

The reforms, which nearly everyone agrees are essential, will no doubt continue to come - but at the rhythm of a drip-feed and never enough to halt the economic slide.

Then what everyone fears is some external event - an interest rate hike that makes the national debt unpayable, an act of terrorism - and such has been the collapse of faith in politics, the country could be on the edge of genuine civil strife.


France is, by inclination, so badly governed, that it is very possible that Marine Le Pen can, maybe even will become president.

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Marine Le Pen who, some observers suggest, will ride the French political chaos to the presidency

I say "by inclination" because France remains wedded to the notion that government 'works' and the Quebec model, which is also an economic failure, rests on the same foundation: a popular belief is 'statism.'
 
I fully expect sales of white horses to increase in Europe over the next few years.  Perhaps even in the US.

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Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an interesting analysis of the EU mit or sans Britain:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/with-or-without-britain-there-will-always-be-an-eu/article21509719/
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With or without Britain, there will always be an EU

ERIC REGULY - EUROPEAN BUREAU CHIEF
ROME — The Globe and Mail

Last updated Saturday, Nov. 08 2014

A couple of years ago, it was little Greece that posed the greatest existential threat to the euro zone and, by extension, the greater European Union. Today, that dubious role goes to David Cameron’s mighty Britain. An EU shorn of Britain is no longer a fantasy and it’s an open question whether the EU could survive without a country that will soon displace France as its second-biggest economy.

Give or take an EU treaty, Mr. Cameron has been in favour of EU membership even if Britain would sooner adopt Greek as its official language than junk the pound and join the euro. But, in recent months, the prime minister has become increasingly shrill about the EU, to the point German chancellor Angela Merkel, the high priestess of EU integration, reportedly said Britain was near “a point of no return” in its relations with Europe.

Translation: If you’re going to be a knucklehead and insist on leaving, your loss.

While Mr. Cameron and his Conservatives have never been table-thumping supporters of the EU’s every treaty and regulation churned out in the Brussels sausage factory, they have, for the most part, recognized that membership in the world’s biggest trading bloc has certain advantages. Among other goodies, it has reinforced London’s status as the continent’s premier and unassailable financial centre, a status that Frankfurt and Paris can only dream about.

Lately, he has become the EU’s biggest critic and for that Jekyll and Hyde transformation, you can thank the perennially grinning Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Mr. Farage’s stridently anti-EU and anti-immigrant bellows have captured the imagination of more voters than the Conservatives ever imagined. Britain goes to the polls next spring and UKIP could deprive Cameron & Co. of the reward they cherish – a majority in recognition that Britain is now the fastest growing European, and Group of Seven, economy with plunging unemployment to go with it.

UKIP won the EU elections in May. Last month, a Tory defector handily won a by-election to become UKIP’s first elected MP. On Nov. 20, another Tory defector is expected to hand UKIP its second by-election victory. Last week’s YouGov poll gave UKIP 15 per cent electoral support, against 32 to 33 per cent each for the Conservatives and Labour.

Now you know why Mr. Farage is beaming like a Cheshire cat.

If we had some clever software, we probably could precisely chart UKIP’s popularity rise against Mr. Cameron’s anti-EU rants. After the EU election, Mr. Cameron launched an all-out war to prevent former Luxembourg premier Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming president of the European Commission. He said Mr. Juncker was “the wrong person” for the job because he “has been at the heart of the project to increase the power of Brussels and reduce the power of nation states.”

Ms. Merkel appeared to support Mr. Cameron, then turned on him, handing him a very public defeat (Mr. Juncker is now EC president). Mr. Cameron’s next anti-EU eruption came when he made it clear that his government is “making every effort to control immigration.” That pretty much turned Ms. Merkel into a frenemy. Germany cherishes the EU “four freedoms” – the free movement of people, goods, services and capital. Take away the first through, say, immigrations caps, and Ms. Merkel loses her patience with Britain.

The last anti-EU eruption came when the EC, much to Mr. Cameron’s genuine surprise, handed Britain a bill for €2.1-billion or $2.9-billion (Mr. Juncker’s sweet revenge?). The amount represented back payment for a calculation based on Britain’s relatively high economic growth. Mr. Cameron fumed that the bill was “completely unacceptable” and refused to pay.

That was a smart move politically; if he had agreed to write the cheque, UKIP would have been handed a gift tied with a bow. But his refusal to stump up does not sit well with the rest of Europe. It hardly opened the door to a compromise with the EU – and compromise is the only way a motley collection of 28 countries can operate. If Britain won’t budge, why would Brussels?

Mr. Cameron has allowed UKIP to back him into a corner. As UKIP becomes more popular, the Conservatives will become more jarringly anti-EU, to the point, inevitably, that they will be incapable of defending Britain’s membership in the EU. If re-elected next year, Mr. Cameron has promised to hold an in-or-out referendum on EU membership, similar to the Yes-or-No vote he backed, and narrowly won, in September’s Scottish sovereignty referendum.

Mr. Cameron, a former PR man, has always been excessively influenced by the polls. How can he go from hammering the EU before the EU referendum to declaring the EU the greatest thing since Kate Moss during the referendum. He would get slaughtered for hypocrisy.

Britain, like most other EU countries, used to be known for its sense of moderation in tweaking the institutions and policies that govern the world’s most complicated union. No longer. No wonder Ms. Merkel may consider him, and Britain, a lost cause. There are no winners here, aside from UKIP. Britain’s exit from the EU would leave both as vastly diminished forces.

There is, it seems to me, some merit in both arguments:

    1. Britain is doing well despite being shackled to the the EU's protectionist fantasy; or

    2. Britain is doing well because its economy rests on the firm foundation of the EU ~ a giant free trade area.

On balance, I think the second argument is probably better, but, I also suspect that if Britain decided to leave it would be essential for both Britain and the EU to negotiate a free trade agreement ... they need one another. Britain is more global than any other EU member, even more than Germany, but it is, also, undeniably part of Europe. The question for Britain (and for Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and a few others, I believe) is: how tightly bound to Brussels to we need to be versus how close do we want to be? 
 
One of the reasons Europe, whatever that may be, keeps failing is because Europe is nothing more than an abstract geographic expression ... and never will be more than that. For example, in foreign policy, we have "France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has demonstrated a long-standing ambition—bordering on a psychological need—to be taken seriously as a player in the Middle East," which puts itself at odds with many (most?) of its European neighbours, even those that appear to share common policy ends because it's "end" is special. Anyway, here is the article from which the preceding quote was lifted; it is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142402/rory-miller/empty-promises
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Empty Promises
Why France Won't Deliver for the Palestinians

By Rory Miller

NOVEMBER 30, 2014

Tomorrow, the French National Assembly is set to vote on a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state, a step already taken by the Swedish government, the British and Spanish parliaments, and the Irish Senate. Yet even with several other European countries looking to do the same, a “yes” vote would have little practical effect: it would be nonbinding, dismissed by the United States, and rejected by Israel. If such formalities really did matter, then a Palestinian state, which 134 countries have recognized, would already exist.

How the National Assembly votes and how the government of French President François Hollande responds does matter in other way—although not so much for Israel or Palestine as for France. The country is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third largest in the world after Israel and the United States. Anti-Semitic attacks almost doubled in the first half of 2014 compared with the same period in 2013, and Jews are leaving the country for Israel in record numbers. This year, more new immigrants have arrived in Israel from France than from any other country in the world.

France also has Europe’s largest Muslim population, which is feeling increasingly restless and marginalized as well. The far-right National Front party, with its program of tough anti-immigrant measures, has made sizable gains in local elections across the country. Anger over such policies has only compounded a sense of injustice when it comes to Palestine.

Last summer, at the height of the Gaza crisis, tensions reached a fever pitch when thousands took to the streets of Paris and several other French cities. France’s ban on anti-Israeli marches and the violent clashes that ensued between the police and demonstrators recalled the infamous street fights of the early 1960s, in which hundreds of North African immigrants died protesting for Algerian independence. As one organizer of the recent demonstrations explained, “The Arab, the Muslim, and the black [are] going to public and expressing solidarity with a people under siege—and there’s a continuation of colonial policies of repression.”

Beyond such domestic considerations, the vote matters also because France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has demonstrated a long-standing ambition—bordering on a psychological need—to be taken seriously as a player in the Middle East. It is, in the final account, a referendum on whether France really is the West’s truest champion of the Palestinian cause.

DOG AND PONY SHOW

During the 1950s and 1960s, France was in a rather different position. As a major Israeli ally, Paris supplied the Jewish state with guns, intelligence, and nuclear know-how. But following the outbreak of the 1967 Six-Day War, French President Charles de Gaulle realigned France’s Middle East policy in favor of the Arabs as a way of rebuilding regional influence in the wake of the Algerian crisis. Since then, every subsequent French government has prioritized the Palestinian cause. And all have gone to great lengths to brandish their pro-Palestinian credentials.

De Gaulle’s immediate successor, Georges Pompidou, used France’s dominant position inside the European Community in the early 1970s to pressure his partners on the issue. Later, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to open an office in Paris, championed Palestinian national rights at the United Nations, and backed Palestinian self-determination during a visit to Kuwait in March 1980.

President François Mitterrand entered the Élysée Palace with a reputation for being an old-school pro-Israeli socialist. But when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, he fought for the survival of PLO leader Yasir Arafat and his organization. French soldiers participated in the PLO’s evacuation of Beirut in the summer of 1982 and its flight from Tripoli in December 1983. The media-savvy Arafat had little trouble summing up the French role in a crisp sound bite: “From the rank of a friend,” he told journalists, “France has now become a brother.”

A decade later, in Jerusalem in 1996, President Jacques Chirac refused to speak with Israeli parliamentarians and rejected the protection of Israeli security personnel on a visit to the Arab part of the city. He also became the first Western head of state to meet Arafat in Ramallah. This gesture resonated so deeply that during the 2002 French presidential elections, Muslim audiences chanted, “Chirac to Ramallah, Chirac to Ramallah,” recalling the landmark meeting.

By the early years of this century, the Oslo peace process was dead and Chirac was one of many world leaders criticizing Israel for its aggressive response to the second intifada. In 2004, the same year that Chirac cancelled a planned visit from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a terminally ill Arafat chose to spend his last dying months in a French hospital. Following his death, French soldiers loaded his coffin, draped with the Palestinian flag, onto a French military plane while an army band played the French and Palestinian national anthems. His remains were flown to Cairo. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier followed close behind.

Although Chirac may have provided Arafat with an impressive sendoff, neither he nor any of his predecessors ever gave Arafat the one thing that he really wanted when he was alive: recognition of a Palestinian state. Despite their demonstrations of solidarity, none wanted to act alone and none had the requisite influence to carry their European partners with them. And little has changed since. French President Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly promised to help bring about international recognition of a Palestinian state while in office. At the same time, he worked hard to repair relations with Israel, which had hit an all-time low under Chirac. As the two-year deadline for announcing a unilateral declaration of statehood drew near, Palestinian officials openly predicted that France would recognize their proposed state by the end of 2011.

But they were sorely mistaken. At the annual UN meeting of world leaders in New York in September 2011, with a U.S. veto looming and other EU nations still undecided on how to act, Sarkozy used his General Assembly speech to put forward his own proposal for Palestinian “observer status” as an alternative to a unilateral declaration of statehood.

Hollande has merely picked up where Sarkozy left off, further consolidating economic ties to Israel while openly expressing a general commitment to the Palestinian cause. That’s a far cry from his pledge, during the 2012 campaign, to bring about full international recognition of a Palestinian state. In response to criticism about Hollande’s inaction, his foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, has tried to explain what that promise actually entails. The “government’s responsibility,” he has stated, “is not just to recognize a state—a Palestinian state. It’s to make sure that it’s recognized on an international scale.” Fabius has also said the French government will “not shirk its responsibilities” if peace talks fail to progress.

With the latest round of failed peace talks unlikely to resume anytime soon, Hollande is under pressure to follow through with that promise. He has expressed deep frustration with the situation, bemoaning the fact that negotiations have been going nowhere for “too long.” Yet in his most recent meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in Paris last September, Hollande would not formally commit to recognizing Palestine. He was only willing to submit a draft resolution setting out a solution to the conflict before the UN Security Council.

The National Assembly vote is a response to Hollande’s failure to deliver on his pledge. But it is also a direct acknowledgment of the fact that, for decades now, French leaders have set self-imposed limits on their support for Palestinian statehood. In the mid-1970s, Giscard declared the Palestinians “an entity, a reality, a people” and expressed support for a Palestinian homeland but was unwilling to consider the logical outcome of those claims: a PLO-led state with juridical rights and duties under international law. It wasn’t for another six years, until March 1980, that he called publicly for Palestinian self-determination—widely understood as a euphemism for statehood.

French officials hailed this as an unprecedented move that cemented France’s role at the forefront of the European fight for Palestinian national rights. In reality, it was nothing of the sort. In the previous year, the foreign ministers of West Germany and Belgium had made the same call. Ireland had gone a step further, explicitly using the word “state” in relation to Palestinian aspirations a month before Giscard’s declaration.

France was also hesitant at another key moment, in November 1988, when the PLO’s leadership declared an independent Palestinian state without defined borders but with Jerusalem as its capital. The Mitterrand government had spent much of the first half of the decade fighting to save the PLO from Israel in Lebanon. But it still couldn’t bring itself to join the 55 Muslim, Third World, and nonaligned countries that recognized the PLO’s largely symbolic proclamation of statehood. Foreign Minister Roland Dumas explained that his government had “no difficulty” recognizing a Palestinian state “in principle” but that it was impossible to recognize a state that “does not dispose of a defined territory.” As a consolation prize, Mitterrand invited Arafat on his first official visit to Paris.

PRIORITY PROBLEM

There are two ways to explain the gap between French rhetoric and actions. The first is that France has been constrained by the hesitancy of its allies and by its long-standing commitment to a joint EU foreign policy. In 2002, during the lead-up to Palestinian elections, French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine put forward a novel and controversial peace proposal. It began with what was long considered an endpoint—the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the recognition of Gaza as Palestinian territory, and the negotiation of a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

The plan was dismissed in Washington, watered down in Berlin, and blocked by London, where the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair vetoed every French attempt to build support within the EU. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer eventually sidelined Védrine and pushed a less ambitious version of the French proposal that dropped the French call for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state and instead provided a timetable to establish an emergency government, elections, and a provisional state. It wasn’t so much the content of the original French proposal that was problematic. In fact, in late 2004, soon after Arafat’s death, Blair even considered putting forward a similar plan himself. The real problem was that the proposal came from France.

This leads to the second explanation: successive French governments have failed to gain traction for their efforts because they have been unwilling to work with the United States, hostile to Israel, and indifferent to the views of European allies. Instead, they have opted to push ahead with unilateral plans in the service of their own agendas and as a way of consolidating France’s status as the leading independent European actor in the Middle East.

This pattern began with de Gaulle, who didn’t bother to consult his European counterparts before he abandoned France’s pro-Israel policy in 1967. Giscard likewise didn’t inform French allies before calling for a Palestinian homeland in 1974, nor did Mitterrand before he publicly linked the Palestine problem to a peaceful end to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1991. Chirac, for his part, made surprise moves in other areas, resuming nuclear testing and reneging on past French commitments to European border rules. And he did the same in the Middle East, despite presenting his government’s activism in the region as an expression of the EU role there.

As Chirac told an audience at Cairo University in April 1996, his ultimate goal was to improve Franco-Arab ties, making Arab policy as central to French policy as it had been in earlier times. Less than a month later, Chirac sent Foreign Minister Hervé de Charette on a round of shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem, Damascus, and Beirut to promote a French peace plan. Distrustful of French intentions, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher followed de Charette to the region. When the two held a joint press conference in Beirut, de Charette made sure it was conducted in French, leaving Christopher oblivious to the proceedings until a quick-thinking French-speaking State Department official bounded onto the stage and started translating in his boss’s ear.

Although the French peace proposal ultimately came to naught, this brief linguistic victory meant that France could claim, at least momentarily, to be the key Western power in the Middle East. Washington wasn’t happy, of course, and Israel accused France of sowing “confusion.” But the real anger came from Europe; the Chirac government had not only launched a Middle East peace plan without going through the proper EU channels but had not even informed its closest partners about its plans.

More recently, Sarkozy’s September 2011 UN speech stirred a different kind of resentment on the continent. European leaders accused him of going public with a peace proposal based on ideas he had lifted from confidential and ongoing EU discussions with the Palestinians—all to improve France’s image abroad and his own political fortunes in upcoming presidential elections at home. Sarkozy, like Chirac before him, would later justify his own commitment to Middle East peacemaking in European terms. “I want Europe to take back ownership of important political dossiers such as this,” he said.

Hollande doesn’t share Chirac’s or Sarkozy’s flare for the dramatic. But he, too, has characterized French action on Palestine as a European imperative. In a recent speech to French diplomats, he acknowledged the “decisive” role that Washington had to play in finding peace but also urged the EU to action. “Europe’s role is as important,” he said. “It must act more.”

Ever since de Gaulle, the Palestinians have also hoped that Europe, with France in the lead, would act more boldly and that French recognition of a Palestinian state would be a “first step” toward Europe-wide recognition, as the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency put it recently. But having watched from the sidelines for years as Paris pursued national interests in the Middle East under the cover of promoting a coordinated European policy, European leaders have been unwilling to follow France’s lead.

In turn, no French government has been willing to go it alone and meet the key Palestinian demand—full recognition of a Palestinian state without defined borders but with Jerusalem as its capital. The upshot has been paralysis in French policy on Palestine completely at odds with the narrative successive French governments have spun. As the chances for further direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians fade quickly, as more and more of France’s European partners take action on the issue of Palestinian statehood at a national level, and as French parliamentarians prepare to vote, this reality is finally clear for all to see.
 
Laffer's Laughing Again - EU outdoes California

This is an older article but the situation affects My Significant Other  immediately - she, a Canadian in Canada, earns pin money flogging, amongst other things, knitting and crochet patterns to places like Latvia.

Now she won't.  She will have to be content with selling everywhere but the EU.

And it seems the Brit entrepreneurs are going to do the same thing - so much for Free Trade, encouraging enterprise and innovation.

The real aim of the EU is to re-establish Corporatism - the enemy is what it has always been: "the nation of shopkeepers".
 
http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/nov/25/new-eu-vat-regulations-threaten-micro-businesses

New EU VAT regulations could threaten micro-businesses
Online protest today as HMRC predicts 34,000 SMEs affected by laws from 1st January

EU VAT legislation is causing some small businesses to reconsider trading across Europe. Photograph: Tom Van Sant/Corbis
Kitty Dann and Eleanor Ross
Tuesday 25 November 2014 10.19 GMT

Micro-businesses are protesting against new VAT laws that they say could force them to reconsider trading in Europe.

From 1 January 2015, EU VAT will be charged in the country where products are bought as opposed to the country where they are sold. The legislation applies to digital products only, such as e-books, online courses or downloads.

UK businesses are currently exempt from paying VAT if they sell under £81,000 worth of products a year. However this threshold will be removed for those exporting digital products and services to Europe, from New Year’s Day.

From January, if a UK business makes a sale in another EU member state they will have to pay VAT there. The only way to comply is to register for VAT with that country or register for HMRC’s Mini One Stop Shop scheme (VAT MOSS). According to the HMRC website, the VAT MOSS scheme requires businesses to submit a ‘single calendar quarterly return’ and VAT payment to HMRC, which then sends the ‘appropriate information and payment to each relevant member state’s tax authority.’

Amanda Tickel, tax partner at KPMG UK, says: “It’s important to understand that the UK threshold of £81,000 is not being removed and micro-businesses selling digital services to customers in the UK can still trade VAT free as long as they are below that threshold.

“What is changing is that all sales of relevant digital services to EU customers outside the UK will be subject to the local VAT regardless of the value of the sales as there is no minimum threshold.”

Tickel adds: “The issue is that once registered for UK VAT, the threshold no longer applies and all UK sales become liable for UK VAT.”

Lorraine Dallmeier, who runs an online skincare school, has organised a “Twitter storm” on 25 November to protest against the changes. “[The new legislation] is going to have a huge financial impact on people, as well as the administrative burden that comes with it,” says Dallmeier. “There are 28 countries in the EU with 75 different VAT rates.”

Businesses have three options, says Dallmeier: register to pay VAT in every EU member state you sell to; register for the VAT mini one stop shop scheme (VAT MOSS) or stop selling to the EU.

Dallmeier became involved in discussions with other business owners on social media. “I am just one of a number of people pulling strings, trying to get the message out, and telling HMRC that this is crazy.”

Dallmeier has sold her products to 18 EU member states in the past two years, and says she only recently became aware of the new legislation. Since then she been in touch with her local MP, but says “no-one is listening or helping.”

A spokesperson for HMRC says the changes should only have a “small effect on administrative burdens.”

“Although a business needs to have a UK VAT registration number before it can register for the Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS) online service, provided it separates the cross-border part of its digital services business from the domestic part, it can voluntarily register for VAT on the cross-border business only.”

The HMRC spokesperson says that most micro-businesses, such as developers of apps or digital downloads, trade through a third party platform or marketplace, like an app store.

“Where this happens it will be the responsibility of the marketplace operator to account for the VAT. As a result the vast majority of micro-businesses are unlikely to be affected by the changes,” adds the spokesperson.

According to the HMRC website, the changes could affect around “34,000 small and medium businesses” in the UK.

Some business owners are concerned that the legislation will restrict their opportunities to sell abroad.

Beth Johnson, who runs Mumbles Mummy, selling online crochet patterns, says: “Recently I have been starting to write my patterns out so people can download them. I wanted to push my business forward, because even to make a simple hat takes a minimum of an hour. I had to look at ways of expanding.”

Johnson says she has struggled to understand what is required of her as the new legislation comes into force.

Tickel, from KPMG, advises small businesses to work out whether it is financially worthwhile for them to keep trading in certain countries. She says: “UK-based micro-businesses selling digital services into EU countries should do a careful cost- benefit analysis.”

A change.org petition has been set up, asking Vince Cable to intervene and uphold the existing VAT exemption tax.

The HMRC spokesperson says that it has provided a “significant amount of information” about the VAT rule changes and MOSS on the GOV.UK website. “We have worked closely with stakeholders and representative bodies to publicise the changes, been involved in various webinars, held a conference that was streamed on the web, and regularly issue Twitter alerts. We have issued regular updates over the last 12 months in the quarterly VAT Notes and we are organising a Twitter clinic that anyone can join to ask questions.”

And here is the real joker in the deck:

This new VAT procedure was intended to prevent internet giants such as Amazon from avoiding paying VAT by basing themselves in Luxembourg. Instead of this intended effect, the new rule is in fact going to make complying with VAT so difficult that the only way to sell e-products will be to sell via large platforms like Amazon or Apple – who can hire enough lawyers to make the red tape of more than two dozen nations make sense and code an app on their website to calculate the amount payable correctly.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11295953/How-the-EU-is-throttling-online-business-with-idiotic-VAT-reform.html

Luxembourg tax scandal not my fault says EU chief: Jean-Claude Junker launches bizarre defence saying he is not to blame despite being country's PM for 18 years

Luxembourg did tax break deals with more than 300 global firms
The claims are now being investigated by the European Commission
They were signed while Juncker was prime minister of Luxembourg
He now heads Commission, but claims there is no conflict of interest


By JOHN STEVENS and JACK DOYLE FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 15:02 GMT, 12 November 2014 | UPDATED: 09:02 GMT, 13 November 2014
   
Jean-Claude Juncker launched a bizarre defence of the Luxembourg tax-dodging scandal yesterday, insisting he was not to blame despite having been its prime minister for 18 years.

The scandal engulfing the new European Commission President and arch-federalist deepened after a disastrous press conference in which he attempted to claim it was not his fault. Mr Juncker told journalists that he was ‘not the architect of what you could call the Luxembourgish problem’.

‘There is nothing in my past indicating that my ambition was to organise tax evasion in Europe,’ he added.
....
But Mr Juncker was either prime minister or finance minister of the country for more than two decades from the mid-90s.

.....

It was reported last week that Luxembourg had granted secret deals to 340 companies allowing them to avoid tax. It helped them avoid paying billions in tax elsewhere and was agreed at the time when Mr Juncker was in charge of the country.
He said yesterday it was up to the Luxembourg government to explain its behaviour. Bizarrely, he also appeared to blame the problems in Luxembourg on Britain and other countries in Europe blocking tax harmonisation across the continent.
....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2831624/European-Commission-boss-declares-faces-no-conflict-despite-investigation-revealing-links-huge-tax-breaks-awarded-global-firms-Luxembourg-premier.html

 
Not sure how much longer Greece can play these games with the Euro. Both Greece and Germany have powerful incentives to stay on the courses they have chosen; but only one train can be on the track at any time:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-05/fear-the-grexit

Fear the Grexit
Jan 5, 2015 3:02 PM EST
By Megan McArdle

Grexit is back. We're three weeks away from the Greek general election, which the left-wing Syriza party, which wants an end to Greece's punishing austerity regime, seems likely to win. The problem is that the austerity regime is the condition for continued assistance from the euro zone. If Syriza does indeed win and tries to make good on its promises, Greece could be forced to exit the euro.

I have some thoughts about this, which I present in no particular order:

•Financial crises take longer than you think. I've quoted this before, but Rudiger Dornbusch seems particularly apropos: "The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought . . . It took forever and then it took a night." Reaching an accommodation during the last crisis did not mean that the euro was safe, and even if Greece safely negotiates this round, it doesn't mean that Greece won't eventually exit. There is a very serious underlying structural problem in the euro, between rich members who require one sort of monetary policy, and poorer members who would do best with a very different sort of monetary regime. This fissure in the system still hasn't been resolved.

•The deal reached years back is not such a good deal for Greece any more. Back then, leaving made the country unambiguously worse off, because it was running a primary deficit--even if Greece defaulted on all its bonds, it would still be in the red. Which meant that an immediate default would mean even deeper austerity than staying in the euro. Greece is now running a primary surplus (or so they say, anyway). That means default is a more attractive option.

•Both sides have a point. The suffering in Greece is deep and real, and the country and the people are much poorer than the foreign creditors they are struggling to pay back. It's not surprising that Greeks resent this, and want to stop. Just as real, and valid, are German concerns about the moral hazard of letting Greece borrow a bunch of money on what is basically Germany's credit, and then demand a bailout on easy terms to stay in the euro. Unfortunately, there is no way to reconcile these points of view.

•Nationalism remains a real and powerful force. Argentina has repeatedly shot itself in the foot with international bond markets rather than cave into rich, powerful foreigners. There's a deep human drive to resist RPFs issuing orders, particularly when they are ordering you to embark on an austerity plan at great personal sacrifice. In the next few weeks, a lot of earnest, detailed, and completely correct analyses, chock-a-block with facts and figures, will demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Greece would be better off complying with the austerity plan and staying in the euro. These may be very much beside the point.

•If it happens, an exit will be a disaster. The mechanics of a Grexit are beyond daunting. The financial system will have to be frozen in order to keep people from immediately withdrawing all their euros and attempting to find them safe harbor abroad. And what do people use for money? In the long run, Greece may be better off, but in the short term, there will be immense suffering. And the contagion may well spread beyond Greece; Ireland seems to have escaped the trap, but Italy, Portugal, and Spain all remain vulnerable.

•Exit may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people think it will happen, they will rush to withdraw their money from the financial system. The resulting collapse will force Germany to put more money in on easier terms, or Greece to leave the euro. The current market turmoil is not a good sign, though it's still far from a critical reaction.

To contact the author on this story:
Megan McArdle at mmcardle3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor on this story:
James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net

Probably the key takeaway is the idea that Greece claims to have a primary surplus, so can weather out a default. Given their reporting habits in the past, this is open to question (at a minimum), and of course even if they are currently running a surplus, there is no magic formula to suggest they will continue to do so. Indeed, a "Grexit" could trigger a wave of defaults in the PIIGS or the "Latin Zone" (If Ireland has escaped the trap), which would create punishing economic conditions for Greece and the rest of Europe as a whole.
 
I'm reading suggestions, in the newspapers I read, that Germany has decided that the Euro can withstand a Grexit and it may, perhaps, be about to happen. Greece would be pushed out of the Euro and would have to re-float its own currency (the gods alone know how  ::) ) and a few (several) other Euro members who be encouraged to put their fiscal houses in order.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I'm reading suggestions, in the newspapers I read, that Germany has decided that the Euro can withstand a Grexit and it may, perhaps, be about to happen. Greece would be pushed out of the Euro and would have to re-float its own currency (the gods alone know how  ::) ) and a few (several) other Euro members who be encouraged to put their fiscal houses in order.

"Pour encourager les autres?"
 
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