dagblog - Comments for "Germany's Bold Plan to Rescue Europe"

The attitude to date has been

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:56:59 +0000

In reply to German-ECB monetary policy is

The attitude to date has been "let ECB (Germany) throw money at it".

Not likely to help long-term.

The action taken yesterday, leading towards a real financial function of the ECB to bolster the region as a whole, not just contain inflation, will likely have the better effect long-term.

Propping up Greece and Italy's profligacy? Not good - let them come under rules of the game. Spain, as the one article notes, is a more sympathetic figure, as is Ireland.

Anyway, sounds like the Eurozone will get a real financial policy structure, not just another band-aid.

Woah - the Greeks broke it,

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:48:50 +0000

In reply to Maybe I'm missing something

Woah - the Greeks broke it, and don't want to own it. They want another bailout, no pain, just let us keep on as always. They wanted to reject any austerity and have a daddy come in and make it all better. And by the way, still keep railing against the Turks.

Germany's been nice for a long time, much to show how they're making amends for WWII.

Propping up other countries and paying more than their share and keeping quiet with most EU disagreements.

The add-on of 10 new East European countries was a major concession by Germany, who footed much of the bill of accession.

Greece has been a freeloader for a long time. Italy has been borrowing much more than it should. Yeah, German bankers shouldn't lend to bums, but because of WWII the Germans feel obliged to not play hardball. At this point they're getting sick of it.

Regarding $300 billion TARP loans to Deutsche Bank, maybe the Germans did what the Americans didn't - got the money in the hands of people & businesses to keep them moving. Don't know specifically, but Germany recovered much better than others.

Forget about that, end last

artappraiser — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:24:14 +0000

In reply to Germany's Bold Plan to Rescue Europe

Forget about that, end last chapter, start new book?

Sarkozy and Merkel Push for Changes to Europe Treaty
By Steve Erlanger, New York Times, Nov. 5/6, 2011

PARIS — [....] Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, meeting here at the start of a crucial week that will end with a European Union summit meeting on Thursday and Friday, called for amendments to European treaties that would include centralized oversight over budgets and automatic sanctions against countries that violate firmer rules on deficits.

The changes are among the most sweeping proposed since European countries began coordinating their economic policies in the aftermath of World War II. They would effectively subordinate economic sovereignty to collective discipline enforced by European technocrats in Brussels. [....]

Citation tres drole: Mercredi

artappraiser — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:23:20 +0000

In reply to Here's a much better

Citation tres drole:

Mercredi soir, M. Montebourg tenait à rectifier le tir. "Ce n'est pas l'Allemagne que j'accuse, c'est l'annexion par la droite prussienne de la droite française que je condamne", assurait-il.

That's what they call a walk back?! M. Montebourg still seems to be fighting the Franco-Prussian war. Long live all French parties left to right untainted by Prussian thinking! So much for a European union.

A more useful news item for your p.o.v., I would think:

France’s Hollande Woos Germany’s SPD to Rewrite ECB Rulebook
December 05, 2011, 12:24 PM EST

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The opposition socialist parties of France and Germany should broaden the European Central Bank’s mandate to influence economic policy if they come to power, Socialist Party presidential candidate Francois Hollande said.

France’s Socialists and Germany’s Social Democrats, facing national elections in 2012 and 2013, should plan ahead to widen the ECB’s power to fight the debt crisis, Hollande said today in an address to German “comrades” in Berlin. He is leading polls before the May election and the SPD is seeking to win the September 2013 vote....

Still, note the ending line:

The SPD, led by party Chairman Sigmar Gabriel, trailed Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union by 25 percent to 35 percent in a Nov. 25 Stern magazine poll.

Aussi, le PS contemporain, il n'est plus parti socialiste de grand-pere. Wikipedia:

In May 2011, the French centre-left think tank Terra Nova edited a "Left strategy for 2012" report[5][6], which suggests that workers should not continue to be a main subject of the Socialist Party's campaign platform, considering that the working class has lost its political significance and has moved toward the National Front nowadays. It advises the party to revitalize its platform and its voter base by emphasizing its progressive views on youth and women and by targeting ethnic minorities, precarious workers and academia.

Edit to add: Should you be mistrustful of a "center left" opinion of where French working class voters have gone, check out what the World Socialist Website has to say on the matter.

Thanks, AA. Nice link.

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:18:31 +0000

In reply to More reasons in support of

Thanks, AA. Nice link.

German-ECB monetary policy is

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:13:00 +0000

In reply to I was talking about Germany's

German-ECB monetary policy is screwing Italy and Spain.

I repeat: German-ECB monetary policy is screwing Italy and Spain.

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/04/the-euro...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/opinion/15krugman.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/05/there-will-be-blood-2/

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2011/11/14/german_centr...

And so on

Maybe I'm missing something

kgb999 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:03:13 +0000

In reply to This is a curious

Maybe I'm missing something here. It occurs to me ... that this is not my fucking problem. IMO Germany's big sin is trying to dump this on the IMF when it's really their own responsibility to deal with through the ECB.

Germany has dominated every other nation in Europe ... accomplishing through fiat what early 20th century attempts by force failed to accomplish. Fuck. They just flat-out removed the governments of two supposedly democratic sovereign nations and replaced them with unelected hand-picked servants to their will ... in the case of Greece, staffed with literal fascists who have a history of physical violence against their political adversaries.

They broke it. They bought it. Should have stopped their bubbles when we bailed them out with TARP instead of doubling down in Ireland et. al. GERMAN bankers are right at the root of all that shit ... and we've been bailing out Deutchbank from the US Treasury for years now. Clearly, the Germans are far less highfalutin about their dedication to these bedrock economic principles when the American economy is being devalued to help THEIR banks.

Let them pay for once - and let them face their own people with the impacts of their greed. We have our own criminal bankers we're trying to deal with. As the world sits today, the Europeans have dumped ALL of the repercussions for their own bad actions on the citizens of America. Time admit their corruption and culpability and to shoulder their own losses. Their uber-wealthy are going to have to take a haircut too ... or explain it to their own citizens.

I was talking about Germany's

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:02:00 +0000

In reply to Germany's domestic spending

I was talking about Germany's expenses to prop up the EU. You were implying the Germans were just being cheap. Somehow I think they're a bit chagrined to find themselves propping up more and more uncompetitive economies, and frankly they're probably not able to.

Greece of course is a basket case, which lied about the state of its economy.

Italy has a debt of 2.6 trillion € , where 1 trillion € is needed to bail it out, more than the central bank has for this type of thing. Servicing the debt interest alone is already 300 billion € yearly.

This isn't the case of a small Ireland that was actually doing pretty fine economically. It's about entrenched heavy debtors - too big to fail, too big to prop up.

But anyway, Sarkozy & Merkel made up yesterday, so she's no longer being referred to as Bismarck.

Really? Here's where I

EmmaZahn — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:30:10 +0000

In reply to Germans tend to be very

Really?

Here's where I found that image. Some good reading there and at the links.

Decoding Euro-moralizations – Kantoos Economics: "There are some moral debates about the Euro going on in the international blogosphere with Tyler Cowen and Ryan Avent as the main participants, and Scott Sumner adding some interesting historical perspective. In my view, Ryan and Tyler are not talking about the same thing, so let me offer a different take on the issue."

Germans tend to be very

Dan Kervick — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:21:32 +0000

In reply to Yeah, that'll work.

Germans tend to be very sensitive these days about what other people think of them.