Tim Worstall

What sort of confidence can anybody have in somebody who even the EU fired for incompetence? Nigel Farage

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In a speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the Prime Minister will argue that European judges have become too powerful. He will say the court should not “undermine its own reputation by going over national decisions”, just days after its judges overturned the decision of British courts to deport Abu Qatada, the radical [...]

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Surrounded by the wreckage of their system, some Eurofanatics are still asking for more time. The Marxists used to do the same. It is now time for the federasts to follow the Inquisition, Apartheid and the Marxists – out of history.

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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has warned that the year ahead will “undoubtedly” be harder than 2011 in the starkest of a series of downbeat messages from European leaders dominated by fears over the economy. Merkel said Europe was experiencing its “harshest test in decades” but would ultimately be made stronger by the crisis. It’s [...]

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More fundamentally, over centuries this country has made her living (and endured much of her dying) around the world. It is extraordinary that in the age of the internet she should believe that she must do the economic and political equivalent of marrying her next door neighbour. If ever there was a time when matters [...]

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Who asks about my views on what actually should be done about the euro crisis. OK, we have two entirely different things here, the short and the long term. They’re all tied up with each other, of course, but they are different things and need different answers. 1) Short term. A falling, at least a [...]

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The hope here amongst people who understand what’s going on (many European leaders are not in this category) Rule by technocrats is all very well until you realise that the technocrats are ignorant.

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instant dismissal with no pension for any Civil Servant who has unauthorised dealings with European bureaucrats or politicians And “unauthorised” should be expanded to anyone who even says good morning to one without the necessary appendage “you hateful foreign person you”. Or would that be going just a tad too far? Maybe we could relax [...]

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On the whole, the French media, even those hostile to Sarkozy, welcome the Brussels results. Throughout the euro crisis they have given him credit for keeping the German chancellor on the European track, pressing her for faster action and defending the French view that political will is more important than rules. That’s why Britain simply [...]

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Mr Cameron’s “asks” were rejected, not because they were too great – but because it was he who made them. No other British prime minister of recent years would have had difficulty getting this package through. This was Gallic pay-back time for all that unwise Cameron lecturing – and sometimes worse – from the sidelines [...]

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Via, from the Northampton Chronicle. Well, he did rather piss all over their chips in Brussels, didn’t he?

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Via, this idiocy: This could be Cameron’s opening. Given the trouble he is going to be in anyway – with his sceptics, if he agrees to the proposed treaty amendments without agreeing to a referendum, and with business, if he effectively accepts Britain’s relegation to a lower financial league – he should summarily end the [...]

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The Dutch bank ING has had another go at the numbers, calculating that the Greek Drachma would fall by 80pc against the D-Mark in a full-blown disintegration. The Escudo and the Peseta would fall by 50pc, and the Lira and the Punt by 25pc. Germany would suffer a “deflationary shock”. OK, so that’s what would [...]

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Eurozone debt crisis: safeguard the City or I’ll veto new EU treaty, warns David Cameron He’ll do no such thing. This is a domestic piece of willy waving, aimed at some 80 Tory MPs. He’s no more going to veto a treaty change than he is to swap Samantha for Edwina Currie. Fake right, run [...]

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The “lack of progress the European policy-makers have so far made in controlling the spread of the financial crisis may reflect structural weaknesses in the decision-making process within the eurozone and European Union,” the agency is said to have told them. Well, yes, I think “structural weakness in decision-making” is something that we’ve seen ample [...]

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There’s something of a problem with this EAW you see: In another case, Andrew Symeou was extradited to Greece in July 2009 to face charges in connection with the death of a young man on a Greek island. He spent a year in custody before being granted bail but could not leave Greece. He was [...]

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As Ambrose points out: The three main gauges – M1, M2, and M3 – have each begun to decline in absolute terms after slowing sharply over the Autumn. The broad M3 measure tracked closely by the European Central Bank as an early warning indicator shrank last month by €59bn to €9.78 trillion, a sign that [...]

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Referendum now please.

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So if the euro breaks up, where are those currency values going to go? As Jeremy Warner points out, they’re not actually that far out of whack. Except these are the numbers against the US$. Given how much more the eurozone economies are integrated with each other than they are exposed to the $, what [...]

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Mrs Merkel said treaty changes would “make clear that we must take steps toward a fiscal union to express the conviction that we know policies must be more closely coordinated if you have a common, stable currency.” “It is political confidence in Europe that has been lost – we can only win it back politically,” [...]

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