Euro
Mandelson’s Plan for Europe
Peter Mandelson’s short speech in the House of Lords yesterday was a fine contribution to the debate about what Britain should do about the unravelling of the euro.
He said that the task for Europe is to create an Economic and Monetary Union Mark II, learning the lessons from the “design problems” of the current version. [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 17 February 2012 at 1:23 pm
Tunnel, light at end of
At some point, doom and gloom about the economy is likely to turn round. Obviously, if the eurozone goes into an economic nuclear winter, then our prospects may still turn out to be worse than we thought, again.
On the other hand, there are reasons to be cheerful, despite today’s unemployment figures, which are a lagging [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 February 2012 at 10:05 am
Ed Balls: Goodbye, Greece
One more note from Ed Balls’s turn at the Press Gallery lunch last week. I was struck by how he answered a question about whether the euro would survive. He did not answer directly, but the implication was clear and negative.
He said that Greece was the immediate problem and suggested that it had already, in [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 24 January 2012 at 1:36 pm
Enemy of the euro?
I didn’t have time to comment on this curiosity before Christmas. After Standard & Poor’s put most eurozone countries on credit watch and Moody’s said it would review all EU states next year, Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, said on his trip to London on 18 December: “It’s high time we found an independent European rating [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 30 December 2011 at 10:30 pm
Five myths about Britain and the EU
It’s hard to keep abreast of events in Europe, even earth-shattering ones such as the Brussels summit, from across the Atlantic. Then again, this might help you put things in perspective: the Washington Post put its account of the summit on page 19 today. The divorce of the UK from the rest of Europe does not merit a TV headline. The America media are far more interested in Mitt Romney’s $10,000 gaffe in the Republican presidential contenders’ debate last night than in how the country’s economy might be affected by the decisions in Brussels.
By Anne Penketh | The Foreign Desk | Sunday, 11 December 2011 at 8:00 pm
Clegg “did not agree” to the veto
Just to elaborate on my previous post, because I did not write down Nick Clegg’s actual words on the Andrew Marr programme. I had not realised quite how humiliating his position now is. Here is the BBC report…
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 11 December 2011 at 7:49 pm
Why Cameron was right to say No
The completeness of David Cameron’s short-term domestic triumph in keeping Britain out of the eurozone-plus fiscal compact was demonstrated by Nick Clegg and Douglas Alexander’s embarrassment on Andrew Marr’s show this morning.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 11 December 2011 at 11:42 am
Democracy, schmemocracy
My good colleague Steve Richards asks, “Am I on hallucinogenic drugs?” in The Independent today, and I am afraid that it is not tactful to try to answer.
He starts by repeating the current moan of the LBLM&C (London-Based Liberal Media & Culturati), which is that the democratically-elected governments of Greece and Italy have been replaced by [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 22 November 2011 at 10:36 am
How to break up the euro
Silvio Berlusconi went to offer the president his resignation last night — in an Audi (right). George Papandreou left office in a BMW. Thus the leaders of Italy and Greece were literally driven from office by Germany (© Dugald MacMillan).
The Eurosceptics may have been right that the euro would not work, but that does not tell [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 13 November 2011 at 4:48 pm
Break up the euro
It seems to be widely accepted that the break-up of the euro would be bad. Live frogs will fall from the sky, darkness will cover the continent and so on. David Cameron and George Osborne say so (in different words). Although the more careful economists preface “break-up” with “disorderly”, and say that it is an [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 7 November 2011 at 9:28 am
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