There are lots of jokes about economists. Few of them are complimentary, and even fewer are funny. "If all the economists in the world were laid end-to-end they wouldn't reach a conclusion".*
Or how about the one where a physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on a desert island, with only a single can of bully beef for sustenance. One problem: no can opener. The physicist proposes breaking it open with a rock, but they can't find a rock. The chemist wants to use seawater to erode the can, but they're not going to live long enough for that to happen. In despair they turn to the economist, who says, "Well, first let's assume we have a can opener". LOL (not).
The results produced by economic models are notoriously dependent on the starting assumptions, but there's nothing unique about that. Discovery Channel ran a programme this week called "Is everything we know about the Universe wrong?". Despite the title, the show was mainly a parade of cosmologists bragging about how good their "standard model" is at explaining the way the universe works. So well done them.
One problem, though. The model only "works" if you assume the existence of dark matter (never seen, measured or even described), dark energy (likewise), and the new kid on the block, dark flow (don't ask). As the cosmologists admit, their calculations suggest that these never-seen phenomena have to be significantly greater in scale than the bits of the universe that we can see if their theories are to hold. It casts a whole new light on the notion of something "working".
It seems as if economists have missed a trick here. "Yes, I know we forecast growth of 5% and the economy actually shrank, but that's fully explained by a swing in Dark GDP, which is entirely in line with our models".
Physics and economics may be coming together in another sphere too. The new book by baby-faced physicist Brian Cox, "The Quantum Universe", is sub-titled "Everything that can happen, does happen". As a summary of the last couple of days' events in Greece, that's unimprovable.
* Slightly funnier variant from David Frost some time in the late 1960s: "If all the dolly birds in swinging London were laid end-to-end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised".
Friday, 4 November 2011
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Democracy, but only when it suits
The right-wing media in the UK are wetting themselves with excitement at the Greek government's plan to hold a referendum on the latest EU rescue package. According to The Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail and others, the will of the people must be heard, not least because those running the EU apparently react to democracy the same way a vampire reacts to garlic. Sample article from today's Telegraph: "Eurocrats: terrified of democracy".
There's a foul stench of hypocrisy here. Back in 2003, more than a million people took to the streets of London to protest against possible UK involvement in the planned invasion of Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair went ahead and did it anyway -- with the full, nay, enthusiastic support of the right-wing media. If memory serves, their position at the time could be summed up as, "governments are elected to govern". It now appears that noble principle doesn't apply when it conflicts with the media's deep-seated prejudices.
Consistency aside -- because hey, who cares about that? -- there's another reason for the Torygraph and others to ease up on the Euro-Schadenfreude. If things really do go horribly wrong in the Eurozone, the consequences for the UK are likely to be severe. No-one is likely to be exempt from the pain -- not even expats sipping tea at their boltholes on the costas, reading about "broken Britain" in the Mail and complaining about the lack of Marmite on the supermarket shelves.
There's a foul stench of hypocrisy here. Back in 2003, more than a million people took to the streets of London to protest against possible UK involvement in the planned invasion of Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair went ahead and did it anyway -- with the full, nay, enthusiastic support of the right-wing media. If memory serves, their position at the time could be summed up as, "governments are elected to govern". It now appears that noble principle doesn't apply when it conflicts with the media's deep-seated prejudices.
Consistency aside -- because hey, who cares about that? -- there's another reason for the Torygraph and others to ease up on the Euro-Schadenfreude. If things really do go horribly wrong in the Eurozone, the consequences for the UK are likely to be severe. No-one is likely to be exempt from the pain -- not even expats sipping tea at their boltholes on the costas, reading about "broken Britain" in the Mail and complaining about the lack of Marmite on the supermarket shelves.
Monday, 31 October 2011
Oi, Emmerich -- you're bard!
After his success with such cerebral blockbusters as Independence Day and 2012, director Roland Emmerich has turned his attention to an even greater fantasy: the notion that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact the work of someone else. "Anonymous" has just opened here in the UK, to uniformly contemptuous reviews that make it sound like Dan Brown on a bad day, if such a thing is possible. US reviewers have been almost equally merciless.
The "it wasn't Shakespeare" movement has been going since at least the mid-nineteenth century, without ever coming remotely close to either disproving Shakespeare's authorship, or even agreeing on an alternative author. Emmerich's candidate, one of the many out there, is the Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere, known in his own time as a nasty piece of work and third-rate poet. Other putative candidates as the "real" author have included Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson and a host of lesser lights. Along the way, this nonsense has attracted adherents both distinguished (Mark Twain and Helen Keller both signed on at one stage) and comical, such as the appropriately-named J. Thomas Looney, a schoolmaster from that well-known centre of literary exegesis, Gateshead.
All of these claims have been comprehensively and repeatedly demolished by the US scholar James Shapiro, in "1599", an account of a year in the bard's life, and more recently "Contested Will", which trawls through the whole sorry history of Shakespeare denial. They are both worth reading. So is "Shakespeare's language", by the great Frank Kermode. While Kermode does not directly address the authorship question, his analysis of the uniqueness of Shakespeare's "voice" is very compelling.
Does any of this matter? After all, Anonymous is just a movie, and if it's as awful as people say, it's unlikely to be much of an opinion-former. Unfortunately, Sony Pictures has tried to up the ante by sending out study kits to US high schools, peddling the film's absurd conspiracy theories. Needless to say, James Shapiro doesn't merit a mention in Sony's fair and balanced look at the issues. It's a nasty and pointless piece of attempted brainwashing. One can only be grateful that they've stopped short of claiming that the Earl of Oxford was born in New Haven or somewhere, but perhaps they're saving that for the sequel.
The "it wasn't Shakespeare" movement has been going since at least the mid-nineteenth century, without ever coming remotely close to either disproving Shakespeare's authorship, or even agreeing on an alternative author. Emmerich's candidate, one of the many out there, is the Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere, known in his own time as a nasty piece of work and third-rate poet. Other putative candidates as the "real" author have included Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson and a host of lesser lights. Along the way, this nonsense has attracted adherents both distinguished (Mark Twain and Helen Keller both signed on at one stage) and comical, such as the appropriately-named J. Thomas Looney, a schoolmaster from that well-known centre of literary exegesis, Gateshead.
All of these claims have been comprehensively and repeatedly demolished by the US scholar James Shapiro, in "1599", an account of a year in the bard's life, and more recently "Contested Will", which trawls through the whole sorry history of Shakespeare denial. They are both worth reading. So is "Shakespeare's language", by the great Frank Kermode. While Kermode does not directly address the authorship question, his analysis of the uniqueness of Shakespeare's "voice" is very compelling.
Does any of this matter? After all, Anonymous is just a movie, and if it's as awful as people say, it's unlikely to be much of an opinion-former. Unfortunately, Sony Pictures has tried to up the ante by sending out study kits to US high schools, peddling the film's absurd conspiracy theories. Needless to say, James Shapiro doesn't merit a mention in Sony's fair and balanced look at the issues. It's a nasty and pointless piece of attempted brainwashing. One can only be grateful that they've stopped short of claiming that the Earl of Oxford was born in New Haven or somewhere, but perhaps they're saving that for the sequel.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Who are you calling incoherent?
The UK media have, for the most part, been either patronising or insulting about the Occupy protesters camped out at St Paul's Cathedral (odd choice) and Finsbury Square (not so odd -- that's where Bloomberg's London office is located). The main charge is that the protests are "incoherent".
Well, if the media were thinking about this lady, at the Occupy Atlanta protests, maybe they'd have a point.
Some of the protesters in London have been just as spaced-out, but as a group they seem to be very respectable. Many of them are even, gasp, gainfully employed. Now they've started to issue specific demands, which turn out to be very far from incoherent. They're looking for wholesale reform of the governance of the City of London, which is in many ways unaltered from mediaeval times. There's a summary of their wish-list on the website of, what else, The Guardian.
Their chances of achieving any of this are, of course, smaller than John Terry's conscience. Still, there's another story breaking today that may just serve to get them quite a bit more support. Apparently directors of the major FTSE companies saw an increase in pay of just shy of 50% in the past year, notwithstanding the poor state of the economy and a decline in share prices (which are, you might think, the ultimate measure of a director's value). The BBC's report on the story can be found here.
One of the named-and-probably-not-even-a-little-bit-shamed, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, has already responded by saying that the risks he takes are key to the success of his company. For goodness sake, Sir Martin! WPP is an advertising agency. You don't exactly face the same kind of risks as a coalminer, or a cop, or a bus driver or just about any other job you might name. (Blogging possibly excepted). The difference is that folks doing those jobs don't have a little cliquey thing going where they get to set each other's pay rates. Now THERE'S something crying out for reform, even if a tent city outside St Paul's is the wrong way to go about it.
Well, if the media were thinking about this lady, at the Occupy Atlanta protests, maybe they'd have a point.
Some of the protesters in London have been just as spaced-out, but as a group they seem to be very respectable. Many of them are even, gasp, gainfully employed. Now they've started to issue specific demands, which turn out to be very far from incoherent. They're looking for wholesale reform of the governance of the City of London, which is in many ways unaltered from mediaeval times. There's a summary of their wish-list on the website of, what else, The Guardian.
Their chances of achieving any of this are, of course, smaller than John Terry's conscience. Still, there's another story breaking today that may just serve to get them quite a bit more support. Apparently directors of the major FTSE companies saw an increase in pay of just shy of 50% in the past year, notwithstanding the poor state of the economy and a decline in share prices (which are, you might think, the ultimate measure of a director's value). The BBC's report on the story can be found here.
One of the named-and-probably-not-even-a-little-bit-shamed, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, has already responded by saying that the risks he takes are key to the success of his company. For goodness sake, Sir Martin! WPP is an advertising agency. You don't exactly face the same kind of risks as a coalminer, or a cop, or a bus driver or just about any other job you might name. (Blogging possibly excepted). The difference is that folks doing those jobs don't have a little cliquey thing going where they get to set each other's pay rates. Now THERE'S something crying out for reform, even if a tent city outside St Paul's is the wrong way to go about it.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Shave and a haircut
The most that can be said about the Eurozone rescue deal that was agreed in Brussels overnight is that it was significantly better than the markets had begun to fear in recent days. There is a lot of detail to be filled in over the coming months, but in principle the deal should buy the Eurozone the time it needs to carry out the reforms that will really put an end to the sovereign debt crisis. The Economist has a good summary and analysis of the deal here.
One of the hardest parts of the deal to finalise turned out to be the scale of the "haircut" that private lenders will have to take on their holdings of Greek debt. At the last Summit to end all Summits, back in July, a figure of 21% was agreed. That never looked to be enough, and now the size of the haircut has been raised to 50%.
Anyone who sees the financial crisis as being entirely the fault of the banks will no doubt be incensed that they tried to fend off the bigger write-off. After all, the loans were made voluntarily, and the fact that Greek bonds paid significantly higher yields than their German equivalents ensured that investors were being compensated for the risk they were taking on.
This is a good principle: you make a bad deal, you swallow the loss. In the normal course, it's up to investors to satisfy themselves about what they are buying, through s process of "due diligence". For purchases of Greek government debt, this would involve analysing Greece's budgetary position and prospects in considerable detail, to ensure that the country would be able to repay its obligations as they fell due.
Simple, right? Except that in this particular case, the lenders have much more of an excuse. We learned many months ago that the Greek government lied about its budgetary situation for years, in order to smooth its path into the Euro. Shouldn't investors and lenders have been able to figure that out? Well, maybe, but in this case Greece's misleading data were being awarded regular seals of approval by the EU authorities. If the latter, with much more complete access to the raw data than the private lenders could ever hope to have, were allowing themselves to be duped, what realistic hope did those lenders ever have of avoiding the trap?
We can't let the entire financial sector of the hook, however. It's been widely reported that Goldman Sachs undertook a fancy structured transaction that helped Greece to conceal the size of its debts, and they weren't the only ones. The banks that put such deals together must have had some knowledge of the real situation, but chose not to spill the beans to their clients. Still, the fact remains that a lot of insurers and fund managers just found themselves being bullied into a 50% haircut by the same Eurozone authorities that lured them into the Greek market in the first place. No wonder it was hard to reach an agreement.
So much for the past. There's also a more forward-looking reason why it was important to get the scale of the debt write-off right. A lot of commentators, especially in the US, have been voicing concerns that if Greece were allowed to walk away from its debts with relatively little pain, a queue of other borrowers would start lining up to demand similar treatment. Write-offs for Greece may be something the global financial system can manage, but if Spain or Italy wanted the same, the pressure on balance sheets could be devastating. The 50% write-off for Greece, while painful for the lenders, still leaves the country facing a mountainous debt and years of austerity. This should guarantee that this is not seen by other debtors as an easy option, but only time will tell if the right balance has been struck.
It's hard to say how much time this latest deal will buy for the Eurozone. Any backsliding on the details over the next few months could see a swift return to crisis mode. But never mind, there may be a diversion on the horizon. The bipartisan super-committee of the US Congress, set up as part of the resolution of the debt ceiling debate, is due to report in late November. There hasn't been much evidence of a meeting of minds, and today S&P fired a warning shot: it's ready to downgrade Uncle Sam again if the promised deficit-cutting measure show signs of falling apart.
Stay tuned! One way or another, 2011 is turning out to be a good year only for those very few who kept in mind the wise words of Polonius to Laertes: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry".
One of the hardest parts of the deal to finalise turned out to be the scale of the "haircut" that private lenders will have to take on their holdings of Greek debt. At the last Summit to end all Summits, back in July, a figure of 21% was agreed. That never looked to be enough, and now the size of the haircut has been raised to 50%.
Anyone who sees the financial crisis as being entirely the fault of the banks will no doubt be incensed that they tried to fend off the bigger write-off. After all, the loans were made voluntarily, and the fact that Greek bonds paid significantly higher yields than their German equivalents ensured that investors were being compensated for the risk they were taking on.
This is a good principle: you make a bad deal, you swallow the loss. In the normal course, it's up to investors to satisfy themselves about what they are buying, through s process of "due diligence". For purchases of Greek government debt, this would involve analysing Greece's budgetary position and prospects in considerable detail, to ensure that the country would be able to repay its obligations as they fell due.
Simple, right? Except that in this particular case, the lenders have much more of an excuse. We learned many months ago that the Greek government lied about its budgetary situation for years, in order to smooth its path into the Euro. Shouldn't investors and lenders have been able to figure that out? Well, maybe, but in this case Greece's misleading data were being awarded regular seals of approval by the EU authorities. If the latter, with much more complete access to the raw data than the private lenders could ever hope to have, were allowing themselves to be duped, what realistic hope did those lenders ever have of avoiding the trap?
We can't let the entire financial sector of the hook, however. It's been widely reported that Goldman Sachs undertook a fancy structured transaction that helped Greece to conceal the size of its debts, and they weren't the only ones. The banks that put such deals together must have had some knowledge of the real situation, but chose not to spill the beans to their clients. Still, the fact remains that a lot of insurers and fund managers just found themselves being bullied into a 50% haircut by the same Eurozone authorities that lured them into the Greek market in the first place. No wonder it was hard to reach an agreement.
So much for the past. There's also a more forward-looking reason why it was important to get the scale of the debt write-off right. A lot of commentators, especially in the US, have been voicing concerns that if Greece were allowed to walk away from its debts with relatively little pain, a queue of other borrowers would start lining up to demand similar treatment. Write-offs for Greece may be something the global financial system can manage, but if Spain or Italy wanted the same, the pressure on balance sheets could be devastating. The 50% write-off for Greece, while painful for the lenders, still leaves the country facing a mountainous debt and years of austerity. This should guarantee that this is not seen by other debtors as an easy option, but only time will tell if the right balance has been struck.
It's hard to say how much time this latest deal will buy for the Eurozone. Any backsliding on the details over the next few months could see a swift return to crisis mode. But never mind, there may be a diversion on the horizon. The bipartisan super-committee of the US Congress, set up as part of the resolution of the debt ceiling debate, is due to report in late November. There hasn't been much evidence of a meeting of minds, and today S&P fired a warning shot: it's ready to downgrade Uncle Sam again if the promised deficit-cutting measure show signs of falling apart.
Stay tuned! One way or another, 2011 is turning out to be a good year only for those very few who kept in mind the wise words of Polonius to Laertes: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry".
Monday, 24 October 2011
Scots wha hae
The possibility of a referendum on independence for Scotland has been a recurring theme of this blog, mainly for the purpose of making comparisons with the long-running Quebec separatist movement. (See, if you care, posts on 8 May 2011, 3 September 2009, 7 May 2008, and 16 June and 3 April 2007). After the past weekend's SNP conference in Inverness, the countdown to such a vote is definitely under way, so it's time to visit the subject again.
It's not good form to quote yourself, but parts of what I posted here back on 8 May bear repeating:
....back in the 1970s, Ottawa made no attempt to deny the PQ its right to hold an independence vote on its own terms and at a time of its own choosing. News reports suggest that David Cameron has made a similar commitment to SNP leader Alex Salmond, though not all of Cameron's Tory backbenchers are as equable about the prospect of a referendum. Some are urging Cameron to "call the SNP's bluff" by calling his own referendum on the issue in the very near future. There are two problems with this. First, Salmond isn't bluffing; he really does intend to call a referendum on independence, and thinks he can win it. Second, a Westminster-run referendum would stoke the us-against-them mentality among Scottish voters that Salmond desperately needs if he is to achieve his goal.
This is not to say that there is nothing Cameron should be doing. Canada endured two separate independence referenda in Quebec, the second of them defeated by the narrowest possible margin, before the federal government decided to take a more proactive stance. The right of the people of Quebec or of Scotland to decide their own political arrangements is hard to deny; after all, politicians in London and Ottawa have enthusiastically endorsed sovereignty movements in places as far-flung as Bosnia, Kosovo and Southern Sudan. However, the terms on which the national government would allow separation to occur -- everything from how assets would be divided to the wording of the referendum question itself -- are legitimate concerns of the national government. The government of Canada passed legislation defining its stance on these issues at the end of the last century, in the wake of the second referendum. The effect has been to remind Quebecers, in a non-confrontational way, that opting for independence would bring real costs as well as the putative benefits offered by its proponents.
....In the UK....the right to amend the constitution rests solely with the national government in Westminster. This makes it both appropriate and important for it to spell out the conditions on which it would accept a Scottish referendum vote for independence, and what its negotiating stance would be in the aftermath. The key message: you can check out any time you want, but you should clearly understand how much of the furniture we'll let you take with you.
A couple of extra points can be made, now that Alex Salmond's approach is becoming clearer. He seems to have absorbed the lessons of the two Quebec referenda in a rather surprising way. The Quebec separatists were defeated both on a "soft" sovereignty option and a straight YES/NO question. It appears that Salmond is thinking of including both the hard and soft sovereignty options in a single referendum vote. That should just about guarantee that the "no change" option wins less than half the vote, which is no doubt what Salmond will be counting on. However, it is almost certain to lead to the sort of messy outcome that is really in nobody's interest. If the Westminster government wants to compel the SNP to ask a clear question, it needs to speak up now.
The issue of "how much of the furniture we'll let you take with you" should also be clarified sooner rather than later. Alex Salmond seems to have taken note of a satirical comment many years ago by a Quebecois comedian, to the effect that what Quebecers really wanted was "a free and independent Quebec within a strong and united Canada". So he has pledged to retain the Queen as head of state, which the Scots seem to favour. (No word if this would also apply if Prince Charles takes the throne). That's probably acceptable. But what about retaining Sterling as the national currency? Right now it's unlikely that the canny Scots would want to cast their fate with the Eurozone, but it should surely be made clear that in the event that Scotland opted for independence while retaining the use of Sterling, it would forego any right to influence the policies of the Bank of England.
And then there's the issue of citizenship. In Quebec the PQ was a bit coy about this, but tried to hint that Quebecers might be able to retain their Canadian passports in the event that the Province became independent. I'm not sure that Alex Salmond has said anything about this, but the Westminster government should surely make it clear well in advance of any vote that if Scotland becomes independent, its people will lose their right to British citizenship.
This all starts to sound a bit confrontational, but in truth it's the exact opposite. The decision on independence belongs to the Scots alone, but the UK government has a perfect right to spell out some of the consequences. It's time to get started.
It's not good form to quote yourself, but parts of what I posted here back on 8 May bear repeating:
....back in the 1970s, Ottawa made no attempt to deny the PQ its right to hold an independence vote on its own terms and at a time of its own choosing. News reports suggest that David Cameron has made a similar commitment to SNP leader Alex Salmond, though not all of Cameron's Tory backbenchers are as equable about the prospect of a referendum. Some are urging Cameron to "call the SNP's bluff" by calling his own referendum on the issue in the very near future. There are two problems with this. First, Salmond isn't bluffing; he really does intend to call a referendum on independence, and thinks he can win it. Second, a Westminster-run referendum would stoke the us-against-them mentality among Scottish voters that Salmond desperately needs if he is to achieve his goal.
This is not to say that there is nothing Cameron should be doing. Canada endured two separate independence referenda in Quebec, the second of them defeated by the narrowest possible margin, before the federal government decided to take a more proactive stance. The right of the people of Quebec or of Scotland to decide their own political arrangements is hard to deny; after all, politicians in London and Ottawa have enthusiastically endorsed sovereignty movements in places as far-flung as Bosnia, Kosovo and Southern Sudan. However, the terms on which the national government would allow separation to occur -- everything from how assets would be divided to the wording of the referendum question itself -- are legitimate concerns of the national government. The government of Canada passed legislation defining its stance on these issues at the end of the last century, in the wake of the second referendum. The effect has been to remind Quebecers, in a non-confrontational way, that opting for independence would bring real costs as well as the putative benefits offered by its proponents.
....In the UK....the right to amend the constitution rests solely with the national government in Westminster. This makes it both appropriate and important for it to spell out the conditions on which it would accept a Scottish referendum vote for independence, and what its negotiating stance would be in the aftermath. The key message: you can check out any time you want, but you should clearly understand how much of the furniture we'll let you take with you.
A couple of extra points can be made, now that Alex Salmond's approach is becoming clearer. He seems to have absorbed the lessons of the two Quebec referenda in a rather surprising way. The Quebec separatists were defeated both on a "soft" sovereignty option and a straight YES/NO question. It appears that Salmond is thinking of including both the hard and soft sovereignty options in a single referendum vote. That should just about guarantee that the "no change" option wins less than half the vote, which is no doubt what Salmond will be counting on. However, it is almost certain to lead to the sort of messy outcome that is really in nobody's interest. If the Westminster government wants to compel the SNP to ask a clear question, it needs to speak up now.
The issue of "how much of the furniture we'll let you take with you" should also be clarified sooner rather than later. Alex Salmond seems to have taken note of a satirical comment many years ago by a Quebecois comedian, to the effect that what Quebecers really wanted was "a free and independent Quebec within a strong and united Canada". So he has pledged to retain the Queen as head of state, which the Scots seem to favour. (No word if this would also apply if Prince Charles takes the throne). That's probably acceptable. But what about retaining Sterling as the national currency? Right now it's unlikely that the canny Scots would want to cast their fate with the Eurozone, but it should surely be made clear that in the event that Scotland opted for independence while retaining the use of Sterling, it would forego any right to influence the policies of the Bank of England.
And then there's the issue of citizenship. In Quebec the PQ was a bit coy about this, but tried to hint that Quebecers might be able to retain their Canadian passports in the event that the Province became independent. I'm not sure that Alex Salmond has said anything about this, but the Westminster government should surely make it clear well in advance of any vote that if Scotland becomes independent, its people will lose their right to British citizenship.
This all starts to sound a bit confrontational, but in truth it's the exact opposite. The decision on independence belongs to the Scots alone, but the UK government has a perfect right to spell out some of the consequences. It's time to get started.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Hey, Dave and George -- here's a joke for you
There's an old joke -- a VERY old joke -- about a Pope who decides to go out on the streets of Rome to plead with sinners. He walks around telling the hookers to get off the streets and mend their ways, and hectoring the johns to go home to their wives. Finally one of the putanas has had enough and marches up to the Pope, yelling, "Hey, Papa, you no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules!"
Someone needs to tell David Cameron and George Osborne that joke, and hope they get the message. It's remarkable to see them throwing their weight around as the crucial EU summit meeting gets underway, demanding that the beleaguered Eurozone gets its act together and finds a long-term solution to the debt crisis, and warning that British interests must be taken into account in any decisions that get made. Once the UK opted, over a decade ago (correctly, one must now reluctantly admit) to stay out of the single currency, it largely forfeited the right to tell the Eurozone members how to conduct their business.
It's not as if, in their role as self-appointed advisors, Dave and George are speaking from a position of particular virtue. The UK has a higher budget deficit than almost all the countries it presumes to advise -- in 2010 only Ireland and Greece performed worse, and in Greece's case the difference was marginal. The UK's recovery ran out of puff sooner than those of the major EU economies, and of course inflation in the UK is rising at a much higher rate than in the Eurozone. President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and the rest of them will surely be sorely tempted to tell Dave and George where to stick their advice, though no doubt, unlike the hooker in Rome, they'll do so in the most diplomatic way possible.
If Cameron and Osborne are not to be shamed into silence by the facts, you might think they'd want to keep quiet in view of the looming House of Commons vote calling for a referendum on the UK's participation in the EU. But of course, the need to put on a show of machismo for the Tory Eurosceptics is probably exactly why they've decided to large it up at the Summit.
UPDATE, 24 October: Looks like I was wrong about Sarkozy and Merkel being diplomatic. This from The Guardian: Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: "You have lost a good opportunity to shut up." He added: "We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings." Go, Sarko!
Someone needs to tell David Cameron and George Osborne that joke, and hope they get the message. It's remarkable to see them throwing their weight around as the crucial EU summit meeting gets underway, demanding that the beleaguered Eurozone gets its act together and finds a long-term solution to the debt crisis, and warning that British interests must be taken into account in any decisions that get made. Once the UK opted, over a decade ago (correctly, one must now reluctantly admit) to stay out of the single currency, it largely forfeited the right to tell the Eurozone members how to conduct their business.
It's not as if, in their role as self-appointed advisors, Dave and George are speaking from a position of particular virtue. The UK has a higher budget deficit than almost all the countries it presumes to advise -- in 2010 only Ireland and Greece performed worse, and in Greece's case the difference was marginal. The UK's recovery ran out of puff sooner than those of the major EU economies, and of course inflation in the UK is rising at a much higher rate than in the Eurozone. President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and the rest of them will surely be sorely tempted to tell Dave and George where to stick their advice, though no doubt, unlike the hooker in Rome, they'll do so in the most diplomatic way possible.
If Cameron and Osborne are not to be shamed into silence by the facts, you might think they'd want to keep quiet in view of the looming House of Commons vote calling for a referendum on the UK's participation in the EU. But of course, the need to put on a show of machismo for the Tory Eurosceptics is probably exactly why they've decided to large it up at the Summit.
UPDATE, 24 October: Looks like I was wrong about Sarkozy and Merkel being diplomatic. This from The Guardian: Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: "You have lost a good opportunity to shut up." He added: "We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings." Go, Sarko!
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