Achtung, Liam

Swiss Bob

So you are recommending a Euro army? No doubt this will be as successful as the Euro currency.

And what will it be used for? Implementation of EU policy, much like Labour's use of the British Army in persecuting five wars, none of them in defence of the realm.

F@ck that for a game of soldiers.

euro-zone

just a word of correction, Horst Köhler wasn´t forced to resign for telling the truth, he was so upset that the bloggers and MSM were giving him a hard time that he went voluntarily, he felt that he andhis office as Bundespräsident should be shown more respect

aristeides

For 'duplication', you could read 'competition'.

Vulture

I've got an idea that will save Herr zu Guttenberg a fortune in worthless Euros.

Scrap the Bundeswehr entirely ( It won't be missed) and replace it with a pre-recorded tape saying "Ich bin ein Berliner. I surrender" in Arabic, Turkish, and Pashtun. Then keep it handy for inserting into all TV and Radio programmes when the appropriate time comes.

Arthur

Just because we're neighbours, and we buy a lot of stuff from them, doesn't mean that we can trust the Germans or the French to look after our interests. As history is apparently unimportant, and the Germans truly seem to have forgotten how to fight wars, we can ignore anything that happened before 1945, but that still leaves plenty of cases when, for example, French interests have come first to the French, and the rest of us can go hang.

So what if our defence procurement is inefficient? It needs to be independent, otherwise our independence will not be protected. I always thought that the first duty of the State was the protection of its citizens and their interests in the world, not the provision of welfare payments.

Norman Dee

The Germans can do this because they know someone else will carry the can. They are now like Japan in a unique position of being able to fall back on a violent past to excuse their contributing fully to the modern situations we are now in which have no relationship with the past at all. which means that we and the Americans in the main will bear the brunt of the work and deaths. Especially in Europe where cooperation is low but interest in taking even more money away from us continues, despite what we are spending taking the weight for them.

David Lindsay

This has been a key neoconservative aim for decades. The Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society calls explicitly for a single EU defence "capability" under overall American command but day-to-day German control. Do the constituents of, for example, Michael Gove know that he has signed up to this?

Of course he has: Israel comes first, but America comes second. Every American Administration since the Forties has been in favour of a United Europe, while every American Administration since well before that has preferred Germany to Britain. For the very good reason that, whereas Britain is the founding enemy, most white Americans, especially Protestants, are more German than anything else.

The House of Representatives once came within one vote of making German the only official language of the United States, and numerous expressions in American English are verbatim translations from German. Until 1917, there were many German or Austrian place names in America; before then, anywhere now called Liberty was probably called Berlin, or Vienna, or something like that.

Mycroft

Dear David Lindsay, how on earth do you find time to write all this stuff? I can only suppose you save time by not thinking before you put it all down. That certainly makes it more enjoyable to read, as one wonders whether the next assertion can possibly be more questionable than the last.

Jez

Swiss Bob;

"So you are recommending a Euro army?"

Yes he is, of course.... and that conclusion is derived 100% from what he writes constantly about in the Coffee House.

Korski wants rid of the nation state- and have big trade blocks of countries stuck together.

I'm going to google it after this; what Korski has said in the past about the Euro.

Olaf Rye

It is a platitude that much of Europe's generous social safety net was possible because it spent much less than its fair share on defence. The continental forces are largely unwilling to fight for anything, no matter how mortal the threat to their existence. No nation can slough off its defence responsibilities and we certainly cannot trust France or Germany to release assets for the prosecution of a war that their electorate will undoubtedly find 'immoral' or 'unjustified' as they feel all conflicts are inherently wrong. I would rather see more unemployed civil servants on the streets than a diminution of our defence forces in personnel or equipment.

Jez

Busted Korski!

This is why you want rid.... you're working to the word, to Robert Mundell's economic plan.

Your own words Daniel;

"Trying to understand the problems of the euro has sent me back to my undergraduate economic textbooks and Robert Mundell’s work on optimum currency areas. As Spectator readers (many of whom are bankers) will know, the US economist theorised that a group of countries will benefit from a common currency like the euro if three conditions are satisfied.

1). The countries should not be hit by shocks that are too asymmetric: i.e. one country should not be substantially worse off while the other regions are booming.

2). There is a high degree of labour mobility and/or wage flexibility within the group of countries.

3). There is a centralized fiscal policy in place that will transfer money or other resources from countries that are doing well to countries that are doing poorly

The jigsaw, it's put together now..... get the Poles/Eastern Europeans to come here and work for nowt... ship out the industry to be made for nowt.

I'm not going to swear.

Kennybhoy

Mycroft,

Most of Young Maister Lindsay's outpourings are recycled from his earlier posts. Simple cut and paste job. This post above is actually one of his more intelligible, if still lunatic, efforts. His less intelligible efforts read like Nostradamus' quatrains!

Daniel Korski

I normally don't engage the rantings of my most ardent detractors, but when I am wilfully misquoted I have to comment.

I have NEVER supported an European army. NEVER. Show me one piece of writing where I have done so. It does not exits. I support greater European defence cooperation - but equating that to a European army is like equating the UN to world government.

As to the article about the Euro, Jez, have the decency to quote the whole piece. After the section you replicate, I said:

"The economic crisis has put paid to the first condition. Even though travel within Europe has been greatly facilitated by the creation of a single Europe, there are substantial barriers to the mobility of labour. Language and other barriers make it difficult for an Irish worker to move to Portugal and find a job with anywhere near the same ease that a displaced worker from Virginia can move to California and find a job. Furthermore, wage flexibility is hardly the word one would use to describe the state of the highly regulated, structural problems plaguing European economies. The powerful roles played by unions and the generally high level of wage regulations mean that European workers have some of the highest wages in the world.

Finally, there is no centralised fiscal policy for the redistribution of income and what was meant to substitute it – the Stability and Growth Pact – is irrelevant. It would be difficult to see how it would be politically feasible for the French government to raise taxes on its citizens and redistribute them to assist displaced Portuguese fishermen. As we have seen with the German reaction to the Greek crisis, transferring taxes inside the eurozone poses significant problems. In short, there were always serious doubts, according to economic theory, as to how successful the euro could ever be.

That said I don’t think there is any chance the euro will be abandoned. Nor that the Franco-German initiative for “strong co-ordination of economic policies" across the EU will happen. The two governments will struggle to agree on what this actually means or get the required treaty changed. Finally, a well-organised Euro-bond market is also unrealistic.

So what will happen to solve what economists call “indeterminacy”, the fact that the markets know that there are problems with the euro but European leaders have not presented them with a credible solution? One way out of the problem may be the implementation of a two-currency EMU, with both currencies run by the Frankfurt-based ECB. The Euro is so great, Europe may be lucky enough to get two for the price of one…."

You should be confident enough in the power of your arguments not to have to resort to half-truths and wilful misquoting...

Daniel

Kennybhoy

Daniel Korski wtote:

"I normally don't engage the rantings of my most ardent detractors, but when I am wilfully misquoted I have to comment."

Such exquisite lese-majeste!

Jez

Unfortunately i have to be in Liverpool for 9, so i have to flick through that- for the moment.... and may i admit- i did have a 'rant' last night.

But i'm glad i did mate.

You say you don't support this or that- but why does it always sound as though you do.

The Governments of the country seem to have signed to this migratory 'high degree of labour mobility' which means that no-one would really dream of moving to Rumania/Bulgaria/Poland with their families- but large portions of their work force would do so to here.... for obvious reasons.

It's so short sighted, Daniel.

It's an educated man's Pyramid scheme.

I going to be late if i don't watch it.

Jez

Firstly may i apologise Daniel.... the rantings (yep. it was a rant) that i contributed to earlier (with others) on in this thread, have closed down anymore input.

The Bankers and educated Johnny's have jogged on, it seems. (scared)

It does seem inefficient and a waste of money having several multiple / identical projects within one entity..... but i bet it's just as inefficient / frustrating having several lead nations developing one peice of kit. And wasteful. And in many cases- pointless.

What is it that you're suggesting?

Have one type of gun. One main Battle Tank, Personnel Carrier, Fighter- throughout the whole of Nato?

Why doesn't European Nato just buy from the Yanks. That'd save money. And be more efficient- then pump that back into the state economies.

The thing is Daniel, although you aren't coming right out with it- the fact of the matter is that you and the majority of the mainstream *really* are up for this selling this place out.

The world is becoming a smaller- but the middle class of unique places like India are exploding, the First World economies are detracting- to sustain the standard of living we need to borrow.

Your model you're working to isn't really doing too well, maybe.

Classic example; India again. I would go there to open a factory / call centre. Anyone who went there from here would be in a managerial posistion. The goods would be for that market or Europe mainly. this would benefit the small percentage of owners / managers from the UK and the Indian economy, both local and National (is it a trillion US doller GDP at the moment?)

Here, we can't afford to open a factory. To keep wages in what's left down you need cheap labour... from abroad.

To keep it going over here, you need to borrow. You wind up a debt- and then you pay the interest by borrowing more... from China etc.

That is a rubbish business model.

It's failing Daniel, as an opinion. The globalists have sold out the industry, the manufacturng infastructure and eliminated the pool of skilled workers.... On the back of a business model from the States. That doesn't work.

Germany and France are the only ones throwing up shoots of recovery... they still have a fraction of their traditional industries (and not blown the money like NuLab).

That's why i ranted.

Jez

I missed a point;

The French and British develop a lot of weapons for export.

You know that more than most.