European Bank crisis

[clv101]

Yes, I have predicted the EU won't exist in 24 months. 2017 is going to be momentous.

Indeed, I think it's pretty likely that by the time we get around to leaving, it won't be at all clear what it is we're leaving! I could well imagine Italy and France on their own exit trajectories by then. It makes our Brexit negotiation rather problematic though... we might end up in some sort of New Union with France, Italy...

[Little John]

I predict none of this will matter in 10 years time because in 10 year's time, there will be open conflict across the world between China and Russia and their various allies on the one side and America and its allies on the other. There is already indirect conflict now using various nations as proxies. It's only a matter of time before the proxies give way to direct conflict.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/20 ... s-disorder

The nature of the political upheaval in Europe continues to be misunderstood. An intrepid follower of fashion, the writer and gadfly Bernard-Henri Lévy has joined many others in opining that voters are no longer interested in facts or arguments. But “post-truth politics”, like “populism”, is a term mostly used by liberals who cannot face up to the self-defeating effects of their inordinate ideology. They might benefit from revisiting an idea that captivated an earlier generation of progressive thinkers, and considering the possibility that history obeys a law of dialectical contradiction. By pursuing the ultra-liberal project of a borderless continent in which national identities count for little, Europe’s ruling elites are bringing the opposite into being.

Unhappily, there is no sign of any higher synthesis. Europe has entered one of its periodic states of protracted disorder. That seems not to have penetrated the minds of those who agitate for a fuzzy Brexit. Their jubilation at the election of a Liberal Democrat after Zac Goldsmith’s self-immolation in the 1 December by-election in Richmond Park, south-west London, screens out this larger reality. Equally, whether you see it as a legitimate test of constitutional principle or the pursuit of the Remain cause by other means, the result of the government’s appeal against a legalistic challenge to its authority to implement British EU withdrawal is sublimely insignificant, in the context of the upheavals under way across the Channel. By the time any soft Brexit could be negotiated, Europe’s political landscape will have changed beyond recognition.

John Grey has written some cracking articles on the New Statesman about our post-liberal era and why the European project is collapsing.

Fully agree with the consensus that the EU is going to collapse over the coming few years.

[snow hope]

We have discussed and debated over the years on here, how the world will start to commence the downslope of our way of life and standard of living as a result of Peak Oil.

I always felt that the economic collapse of the financial system in 2007/8 was as a result of the peak in oil price of $146 in July 2008 and its impacts on business and commerce globally.

The financial system was only prevented from collapsing by the bail-out of many too-big-to-fail banks and other companies and institutions.

I believe that 2016 has seen the first major step on the downslope. In 2017 this will only gain momentum unfortunately.

Another much larger financial collapse is coming as TPTB lose their ability to keep the banking system from crashing. The general public are losing confidence in the establishment and it will not be long until they start to lose confidence in our coloured paper.

I have no doubt that the declining American empire will go to war with the emerging empire(s) in a desperate fight to retain global hegemony.

We have very very tough times ahead in my opinion and the vast majority of people will simply not know what has hit them.

[Lord Beria3]

Fully concur Snow hope.

Ambrose has written a great piece of the euro Greek tragedy in the Torygraph today (its the main reason I signed up to their premium service).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/201 ... y-not-imf/

There is no longer any tolerance on the IMF board for further squalid fudges over Greece, and it is almost unthinkable for the Fund to take part in the latest €86 bail-out under the current EU terms.

The election of Donald Trump has clinched it. "We have enough problems; let Germany handle it. It's peanuts for Germany,” he said when asked what he would do about the country.

"Frankly, Putin probably comes in to save the day, if Germany doesn’t,” he added, for good measure.

If only Greece had defaulted and left the euro in May 2010 when the crisis first detonated, and had been able to do so without bringing down the temple on everybody's heads.

The country would have suffered a short sharp shock like Argentina when it broke the dollar peg, with temporary capital controls and a temporary nationalisation of banks. The chances are that it would now be four years into a blistering 'V-shaped' recovery with a super-competitive drachma.

Actually, it is still not too late for liberation, and next time nobody will stop them.

Whilst the Greek public still wish to remain part of the eurozone at some point it will exit. One wanders what level of humiliation is required until the Greek public finally scream "that is it" and elect a government prepared to return to the drachma.

[johnhemming2]

I don't see why having tax exemption from VAT for some islands and not other islands is so humiliating.

The humiliation if anything is the acceptance that the greek government are not fiscally competent.

[snow hope]

The humiliation, johnhemming2, is that the IMF, Eurogroup (the EU) and the ECB conspired to screw the historic country of Greece into deep debt for many decades if not a century. If Greece had not joined the Euro, the situation they found themselves in - caused in 2007/8 by the *ankers, amongst other financial institutions - would have been nowhere near so bad.

I am embarrassed to be a member of a country in the EU and voted Brexit for the reason above in addition to 3 or 4 other major reasons.

I don't expect you to see, agree or understand this, but it is a growing understanding amongst many people not tied into the establishment, of what really happened.

[emordnilap]

There are multiple crises happening as we type; we're buffered by privilege. The break-up of the EU is a minor consequence.

Snow, have you read Paul Mason's Postcapitalism? It should be available at a library. Like any such book, it can only guess at the future and we know that that future will not turn out as he thinks.

But the narrative provides excellent context for today's many crises and very neatly puts these various actors into a list. We need more thinkers like him to get ordinary people thinking, rather than supporting entrenched BAU cheerleaders.

[snow hope]

No I haven't read it yet, but I know Paul Mason is a good/deep thinker based on what is unravelling.

What do you feel are the main crises occurring emordnilap?

[emordnilap]

No I haven't read it yet, but I know Paul Mason is a good/deep thinker based on what is unravelling.

What do you feel are the main crises occurring emordnilap?

The 'main' crises. There you go - as Mason states, any single or even several crises are solvable but not all the myriad crises taken together. That said, collapse due to one crisis may solve others.

In no particular order, here's half-a-dozen or so:

Automation (look at this for instance or this) and consequent race to the bottom
Ageing population
Climate change
Increasing inequality
Overpopulation
Species extinction (especially fish and bees)
Energy density

This doesn't include financial collapse because that would be a positive crisis (providing it was thorough enough). Plus we have the rightwards direction of politics and emergence of police states; the 1% can't predict the future any more than Paul Mason but they have the means to do some preparation.

I'll have a look at Mason's book when I get back home, see what I've missed from the list.

For a bit of woo and maybe a glimpse of a better future, see here.

[emordnilap]

And on a lesser note, would you like to know the beneficiaries of the money printing by the ECB?

Though the amounts – the total the ECB holds in these companies – are not available, the high number of trades indicates a strong interest in companies that are contributing the most to climate change.

Source

[emordnilap]

No I haven't read it yet, but I know Paul Mason is a good/deep thinker based on what is unravelling.

What do you feel are the main crises occurring emordnilap?

The 'main' crises. There you go - as Mason states, any single or even several crises are solvable but not all the myriad crises taken together. That said, collapse due to one crisis may solve others.

In no particular order, here's half-a-dozen or so:

Automation (look at this for instance or this) and consequent race to the bottom
Ageing population
Climate change
Increasing inequality
Overpopulation
Species extinction (especially fish and bees)
Energy density

This doesn't include financial collapse because that would be a positive crisis (providing it was thorough enough). Plus we have the rightwards direction of politics and emergence of police states; the 1% can't predict the future any more than Paul Mason but they have the means to do some preparation.

I'll have a look at Mason's book when I get back home, see what I've missed from the list.

For a bit of woo and maybe a glimpse of a better future, see here.

Yus, I missed one from the list, a favourite on this forum - migration. Likely to become a much bigger issue with climate change and the next push of neoliberalism.

[Little John]

......we have the rightwards direction of politics and emergence of police states.....

I don't think that is inevitable in principle E. In principle, we have an authoritarian direction of politics and the emergence of police states. This may be far Left or it may be far Right.

I do accept, however, that in practice the existing economic/political elites may well allow the far Right to come through if faced with a binary choice of extremes. The reason being they can do business with the far Right, but they can't do business with the far Left.

[emordnilap]

......we have the rightwards direction of politics and emergence of police states.....

I don't think that is inevitable in principle E. In principle, we have an authoritarian direction of politics and the emergence of police states. This may be far Left or it may be far Right.

I do accept, however, that in practice the existing economic/political elites may well allow the far Right to come through if faced with a binary choice of extremes. The reason being they can do business with the far Right, but they can't do business with the far Left.

Yeah, libertarianism is seen as opposite to authoritarianism but what happens when you're desperate to protect your libertarianism?

Anyways, summing up Postcapitalism, it's utopian. Some of his 'top priorities' are 100% state control of wholesale energy, an immediate end to the neoliberal experiment and nationalisation of central banks under democratic oversight. All well and good and I would support all three but my - and his - desires on those issues are irrelevant.

[kenneal - lagger]

I'll say it again, we are definitely in the post Capitalist era because we entered the Corporatist Era when the first corporation became "to big to fail". Whether or not we have entered the post Corporatist era yet, I am not sure, but it must be well on the way. Perhaps when the first big corporation is allowed to fail we will know we have reached that Holy Grail!