David McWilliams: Ditch the Euro

[ibis]

That argument reminds me of those apologists for Britain use to blame the Irish people themselves for the Famine, rather than Britain. Now we have "West-Europeans" instead of West-Brits.

Yes our govt is partly to blame, but so too are ECB rates that created the bubble and consequently the crash. Having interest-rates of 4.5% when your inflation is 7% was cracked.

Hm. Where did the UK housing bubble come from? The US one? The Australian one? Was the ECB dictating all their interest rates too?

[eurosceptic]

Still no-one who opposes euro withdrawal will offfer a clear strategy for recovery which must come one of two ways. Deflation to cut costs or inflation to dilute costs. Only the former is possible by staing in unless the ECB can be persuaded to do the latter (which wont happen). I am a pragmatist so explain how we do it by deflation.

[Seos]

Also if poland joins the euro at a weak rate in the near future which is possible, how can we possibly compete with them? Even worse if sterling joins at a weak rate how do we compete with the brits?

Hang on, on the one hand you're saying we should leave the Euro and on the other hand you're saying if the UK or Poland ever joined that it would give them a huge competitive advantage over us? Which is it?

On our current trajectory we are facing slow strangulation.

We have a noose uncomfortably tight around our necks, I know! Let's kick the chair supporting our weight away.

Well he is a professor of economics so knows what he is talking about.

No he is not!

[McDave]

Still no-one who opposes euro withdrawal will offfer a clear strategy for recovery which must come one of two ways. Deflation to cut costs or inflation to dilute costs. Only the former is possible by staing in unless the ECB can be persuaded to do the latter (which wont happen). I am a pragmatist so explain how we do it by deflation.

Well, your rhetorical limitations are probably unacceptable to many poster here.

Anyway, the best thing the ECB can do is keep interest rates low for now, but not go to 0%. After that it's largely down to addressing the variety of problems in the different Eurozone countries. Germany will have to absorb temporarily high unemployment until their exports pick up again. Ireland will have to slash costs and expenditure and hope for the best. ECB/IMF bailouts may be deployed for the likes of us and Spain.

The Eurozone overall will not deflate because it is not fundamentally weak, and its main single currency competitor, the US, will itself deflate because of its own inherent weakness.

The Eurozone will certainly not inflate, because as the world economy slowly recovers, the effects of printing money in the Anglosphere will cause inflation there to rise thereby causing them to raise interest rates up to a highly uncompetitive 5 or 6%. The Eurozone will take this opportunity to continue reining in costs thereby continuing to improve its export performance.

[Seos]

Still no-one who opposes euro withdrawal will offfer a clear strategy for recovery which must come one of two ways. Deflation to cut costs or inflation to dilute costs. Only the former is possible by staing in unless the ECB can be persuaded to do the latter (which wont happen). I am a pragmatist so explain how we do it by deflation.

Since you don't mind increasing our national debt and certainly leading to default, which is what devaluing our currency would mean, with all our debt (National and private) being in Euros. Why not borrow like crazy instead, have huge stimulus packages? At least that way we'd have some infrastructure to show for that mode of economic suicide.

But seriously, to talk about us getting a recovery through deflation is inaccurate, no one believes that. What I do believe is that Ireland as a whole has costs which are too high, they must come down before we can recover. I also believe that deflation is the unfortunate consequence of our bubble which we must suffer through before we recover. Right now, we know how painful that will be or at least have some understanding of it, we know what's ahead of us and we must bravely face it and go through it, not try and con our way out of it.

[Twin Towers]

Also i'm suspicious of the intentions of certain individuals on this thread, when they make excuses like "without Europe, we'd be run by corrupt....." Seems to me like some people have some skeletons in their closets, or little secrets that their not disclosing openly with the rest of us (there is something very fishy and covert about some pro-EU intentions)

Most of the EUphiles here as in other EU hostage nations are in the pay of the EU or hope to be. The wooden horse of Brussels.

[nuj]

BTW, referring back to the original post, when did McWilliams become a "Prof"? Of what, and from where? Bob Jones University?

[Seos]

Most of the EUphiles here as in other EU hostage nations are in the pay of the EU or hope to be. The wooden horse of Brussels.

You know, considering how many jobs are here because of the EU you could be indirectly correct about us "EUphiles".

And if there are any farmers posting then they are certainly in the pay of the EU.

So sorry what was your point?

[Oppenheimer]

And you and Oppenheimer's ideas are.....................

.....already documented in one of these threads on ditching the euro way back when. To keep on bringing up this topic is past a joke now, it is actually spamming the board and should be moderated. I bet I could find at least a dozen threads debating this posted in the last 9 months so any new ones only deserve contempt and ridicule - it is times like these when we should have a "No thanks" button on the OP.

[nuj]

Most of the EUphiles here as in other EU hostage nations are in the pay of the EU or hope to be. The wooden horse of Brussels.

There's a character in Viz magazine called Grassy Knollington, conspiracy theorist.

Are you based on him?