Eu Crisis

[jasconius]

Though I am not huge fan of President Blair, I still think that he was right to push for reforms in the CAP at the expense of his €3bill p.a.
While the UK is not an Agri based country - evidence their attitude in the Foot and Mouth debacle - (I think Agri accounts for only 4% of GNP), the time has long come when we should complain about 40% of the Budget going to 4% of the population who still moan and groan and are striking every day of the week somewhere in Europe. Notice that it is the militant French that lead the way and yet at the drop of a chapeau would shut down the ports and blockade the garages if they didn't get their little foot stamping way in this debate.
The fact remains that the EU is paying huge amounts to farmers to grow (or not grow) vast quantities of food, the bulk of which is dumped on Russia or Africa who in turn cannot compete with this in their own econonies.
Read somewhere recently that we bin about about 35% of all food that we purchase from the supermarkets even after paying a huge price for it.
France as a nation has to wake up and realise that it is not the nation it once was 10 or 15 years ago, funnily enough neither is their ally Germany!
Bertie was keen to put himself in the middle ground of his buddy Tony while at the same time appeasing his ex-paymasters in Europe.
Fact is that the big two, France and Germany are are trying to dominate and influence the EU in order to try and hold on to what little power they have.

 

[daltonr]

Agriculture in Europe is like Defense in the US. There are a lot of jobs in it that arguably couldn't be sustained without the government intervening, but very few governments have the balls to either put farmers off the land, or shut down defense projects.

I've never quite understood why we don't let industries die. At what point does an industry become so important that it gets that heavily subsidised?
IT accounts for a reasonable number of jobs and luckily pays its way. But when the IT jobs go to India will there be subsidies to help IT workers stay in the industry when demand for their product is no longer enough?

-Rd

 

[Purple]

Hi jasconius,
Good post. I agree with you in just about everything you say but don't knock Germany and France too much, remember that as long as they keep making a balls of their economy by holding onto a socialist system that they can't afford we will keep the low interest rate environment and cheap money that we have grown used to.

 

[daltonr]

as long as they keep making a balls of their economy by holding onto a socialist system that they can't afford we will keep the low interest rate environment and cheap money that we have grown used to.

All fine and dandy. Low interest rates in a booming economy are great.
Just wait until they cop themselves on, start taking the jobs out of Ireland.
Our economy starts going down, theirs starts going up.
Then they raise interest rates.

High rates in a slump are the other side of this coin.

-Rd

 

[MugsGame]

"President" Blair - so that's what he's planning!

I am sympathetic to the farmer bashers. But, you can argue a special case for production of necessities such as food and energy. Imagine a situation where we have no home grown food, because we can't produce it cheaply enough. We are relying on foreign farmers being willing to accept our currency in exchange for food. If they don't we'll starve. Are their situations in which that could happen? Yes. They're not very likely, but it is worth insuring against that risk. But perhaps not with 40% of the EU budget.

 

[Purple]

All fine and dandy. Low interest rates in a booming economy are great.
Just wait until they cop themselves on, start taking the jobs out of Ireland.
Our economy starts going down, theirs starts going up.
Then they raise interest rates.

High rates in a slump are the other side of this coin.

I'm not disagreeing with you there, I'm just saying I hope they stick to their principals and ignore reality long enough for the property boomers to pay off a chunk of their mortgages so that we have some depth of wealth in the country before the sun stops shinning.

 

[daltonr]

Oh I agree purple. The longer it lasts the better for some, i.e. those who see it coming and pay down their mortages etc. But the flipside of being forced to keep interests rates low when slightly higher rates might suit Ireland, will be being forced to have high rates when we really need them to be low.

Inappropriately low interest rates can be as bad as inappropriatesly high rates, you just don't realise it until it's too late.

Imagine if we were in a sluggish economy right now with punitive interest rates. How long do you think it would have been before the calls to leave the Euro kicked in?

We're a flea on the This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language of the European Economy. If France/Germany feel like scratching or sitting on us there's not a lot we can do. It could take years to happen but eventually we'll have innapropriately high interest rates in this country.

There seems to be a belief that when we joined the Euro we Joined some big economy and ours would immediately and forever mirror the EU Economy, and everyting the ECB did would be as appropriate for Ireland as it is for anyone else.

-Rd

 

[joe sod]

"I am sympathetic to the farmer bashers. But, you can argue a special case for production of necessities such as food and energy. Imagine a situation where we have no home grown food, because we can't produce it cheaply enough"

Yes I agree with this statement. Food and energy are too important to be left to free trade. The reason we have the CAP is because of what happened during the second world war. Europe and Britain were close to starvation because they were dependant on the cheaper food from the Americas. The free trade argument won out before the second world war so Europe imported more and more of its food from America where it could be produced cheaper.
The huge food mountains of the 80s are now gone, there is no longer huge food surpluses on world markets. In fact we are probably moving into a period of shortages in agricultural commodities. For example Australia traditionally a huge exporter of agricultural produce has been plagued by unprecedented droughts for the last 5 years. It would be a very foolish thing for Europe to abandon the CAP and go back to being dependant on dodgy African countries for its food. Look at Zimbabwe traditionally a big agricultural exporter now not able to feed its own population. CAP is a very small price to pay for security of food supply. It is probably more important now than at any time since the second world war