#Poverty for the employed Spaniard #Eurogrope’s rape of Greece #Austria doomed
New data in
Spain show that a growing number of the
employed are now below the EU defined poverty level. But as the EU and its eurogrope caused that situation in the first place, no doubt the defiition of poverty will soon be revised downwards. All very Blairite: no wonder Moral Tone wanted to be EU President. Things must be bad there, because
even the New York Times has caught up with it.
In Britain, The Independent is in turn finally working out that if the EU’s sole remaining advantage is that it allegedly stops wars, fairly soon this may not apply to civil war in
Greece. A
good piece there yesterday spells it out for the readership:
‘We all know the spiralling debt cannot and will not be repaid. We all know the austerity to which it is tied will make Greece’s depression worse. Yet it continues. If we look deeper, however, we find that Europe is not led by the terminally confused. By taking those leaders at their word, we’re missing what’s really going on in Europe. In a nutshell, Greece is up for sale, and its workers, farmers and small businesses will have to be cleared out of the way.’
It’s as yet unclear when this awareness of the Neoliberal Behemoth formerly known as the EEC will filter into the inner sanctum of the Labour Party: we can only hope that it’s hermetic seal may be loosened as and when the Labour Out campaign gets going. Or perhaps the right word is ‘if’.
And finally,
Frances Coppola keeps up the good work by producing yet another crackerjack insight on the developing (some would say unravelling)
Austria situation, wherein a Higher Court has ruled that the planned Heta bank failure bailin is illegal:
‘The implications of a decision to repeal the Heta bail-in provisions in BaSAG would be huge….If all the guarantees are reinstated, the Austrian government faces heavy losses, both on its own holdings of HAA unsecured debt and also through its ultimate liability for the Carinthia guarantees – which under the Austrian constitution it is unlikely to be able to evade. Given the scale of the deficiency guarantees, bailing out Heta at a cost of about 8bn euros may turn out to be the cheaper option.
But the consequences for Austria’s fiscal finances are potentially serious. According to Eurostat, at the end of 2014 Austria had a budget deficit of 7.9bn euros, or about 2.4% of GDP. Bailing out Heta would add another 8bn euros. Austria’s annual GDP in 2014 was just under 330 bn euros. So a Heta bailout would leave Austria with a budget deficit of the order of 5% of GDP, well above the Maastricht limits.’
What now, Wolfie….Anschluss II?
None of the above was brought to you by the Labour Out Campaign, UKip, or Conservative Eurosceptics
