Spain has Leopard 2 tanks (546) and Pizarro IFVs (356). Catalonia doesn’t. Make of that what you will. Spanish governments have a long standing tradition of crushing large scale rebellions with cavalry and this is just the modern extension of it.
The interesting thing is that the issue is about private debt. State debt is low. This BBC informational piece explains it pretty well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290598
We can thank the ECBs policies of low interest rates for fueling the credit bubble which led to this mess. Now they expect the Spanish government to bail out banks which gave credit to people which never had the financial capacity to get credit in the first place. They should just let the whole damned thing fail. Sure some regions need extra funding or downsizing because they are getting less tax income from the reduced financial activity caused by the crisis but that is not the main problem at all.
They should just let the whole damned thing fail.
Yeah, they have been trying very hard to avoid the need for anyone to take losses, which is of course absurd. Sooner or later someone is going to have to take their losses, but all players are still trying to ensure it’s not them.
And all players are trying to muddle the issues.
The Germans want better oversight (though definitely not the best form of oversight, which would be no more intervention and just simply market forces), but they don’t want to pay for a bail-out of the existing mess or for future deposit insurance. They also don’t want the new regime apply to the incesteous network between politicians, Landesbanken and industry.
The French aren’t too keen on extra oversight for their own banks, they want the Germans to pay for a bailout and they want eurobonds to help them leech of the others.
Neither has a reasonable position, though a reasonable compromise could be constructed from the elements of their positions. Unfortunately, so could very unreasonable compromises and that’s what I’m worried about.
What I’d like to see is:
– swift eurozone-wide prudential oversight, for all banks, not just the “systemically important” ones
– very limited eurozone-wide deposit insurance (less than 50%, to a maximum of no more than E30k), combined with an abolition of and prohibition on national deposit insurance schemes
– a partial eurozone-funded bail-out that involves massive private haircuts, including all the corporate bankruptcies that would entail and massive restructuring of banks without regard for national ownership issues
– massive liberalisation of labour and product / services markets
– massive privatisation
– eurozone-funded infrastructural investments (a sop) targeted at breaking up regional infrastructure monopolies by combining networks for energy, railways, motorways etc (to make sure we at least get back something valuable for all those Northern euros).
Now I have Conquistador stuck in my head. Not that that’s a bad thing. As long as William Shatner isn’t singing.
The fascinating aspect to all this is how it highlights the failure of the modern European experiment. If you look at the recent history of Europe and the sentiments across the continent you’ll see that balkanization is a major trend. The USSR broke up into satellite states. Czechoslovakia broke up. Yugoslavia broke up. And there are still as many disgruntled territories that desire independence as there have ever been. Independence movements in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have grown to major levels lately. Basque separatists have always been up in arms. Belgium has always had trouble keeping together. And, of course, we have the Catalonia issue.
Despite the last half-century of liberalizing influences, “multi-culturalism”, racial sensitivity training, and the spread of an over-arching European Union these trends have not abated. And now we’re starting to see some serious cracks in the EU and the eurozone as well.
What does it mean when even in a country like Britain (with one of the longer histories of support for democracy and liberty of any European country) can have something like a third of all Scots favor independence?
It says something very profound, I think, when even in Europe, the purported pinnacle of modern civilization, most citizens still feel a tribal attachment to their particular cultural enclaves. And that tribal association surpasses their attachment to their country and to Europe as a whole. What does that say about the efforts to integrate immigrants with even greater differences of culture, religion, and language?
The fascinating aspect to all this is how it highlights the failure of the modern European experiment.
Or the growing irrelevance of the European nation state, with a move towards a Europe of regions. Support for having an EU at all remains strong pretty much everywhere except in England and perhaps Wales. Many Scots want independence inside the EU.
Catalina wants to go Galt?
One problem is Margaret Thatcher wasn’t quite right about running out of other peoples money. That’s because fiat money can be manipulated as a tax through inflation of the printing press. Money doesn’t run out, it just approaches worthless asymtopically.
This is a strong argument for not having government be the central controller of money. But anytime that control is threatened the govt. sends in the troops (military, police or lawyers) and will steal the wealth of private citizens with impunity.
This is how you get violent anarchy.
Maybe the Basque separatists were way ahead of their time.
Spain has Leopard 2 tanks (546) and Pizarro IFVs (356). Catalonia doesn’t. Make of that what you will. Spanish governments have a long standing tradition of crushing large scale rebellions with cavalry and this is just the modern extension of it.
The interesting thing is that the issue is about private debt. State debt is low. This BBC informational piece explains it pretty well:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290598
We can thank the ECBs policies of low interest rates for fueling the credit bubble which led to this mess. Now they expect the Spanish government to bail out banks which gave credit to people which never had the financial capacity to get credit in the first place. They should just let the whole damned thing fail. Sure some regions need extra funding or downsizing because they are getting less tax income from the reduced financial activity caused by the crisis but that is not the main problem at all.
They should just let the whole damned thing fail.
Yeah, they have been trying very hard to avoid the need for anyone to take losses, which is of course absurd. Sooner or later someone is going to have to take their losses, but all players are still trying to ensure it’s not them.
And all players are trying to muddle the issues.
The Germans want better oversight (though definitely not the best form of oversight, which would be no more intervention and just simply market forces), but they don’t want to pay for a bail-out of the existing mess or for future deposit insurance. They also don’t want the new regime apply to the incesteous network between politicians, Landesbanken and industry.
The French aren’t too keen on extra oversight for their own banks, they want the Germans to pay for a bailout and they want eurobonds to help them leech of the others.
Neither has a reasonable position, though a reasonable compromise could be constructed from the elements of their positions. Unfortunately, so could very unreasonable compromises and that’s what I’m worried about.
What I’d like to see is:
– swift eurozone-wide prudential oversight, for all banks, not just the “systemically important” ones
– very limited eurozone-wide deposit insurance (less than 50%, to a maximum of no more than E30k), combined with an abolition of and prohibition on national deposit insurance schemes
– a partial eurozone-funded bail-out that involves massive private haircuts, including all the corporate bankruptcies that would entail and massive restructuring of banks without regard for national ownership issues
– massive liberalisation of labour and product / services markets
– massive privatisation
– eurozone-funded infrastructural investments (a sop) targeted at breaking up regional infrastructure monopolies by combining networks for energy, railways, motorways etc (to make sure we at least get back something valuable for all those Northern euros).
Now I have Conquistador stuck in my head. Not that that’s a bad thing. As long as William Shatner isn’t singing.
The fascinating aspect to all this is how it highlights the failure of the modern European experiment. If you look at the recent history of Europe and the sentiments across the continent you’ll see that balkanization is a major trend. The USSR broke up into satellite states. Czechoslovakia broke up. Yugoslavia broke up. And there are still as many disgruntled territories that desire independence as there have ever been. Independence movements in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have grown to major levels lately. Basque separatists have always been up in arms. Belgium has always had trouble keeping together. And, of course, we have the Catalonia issue.
Despite the last half-century of liberalizing influences, “multi-culturalism”, racial sensitivity training, and the spread of an over-arching European Union these trends have not abated. And now we’re starting to see some serious cracks in the EU and the eurozone as well.
What does it mean when even in a country like Britain (with one of the longer histories of support for democracy and liberty of any European country) can have something like a third of all Scots favor independence?
It says something very profound, I think, when even in Europe, the purported pinnacle of modern civilization, most citizens still feel a tribal attachment to their particular cultural enclaves. And that tribal association surpasses their attachment to their country and to Europe as a whole. What does that say about the efforts to integrate immigrants with even greater differences of culture, religion, and language?
The fascinating aspect to all this is how it highlights the failure of the modern European experiment.
Or the growing irrelevance of the European nation state, with a move towards a Europe of regions. Support for having an EU at all remains strong pretty much everywhere except in England and perhaps Wales. Many Scots want independence inside the EU.
Catalina wants to go Galt?
One problem is Margaret Thatcher wasn’t quite right about running out of other peoples money. That’s because fiat money can be manipulated as a tax through inflation of the printing press. Money doesn’t run out, it just approaches worthless asymtopically.
This is a strong argument for not having government be the central controller of money. But anytime that control is threatened the govt. sends in the troops (military, police or lawyers) and will steal the wealth of private citizens with impunity.
This is how you get violent anarchy.
Maybe the Basque separatists were way ahead of their time.
Three words for the Catalans: partido de té.