Class divides and European integration, yet again

Prof. O’Rourke, from your June 14th 2008 piece.

” … maintain the benefits of open international markets…”

Which are? And whom are the ‘losers’ then? – since there have to be ‘winners’. And if those losses involve the permanent loss (or significant reductions) of incomes derived from waged-labour employments – then what? If you promote support and invoke economic policies which eventuate in a reduction of ‘consumer demand’ – then whither your Consumer Society in terms of its mandatory, continual and exponentially increasing, consumption of goods and services?

They gave Louis and Antoinette a somewhat radical ‘haircut’ for suggesting that hungry folk whose low incomes could not buy bread – should substitute to cake – Economic Theory posits that this is what should have happened in a ‘Free Market’. So how did that work out, then? Not so a good I believe!

So what does modern Irish Economic Woman do when her income decreases or disappears? Substitute to their Credit Card(s)? Now that’s what I call really ‘clever’ career advice!

If voting Yes in that referendum meant that all state salaries and pensions and waged-labour incomes above 90,000 would be taxed at 100% – and all non-employed citizens would get an automatic 50% increase in their state income – and there would also a juicy 50% tax on all nature of un-earned incomes and all property transactions and inter vivos transfers. Guess who would have voted No? Hmmmm …

“My claim is simply that economic interests were one factor among many, and should not be ignored. If working-class and rural voters are systematically voting against further European integration, that is something which Europe’s political leadership will need to listen to.”

No contemporary political leader gives a rat’s ass about ‘public opinion’. All they hear is what their immediate supporters and spokesmodels tell them. “You are really, really wonderful minister! “You are working SO hard on our behalf.” And they actually believe this PR guff.

I live in DL. I voted No. I knew then, and I still know now, what is involved. The dilution of our Constitutional Republic in favour of un-elected and semi-elected officials and European parliamentarians. They cannot deploy force – though they would; so they deploy forceful economic means instead. Working, so far. So far!

It may take a triple-whammy of inconclusive Irish parliamentary elections to ‘shake’ the Irish political parties (and our bureaucrats) into implementing the required, modernizing, political and economic restructurings (reforms are simply window-dressing). We’ll see.

Is anyone following the Bitcoin story ?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f13bf822-9de4-11e3-95fe-00144feab7de.html

“It is a good thing that he resigned. It is a bad thing that he needed to resign,” said Roger Ver, an angel investor in a string of start-ups often known as “Bitcoin Jesus”

“The lesson is not that nobody can be trusted,” wrote Mr Voorhees. “The proper lesson, if I may suggest, is this: we are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow’s finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so.”

@DOCM

Applying his character’s experience to the EA, and a currency that is effectively the world’s second reserve currency, would not, however, be very credible.

Ehhh, you do know that Kevin O’Rourke is speaking figuratively about bankruptcy here? As in morally bankrupt, no credibility left to spend, crisis of authority – that sort of thing?

Seafóid keeps banging on about this but you seem to be oblivious to it. Elite complacency about the undeniable failure of EU macroeconomic policy and EMU will gradually undermine the common interests of EU countries until suddenly there will be nothing left.

If the people of France grow tired of being in a currency union with Germany and democracy works its magic the Euro might well live on as some Deutsche bloc currency (or with Germany being the only large country left using it).

The Euro would still be a strong currency, it is just the EU that would be weak.

@ DOCM: Hi, there. Reading that Joe Salerno book on ‘Money’. Not very whelmed by what he has to say. These von Mises folk? They would not be another group or school of economic, ideological astrologers?

And on the subject of astrological ‘forecasts’ – have you read the utter sh*te from one of our ‘leading’* economists – Blanchard at voxeu.org/article/world-recovery-really-strengthening?

* Leading us to where exactly?

And as for our ‘judges’ rending their cloaks over the inability to appoint the ‘best’! A sample of ONE is now a positive ‘trend’ – which will end in what? – a disaster? Sweet divine!

re EU forecasts. The Commission expects Ireland to miss the 3% deficit target by a wide margin in 2015 (4.3%) and also believes that the output gap will turn positive then so the structural deficit is even higher at 4.6% which implies the need for further significant adjustments. Only a forecast of course but different tack from Government and consensus….

Quoting Ernest Hemingway who shot himself as his father also did, may be appropriate as the poll results point to a depressed French public. Official unemployment is more than double the German harmonised rate of 5.2%.

Globalisation, politicians, the euro and so on are handy to blame.

By 2015, German and French GDP will have grown by 25% since 1999, the year of the launch of the euro – not very impressive but there is no magic formula for sustainable jobs and Richard Freeman, the Harvard economist, has calculated that: “In 1980 the global workforce consisted of workers in the advanced countries, parts of Africa and most of Latin America. Approximately 960m persons worked in these economies. Population growth — largely in poorer countries — increased the number employed in these economies to about 1.46bn workers by 2000.

But in the 1980s and 1990s, workers from China, India and the former Soviet bloc entered the global labour pool. Of course, these workers had existed before then. The difference, though, was that their economies suddenly joined the global system of production and consumption. In 2000, those countries contributed 1.47bn workers to the global labour pool — effectively doubling the size of the world’s now-connected workforce.”

A temporary stimulus would not solve France’s economic problems as money printing alone will not solve Japan’s: a country can be prosperous and not.

Just over a quarter century after the USS Missouri sailed into Tokyo Harbour to accept surrender, Time magazine featured Akio Morita, Sony co-founder, on its cover with the slogan: “How to Cope with Japan’s Business Invasion.” Today Samsung announced that it has sold more than 200 million Galaxy S smartphones.

France’s overall debt has risen from 174% of GDP in 1999 to 262% in 2012 while German debt hardly changed. It has a big number of small firms (reducing export potential) and profitability is much lower than in German firms.

Kevin I ‘m not sure the “right wing” label blunderbuss is really appropriate to Eurosceptic political movements. Most Ukip voters (not the nutty activists) would just laugh at anyone who suggested they were right wing. There are pressures on ordinary people that the elites of politics, journalism and academia just don’t experience. To them a guy actually in tune with their concerns is a left wing politician not a right winger.

fyi
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Charles Edouard of Swiss TV on the Phillips curve

http://www.rts.ch/emissions/ttc/rubriques/?theme=13959

Charles Edouard on Derivatives

http://www.rts.ch/video/emissions/ttc/5310691-charles-edouard-nous-explique-ce-que-sont-les-produits-derives.html

@political science heads

“… now they mainly just want to capitalise on, and monetise as much as possible, that investment of time and effort” [grumpy, 2014]

Critically discuss, in less than 100 words, wrt to The Irish Labour Party Elite in the context of possibly resolving the EZ crisis.

Just Google Search “Hollande austerity”. Says everythig about why most French think the EU is turd-buckets.

DOD,
Maybe the 1968 class just grew up. After all if you are not a socialist in your 20s you have no heart and if you are still a lefty in your 50s …. No brains.
Or maybe they just died of substance abuse.

@ Tull

“After all if you are not a socialist in your 20s you have no heart and if you are still a lefty in your 50s …. No brains.”

Tull

We are now in year 34 of morning in America. It has been very kind to the plutocrats.
The right wing agenda won and the stockmarket is banjaxed.
Like Hef on Vi##ra. Sure it still goes up every so often but honestly does anyone believe it? Most of the girls are just there for the money.

Morgan Stanley struggle to make 10%. Ballyhaunis Credit Union can do better than that. Just saying.

Larry Summers brought up the subject of secular stagnation last November.
A big load of externalities that were not priced in hit the UK last month.
I dunno if the right wing has any answers either, frankly.

Rather small sample what 1,000 glad they could find some French “workers” rather elusive.Russell index just hit all time high!

“Confidence in developed economies like North America and western Europe has shot up since last year, according to a survey of investors across 23 countries.

Some 27 percent of the 15,749 investors surveyed by asset management company Schroders said western Europe offered the best prospect of returns in 2014, up from just 10 percent last year. Meanwhile, almost one-third (31 percent) of investors saw North America delivering the strongest returns, up from 18 percent in 2013.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101443240

@seafoid 100% of American workers think mothers day is a good thing….

The most interesting thing I read in the past few weeks is that no progress has been made in economics since David Ricardo and Karl Marx. This was in a paper commenting on James Galbraith’s latest book which is widely praised.

In accordance with my Kerry need to keep an eye on things. I spent three unexciting hours at a meeting to elect the founding executive committee of a federal constituency. It takes the place of being in the bar or fingering the Rosary beads in Ireland.

Mickey,

in principle, the counter example Denmark. With a spandex tight peg to the Euro.

But it requires a lot of discipline and social cohesion. Could you imagine that in Ireland?

@JG

I believe in moms, apple pie and the equity risk premium

@francis
The Irish tend to get caught up in idee fixe. For example before joining the EuroZone there were decades when the Irish Pound was tied to the British Pound in a fixed rate arrangement that involved backing from both the British and the US. The Irish Pound was still vulnerable to attack by the Soros’ of the world, as you know he brought down the British Pound on one occasion. Also a man’s word is his bond (as at a cattle Fair), it is a small country and reputation matters. There is no anonymity in Ireland as there is in the large cities abroad.

This had a lot to do with the State honouring debts of private banks at taxpayer expense. The shame of having all the private Irish banks going bankrupt was too much for the Government of the day and its successor to face. In many countries they would be put into receivership and the courts would sort it out. Being hardened by years abroad and understanding that business is business and the law is the law and having experienced bank collapses (deposit insured) I know that life goes on. That is not what the Irish Government understood as they were in their overwrought emotional state, shame, guilt, loss of reputation. The world needs hard bitten, rational, cold people on occasion.

Ireland should not be mistaken for a country that was industrialised 200 to 300 hundred years ago. Think of it as nation of farmers and small businesses whose people are morally and politically conservative to the point where it is a problem. I know there are large foreign owned businesses but they do not elect Irish governments. As for discipline, within the culture it is positively brutal as my wife pointed out to me.

Why are trackers valid?
To save the borrower, lest he or or she bring down the lender.
Imho, it is the lender that is being saved.

@ MH: ” … commenting on James Galbraith’s latest book which is widely praised.”

Galbraith fils needs to be read, carefully and in parallel, with Blyth and Krippner – at the very least. Our current global financial and economic mess has been at least four decades in the making. Each ‘paints’ only a portion of the full canvas. The Irish dimension is another canvas entirely.

Blyth: ‘Austerity’ – 2013.
Krippner: ‘Capitalizing on Crisis’ -2011.

@ francis: “But it requires a lot of discipline and social cohesion. Could you imagine that in Ireland?”

No imagination needed francis. We did it in 1979 – if my memory serves me. First papal visit!

@ DO’D: I don’t know that reversing out of ‘Neoliberal Lane’ (its a damn cul-de-sac) will be all that easy. But your suggestions are valid. We need (urgently) policies to ensure a minimum income for persons who either cannot engage in waged-labour or who could, but there are no longer suitable opportunities available for them. We inhabit a consumer economy and one needs the appropriate income for all necessaries.

We need policies to ensure that property (especially arable land) is available for purchase at prices that a family could afford. And policies which minimize the impact of all taxes, duties, social and property charges on waged-labour incomes. Doable – but unlikely in the present. Maybe three parliamentary elections hence. When the dung is well and truly airborne.

@ JR

If trackers are losing the banks 700m and regular mortgages are jacked up to subsidise them why aren’t trackers loaded to make it fairer ? Is it because so many trackers are knackered ? Is there a BTL bias towards trackers ? What is it ?

Would Mr O’Rourke be so kind to define ‘far right’?