In the wake of Brexit, the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the UK with spite and vengeance.
Merkel insists that if the UK pursues a Norway-style solution, it will have to accept the EU’s migration rules along with it.
Ironically, had the EU’s migration rules been more sensible, the UK would not have left in the first place.
Following a close election in which there were voting irregularities, Austria’s Constitutional Court Orders Rerun of Presidential Election.
Citing serious irregularities in the counting of postal votes, Austria’s constitutional court issued an unprecedented rule mandating a rerun of the presidential election in which Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen narrowly beat Freedom Party and anti-immigration candidate Norbert Hofer
Hofer was ahead before postal votes were counted. Perhaps he wins the second chance election.
Hungary Announces Referendum on Migration
Hungary is so fed up with EU’s refugee policies that it announced an October Referendum on EU Migrant Plan.
“Is it the goal of European policy to stop migrants at the borders, to keep processes under control, to conduct procedures outside our borders and to then decide on admitting certain individuals? Is it our goal to let them in and to redistribute them later?” Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban said in Brussels last month.
Four Countries Fed Up With EU
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic issued a joint statement “The genuine concerns of our citizens need to be better reflected. National parliaments have to be heard.“
Poland’s deputy prime minister Mateusz Morawieck said “The British voice was the voice of reason.”
For details, please see Four Countries Blame Jean-Claude Juncker for Brexit, Two Seek His Ouster.
The EU Prison
Financial Times writer Martin Wolf asks “Is the best way to preserve the EU bloc to make it a prison, rather than a desirable place of refuge?”
Other than a stray sentence here and there, I seldom agree with Wolf on anything.
This time, he generally gets things correct in his article How Europe Should Respond to Brexit.
The UK is leaving. That has to be the assumption of its EU partners, particularly if free movement of people remains an inviolable principle. So how should the rest of the bloc respond?
The UK’s almost certain departure is a threat to the EU on two dimensions.
First, the UK is a neighbour, a market, a financial centre, a security partner and a link to the wider world. It is in the EU’s interest to achieve a mutually satisfactory relationship, however infuriating the UK must be. This argues for the pragmatic position taken by Alain Juppé, frontrunner in the race for the French centre-right presidential nomination. He even suggests that restrictions on free movement of people should be negotiable. If so, that would surely have obviated Brexit.
Second, Brexit is a precedent. The first country to leave the EU is, inevitably, an example to those that wish to follow suit and a warning to those who oppose it. It is natural for the latter to seek to undermine the appeal of the former by punishing the UK. I sympathise. The question they must ask themselves, however, is whether the best way to preserve the EU is to make it a prison, rather than a desirable place of refuge.
The paramount example of recent failure lies inside the eurozone. That has nothing to do with the UK. The sad truth is that, far from launching a period of prosperity, the euro has delivered a lengthy period of stagnation and massive divergences in living standards. Between the first quarters of 2008 and 2016, aggregate eurozone real gross domestic product rose by a mere 0.5 per cent, while real aggregate demand fell by 2.4 per cent. This is grim enough. Even worse, between 2007 and 2016, real GDP per head is forecast to rise 11 per cent in Germany, stagnate in France and fall by 8 per cent and 11 per cent in Spain and Italy respectively.
The core challenge for the EU is to make it work — and be seen to work — for the benefit of the great majority of its citizens. Germany has done well out of the euro. Its principal partners have not.
Separate Ways
Who Has the Keys?
Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel want to make the EU a prison. The Eurozone was designed as a prison from the beginning.
But like Otis on the Andy Griffith Show, voters have the key.
Otis was the town drunk. He frequently locked himself in jail to sober up. Otis had access to the courthouse keys and could come and go any time he wanted.
Voters too have the keys. The UK has had enough of the EU prison and wants out.
The more the EU responds by cramming absurd rules down the throats of citizens, the more likely it is for voters to demand the prison key.
Once again, it is Angela Merkel is the Person Most Responsible for Brexit.
Her policies on migration rules led to the UK voting to leave.
The cat is finally out of the bag. And voters know they have the key.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
What I find incredible is that Carney is talking down the pound and the economy. I have never seen a CB chief do this so blatantly. IMHO it is an attempt to send a clear message that a vote against the establishment comes with very negative consequences. Carney had the temerity to talk about excessive UK debt and to support measures to increase it. Not a word on excessive debt from his lips before. Once a Goldmanite always one.
All bad things will be blamed on Brexit. If the vote had been for remain, the blame would be on the uncertainty caused by the referendum.
Depressing….
What I find incredible is that a non UK national is allowed as head of the BOE …
Substantially more troubling still, is that there exists a BOE.
The job description of the BOE’s chief requires that his very life be dedicated to the cause of central banksterism. If the chap hadn’t survived the exhaustive vetting process that The Club conducts, he’d never even see the inside of the BOE employees’ washroom (except perhaps on a tour). In any case, isn’t the de facto slogan of the central banksters “Think globally, rape locally”?
“If all bad things will be blamed on a Brexit”, that will be a fitting irony since Brexit never would have happened had successive UK governments not blamed the EU for their own competence and mistakes. Britain was labelled the “sick man of Europe” prior to joining the EU. Since joining, it’s prospered. Since Brexit, it’s chaos. Go figure.
“In the wake of Brexit, the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the UK with spite and vengeance.” This is quite erroneous. Of all EU leaders who’ve reacted to the Brexit vote, Merkel was the most conciliatory and not demanding that the UK take immediate action to leave. As for her stance on the UK’s adoption of the “Norway” model, that isn’t treating the UK with “vengeance”, rather the reverse, it would be giving special again yet again to the UK as Norway agreed to both Schengen (borderless travel to/from the EU) and to the right to emigrate to/from the EU while the UK would onlhy be required to agree to the latter, not the former.
“The Eurozone was designed as a prison from the beginning.”
You got that right. Which is why self-rule (i.e. sovereignty, independence, freedom, Brexit) is the only way to go. Hungary and Eastern Europe can complain up the kazoo, but the rules are the rules; and they signed onto them to avoid passport hassles, etc. In the EU, they will travel freely amongst member states but remain whimpering, whining whipped dogs. That is the nature of the beast. The only way for their Parliaments to be heard is to be sovereign countries again, not Slave States or Provinces in the EU Empire. Until then, they are subordinates, not equals with the power to negotiate. That is the nature of Power and Freedom.
Might as well try to negotiate the laws of gravity, as change the nature of Empire. Eastern Europe would do better to have its own neutral alliance, and play Russia against the EU for best advantage. The grand totalitarian experiment that was supposed to lead to peace is marching to war with Russia at behest of the USA Neo-Con War Party. Europe will be crushed like a bug in a third world war, which would be just fine with the USA War Party if it kept the USA Homeland military-industrial complex humming. Utopia is not in the cards, or in the EU. Human nature does not correspondend to Marxist precepts, as much as socialists wish it to be otherwise.
France blocked Turkey from joining the EU before Erdogen was elected — ignoring NATO history and Turkey’s (then) fast growing economy / young population.
All the EU “club med” members spend like drunken sailors (apologies to drunken sailors).
No one elected the pompous @sses that run the EU. No country in Europe ever ratified the Lisbon Treaty.
No EU country has complied with Maastrict Treaty, and most (including France) selectively obey Schengen while chastising England for not obeying 100%. France puts all their muslims into a ghetto outside Paris, while England elected a muslim mayor.
Seems like there is plenty of blame to go around.
Also seems like blaming the Germans (or any nation) is the opposite of being a team player. Do you want the Germans on your EU team or not?
Divide and conquer is a tactic one would expect from someone trying to break up the EU. Instead, the EU has failed to play as a team from day one. Sports teams that attack and blame their own players end up losing. The EU has been blaming England, blaming Germany, blaming Spain — which is why “team EU” has never played like a team.
The EU is 28 prima donnas that each think they are infallible and “its all the other players on my team holding me back”.
No different from any economic union. And I mean ANY. Consider the way OPEC has operated, and for that matter the cabal of American farmers who get ag subsidies enacted and then look for ways to cheat without getting noticed.
It can never be any other way, since individuals, households, or at it’s largest, slightly extended families, are the sole and only actors in any economy.
There never were, nor are, nor ever will be, a “we.” No “he/she/they who are speaking on ‘our’ behalf.” No “us”, no “them.” All that, is simply illusion, heavily indoctrinated into those envisioned to be the “equal” masses, by those deeming themselves more equal. Who hence, consider themselves in their right to command the mere equals, as “their” “leaders.”
As long as most self described practitioners of economic “science”, instead of observing the world as is, kowtows to the above fallacy as devotedly as the rest of the indoctrinati, the whole profession will remain nothing but a laughing stock. As well as a useful shill for totalitarians, and a low hanging career fruit for less than luminary saps, who want to “do science”, but are unable to play that game at a higher level. Ditto for the rest of social “sciences.”
The EU’s politicians care more about their jobs and the EU than the prosperity of their countries and their citizens.
Even though a Brexit would be terrible for Europe’s exporters (who have a huge trade surplus with Britain), they can’t possibly give them mutually beneficial free trade because they have to force EU fees and a few million Eastern European migrants down every rich member’s throats which basically no one wants in order to stop the EU collapsing.
The best thing that can happen now is the UK leaves and joins the EFTA that it set up back in the 1960s as a simple free-trading area to compete with the EU and lands trade deals with the US, Canada or even tries to join the TPP to show that a country can prosper outside of the union.
The Germans are good at building walls to keep people IN…
The German politicians know if the Euro and the EU breaks up they are doomed. Why? Their DM would kill their economy. Germany prospers under a one currency fits all as their production of goods costs are way down. The DM would be 2.5 to 3 DM per Euro!!!
I doubt that. The DM would be whatever the Germans decide. It’s just a number. They can start at 1:1 with Euro and over time the DM would likely go *up* against the Euro.
Markets decide the DM price to other currencies or they did. When I left Germany it was 2.50 to the dollar. Currently the DM would rise and definitely hurt their manufacturing based economy.
You must be a neo-keynesian if you think the key to prosperity is having a worthless currency.
Back when Japan was growing, the yen kept rising against the dollar and they did just fine.
Pre-EU, the D-mark kept gaining ground on the dollar and the German economy kept growing. Everyone (including the Germans) loved the strong d-mark. You might recall (before the media started editing history) that the Germans insisted on the Maastrict treaty (a strong euro) to prevent the club med countries from doing what they did.
Its not about the currency value, that is a stupid cop-out excuse made by people who like to portray themselves as victims (“give us free shit” by another name). Its so much easier to blame the other guy than to fix your own house
I think the incongruity of the EU is simply showing not only the limits of Globalization but basically its failure. We’re all be turned on one another when you connect “the World” with modern media through the lens of the Internet. So instead of some type of peace, love and Woodstock thing we’re geting the worst of all of us for everyone to see…and it would appear the “out” as it were is folks rejecting “the system” and turning to violence and terror if not outright War. Has the Taliban been solved since 9/11? Nope. Iraq? Nope? Libya? Nope? Wall Street speculations? Nope? Homelessness and hunger? Nope. And the list just goes on and on and on….all under the watchful eye of an eye that never sleeps, never stops watching, never stops recording “our mess” and ultimately our failings. This is a really ugly ending to what a lot of folks thought back in the 90’s would be some “Nirvana” type do-over for the human race. Instead we’ve got global anarchy and terror and it looks to be getting a whole lot worse a whole lot faster … especially since 2008. This whole “unwinding” of Plan Internet sure vehicles like the Rise of the Third Reich to me…and all the same time ramifications near as I can tell.
People forget that at the outbreak of World War 2 the Germans were considered the most forward looking and intelligent people in the World at the time. Yet look to the depths of depravity they sunk to…without even batting an eyelash.
And just like this go around of “smarty pants-ism” no one really cares…about anyone or anything. The Ultimate Irony of the “connected World”… and what Brexit means to me…the fact that there is no way to disconnect from it.
Sure…sounds good on paper and in print…but where is Ukip now? Left leaderless and somehow “blameworthy.”
Welcome to WOPR World…where any attempt to turn of the Doomsday Machine is seen as a threat by the Machine…and the Machine doesn’t have any sense of humanity…nor is it bothered by the fact that you don’t have any humanity to your fellow man.
Quite the opposite actually.
“Behold the tools for mutual Armageddon” human race.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Economic globalization works well, especially for poorer nations. Imagine what China would look like without European and American trade. Without Japanese export autos there would be no such thing as mass production hybrid vehicles. GM still cant sell any. I don’t want shoe and underwear factories in USA. Someone will say those sock factories create American jobs, but with American wages and benefits most of those jobs would be quickly taken by machines.
Social globalization is a better target for ridicule. EU is leveraging the economic benefits to force members into a social homoginization defined mostly by German preference.
c.f. “One size fits Germany”
As soon as any country leaves the EU and the euro and prospers, the entire organization will collapse.
Iceland++.
“In the wake of Brexit, the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to the UK with spite and vengeance.”
So Merkel is a hater.
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic issued a joint statement “The genuine concerns of our citizens need to be better reflected. National parliaments have to be heard.”
In the EU there will be no national parliaments. Poland will be like Delaware, just a state government, not a Government of State.There will be no Czech people, just people living in the state of Czech.
What language should be the official language of the EU? Should all the children be required to be taught German in the EU public school system and all business be conducted in German, a common language?
European countries voluntarily handed power and decision making to EU, if not the people then the governments that presume to represent them. This great socialization of the population occured before the fact, was dreamed to happen after the idea. The removal of national identity, of individual allegiance to tradition, in exchange for the promise of an united and harmonic super reality that saw success and prosperity in the efficiencies of a new monoculture as a long sought ideal, purposefully overlooks and overrides any individual responsibility, a sure temptation of solutions to the blame game of traditional status. The point is that this blame game was the national hierarchy, it was the attribution of local status, and it was the accounting method of societies. It was tight knit and multi generational, based on profound historic achievement and failure.
What results is a vast population awaiting the promised solution, caught between the exposed lies of a nations past or its obvious humiliation, and an endless improvisation from would be masters that have absolutely no clue how to resolve anything at this level.
How could they, for their founding is as detached and unaccountable as the worst of the governance they presume to replace.
When the illusions can no longer be entertained, when they conflict with what any person encounters in the world around him, one that is pulled and shifted in the torrential encounters that this clash of directions bring, it is likely that isolation will be chosen as a defence, and the reclamatory creature that waves its financial banner as justice beyond all other, will be rejected, its account being understood as untrue to a more obvious reality.
There is no prison, and yet people still must choose to leave it, just as staring perpetually through bars into one resembles, or worse so, that of staring out through bars from within.
Socialist utopian nanny states always turn out to be prisons. You can look it up.
RE: “The more the EU responds by cramming absurd rules down the throats of citizens, the more likely it is for voters to demand the prison key.
Once again, it is Angela Merkel is the Person Most Responsible for Brexit.
Her policies on migration rules led to the UK voting to leave.'”
Gee! Isn’t that always the way with Nazi…..like Merkel……..
::::ducking::::
The only time a doctrinaire socialist like Wolf and a doctrinaire Austrian like Mish can agree is when the time for a paradigm change and integration of ONLY the valid and true aspects of apparently opposing ideologies like socialism and Austrianism…are becoming so obvious that even the doctrinaire can see it.
Wisdomics/Gracenomics
wisdomicsblog.com
Bank printers are responsible for causing food riots across the Middle East by printing food inflation. Angie is responsible for forcing mad bombers on countries, instead of peaceful and respectful people. Angie’s vetting process is nonsensical.
It may be a good idea to get out of the EU. But the cost is not irrelevant. To favour a far-left and/or populist government because it advocates the split might not be such a good idea, though. IMHO, it would be a far better idea to reshape the EU along the lines of EFTA and Schengen, but ensuring a thorough control of borders. Controlling Europe’s Southern borders might sound like a nightmare, but any other alternative would be probably much more expensive. Both in the short- and –crucially– long run.
The eu is a fascist dictatorship and has the same goal as hitkler did to rule the whole of europe.they have just done it through the bloc instead of war.1st they want to dilute all the countries with immigrants so as to lose the countries own identities.Then they take all the money out of each country and give them spends and finally they build a super army and make each country defenceless.once all the countries have no money,no identity and no army the eu will rule them with an iron fist just like hitler wanted to do.If you decide to leave they will punish you for years to come unless of course your the uk who will not allow it.I urge all the countries in the eu to take back their countries and trade with each other freely before the eu puts moire clauses in their contracts to make it financially impossible to leave.