UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
from Hugo Dixon:
Brexit could come before Grexit
Investors have been obsessed with the notion of “Grexit” - Greece’s exit from the euro. But “Brexit” - Britain’s exit from the European Union - is as likely if not more so. The country has never been at ease with its EU membership. It refused to join its predecessor, the European Economic Community, in 1957; it was then blocked twice from becoming a member by France’s Charles De Gaulle in 1960s; and shortly after it finally entered in 1973, it had a referendum on whether to stay.
The euro crisis has put further pressure on this difficult relationship. David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the governing coalition’s dominant group, delights in pointing out the flaws in the single currency. The party’s eurosceptics feel vindicated because they have long believed that monetary union was only possible with political union.
But “I told you so” is never a good way of endearing oneself to others. What’s more, the idea that greater integration in the euro zone has “remorseless logic” - as Britain’s finance minister, George Osborne, puts it - directly undercuts the country’s national interest. The more the 17 countries in the single currency club together, the more the UK will be left out on the fringe.
If the Tories weren’t so keen to prove the point about how right they had been, they would be able to articulate an alternative way of keeping the euro together based on two key principles: more flexibility at the level of both nation states and the single market so economies can weather shocks; and the use of market discipline rather than bureaucratic rules to prevent banks and governments borrowing too much money and hence requiring taxpayer bailouts.
from Felix Salmon:
Europe’s doomed fate
This is beginning to feel like 2008, complete with all the rumor and chaos and volatility we saw back then. MF Global is a bit like those Bear Stearns hedge funds which went bust -- an isolated datapoint in one respect, but ominous in many others. And right now the best case scenario is that Greece ends up being Bear Stearns, rescued by an international community petrified of what might happen in the event of a chaotic collapse.
But Greece being Greece, of course, a chaotic collapse has to be pretty much an inevitability at some point.
from FaithWorld:
FInancial crisis boosts European suicide rates, especially in Greece, Ireland
(Suicide hotline sign at telephone booth near Beachy Head, the chalk cliffs near Eastbourne, a leading UK suicide spot, 29 January 2009/Les Chatfield)
Suicides rates rose sharply in Europe in 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes, with the worst hit countries like Greece and Ireland seeing the most dramatic increases, researchers said on Friday. Rates of road deaths in the region fell during the same period, possibly because higher numbers of jobless people led to lower car use, according to an initial analysis of data from 10 European Union (EU) countries.
from The Great Debate UK:
Not much stress, not much test
-Laurence Copeland is professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Back in the 1950’s, when most women stayed at home while their menfolk went out to work, a favourite trick of life insurance salesmen was to walk into the prospect’s home at dinner time and ask the wife:
from MacroScope:
It’s all Germany’s fault
It is fairly commonplace at the moment for U.S. and UK financial analysts -- what continental Europeans call the Anglo-Saxons -- to predict the collapse of the euro zone, a project they were mostly sceptical about in the first place. MacroScope touched on this on two occasions in March.
The latest foray into this area comes from Alan Brown, global chief investment officer at the large UK fund firm Schroders. But he does it with twist, blaming what he sees as the eventual collapse of the euro zone not on the structure itself nor on the profligacy of peripheral economies, but on Germany's response to the crisis.
from Global News Journal:
Should Norway bail out Iceland?
While not exactly pocket change, Iceland’s $5.5 billion Icesave debt to Britain and the Netherlands amounts to just 1.2 percent of the value of Norway’s offshore wealth fund. For Iceland, it's more than $15,000 per citizen.
Given the two countries’ close historic links -- Norwegian Vikings discovered the Atlantic island where people still speak a version of “old Norwegian” -- speculation about Oslo coming to the rescue has Reykjavik licking its lips.
from Global News Journal:
Cometh the hour, cometh Van Rompuy?
Three months ago, Herman van Rompuy might have struggled to be recognised on the streets of his native Belgium, let alone Paris or London. The bookish former prime minister, a fan of camping holidays and Haiku poetry, was nothing if not low-key; a studious consensus builder in the world of Belgian politics.
Three months on and Van Rompuy, 62, may not outwardly have changed much, but his title and the expectations surrounding him certainly have. In November he was chosen to be the first permanent president of the European Council, the body that represents the EU's 27 leaders, and on Thursday he will host those heads of state and government at an economic summit in Brussels -- the first such gathering he has chaired.
from Reuters Soccer Blog:
France break Irish hearts to seal World Cup slot
France ensured the likes of Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Thierry Henry will be at the World Cup in South Africa next year after winning through with a goal that has left Irish fans seething.
There was nothing wrong with the finish from William Gallas, but Thierry Henry admitted using his hand to keep the ball in play and commentators and Irish supporters are already talking of "The Hand of God II" and "The Hand of Henry" in reference to Diego Maradona in 1986.
-
The Wall
