Posted by seumasach on October 28, 2008
Helen Power
28th October, 2008
The pound plummeted close to a six-year low yesterday. The currency’s losses in recent months now mirror its demise after Black Monday in 1992, when John Major pulled Britain out of the exchange-rate mechanism and destroyed the Conservatives’ reputation for economic management.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: join the euro! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 21, 2008
Sterling falls after weaker-than-expected UK CBI Reuters
Tue Oct 21, 2008 11:20am BST
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LONDON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Sterling fell on Tuesday, hitting a session low against the euro after figures showed that UK manufacturers were the most grim on their business outlook in nearly 30 years, underlining ongoing economic weakness. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: falling pound, join the euro!, pound's pounding, Sterling's decline | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 21, 2008
21st October, 2008
Iceland, the country hit worst by the global credit crunch, is about to get a €6 billion international rescue package. Meanwhile, the EU has said negotiations would be quick if Reykjavik wants to become a member state.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, euro, join the euro! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 6, 2008
How the Euro is gaining currency
As the credit crunch bites harder, joining the Euro may prove not just economic wisdom but simple self-preservation for the UK
John Stevens
guardian.co.uk, Monday October 06 2008 19:30 BST
If one wanted a definitive measure of the anti-European bias of our financial commentators, it has been the exaggerated reaction to present uncertainties over national government bank support schemes within the European Union. Of course, the current competitive bailouts are highly undesirable, as the reaction of the markets has shown. They should and will, doubtless, be replaced by a more coherent and coordinated approach, not least as a result of the fallout we have seen. There is no alternative to this. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by seumasach on October 5, 2008
Cailean Bochanan
5th October, 2008
Mandelson is back, declaring Britain to be in “something approaching a national emergency”. That’s very diplomatic: in fact, it is bankrupt. Ever since the collapse of Northern Rock the government have been discreetly channeling public funds to the banks. That this process was nearing its limits was shown when Mervyn King, head of the Bank of England, threatened to resign. Brown in his desperation went to Washington to talk up the US bailout from which it appears British banks would benefit substantially. Paulson tried to bounce the Europeans into a similar bailout of which, once again, Britain would be the beneficiary. This was scotched by Germany and has been dropped. Where else can Britain go, cap in hand?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: join the euro! | 3 Comments »
Posted by seumasach on October 3, 2008
For all that Europe has adopted the language of neo-liberalism, it has a way to go catch up, or rather, slide back to the UK and the USA. That this was the case was shown by the endless Anglo-saxon tirades against “socialist” Europe. Just how far the neo-liberal rot had set in will be revealed by this crisis, but I suspect it will pale in comparison to the devastation over here. Unlike the UK, Europe still has a substantial high-tech industrial base, thriving agriculture, good infrastructure and high levels of education. It still has a bureaucracy which has served as a check on oligarchy and a robust dirigiste tradition. The EU doesn’t run a huge current account deficit nor is its public sector saddled with massive debt from PFI/PPP schemes: the Euro is a rising currency. Sometimes we forget that we are actually members of the EU such is the permanent mood of hostility promoted by our press. It’s time to recognise our good fortune and to enter fully into the spirit of building Europe and to join the Euro as soon as possible.
Mary Dejevsky
3rd October, 2008
The vast majority of European financial institutions are not in difficulty
President Sarkozy has called European leaders to Paris tomorrow to discuss what everyone is fatalistically calling the global financial crisis. But it is not a world financial crisis, is it? It would be more accurate to describe it as a crisis of what the French used to call, with a contemptuous Gallic shrug, the “Anglo-Saxon model”.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: join the euro! | 3 Comments »
In These New Times 