21-01-2009, 11:53 AM
Battle lines grow more obvious. Do we follow the US are Euro?
Cleggs phrase "volatile global capital flows" is clearly code for speculation, I think.
**
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90908dc6-e72d-...ck_check=1
Euro could ‘anchor’ economy, says Clegg
By Alex Barker and George Parker
Published: January 20 2009 23:26 | Last updated: January 20 2009 23:26
Britain must prepare to ditch the pound and join the euro in order to salvage the public finances and prevent the “permanent decline” of the City, Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, said on Tuesday.
Predicting that debate over the euro could soon return with a vengeance, Mr Clegg argued that joining a “major reserve currency” would protect Britain from its “extremely dangerous” exposure to volatile global capital flows.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he said public opinion could “turn on its head” and swing against the pound as the “sheer brutality” of the crisis prompted the public to yearn for the stability offered by the eurozone.
“In that context of people just longing for clearer rules, for reliability, for stability, for certainty, you might just find that becoming part of the reserve currency on our doorstep might become part of the recipe . . . by which we put the British economy back together on a more sustainable footing.”
The Lib Dem leader’s attempt to put the euro back on the Westminster agenda is likely to be seen as a nuisance by nominally pro-European ministers and as a red rag to eurosceptic Conservatives. Polls still show the public staunchly against joining the single currency, in spite of the recent plunge of the pound.
Mr Clegg’s enthusiasm for the euro could cause problems for the Lib Dems as they prepare for the European elections in June. While the party is the biggest cheerleader for the European Union in the Commons, there are internal divisions over how loudly to express their passion for the European project.
Mr Clegg says he is not pushing for immediate entry and admits that the past housing bubble might have been even worse had Britain been tied to eurozone interest rates.
But he says the “page has been turned” in economic policymaking, highlighting the need for an “anchor” against the “incredibly vulnerable exposure to international financial markets”. Refusing to discuss the euro is a “failure of political leadership”, he says.
Turning to the public finances, he argues that preparing for currency union could also provide a vital path to fiscal sustainability.
“The strict rules attached to the euro could emerge as one of the best ways to persuade the markets that we will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, put the public finances in order”.
“The euro is no magic wand, the eurozone is not immune, but it is irresponsible not to appreciate the new vulnerabilities to the British economy, which are huge, which are immense,” he says.
“People will be asking themselves questions about the footloose, fancy-free world of City banking, but also whether it is right for the UK to be in quite such an overexposed environment where the currency is bobbing up and down violently.”
In a scathing attack on leading figures in the City, Mr Clegg slammed the “shameful elevation of greed and corporate overreach”, with chief executives hypnotised by the “vain belief that size matters”.
“It makes you livid, it beggars belief that the one industry that is supposed to count your money in and out cannot say how much money it has lost.”
Mr Clegg, whose father was a banker, on Tuesday told a breakfast of City luminaries that the debate over the euro would be essential in shaping the future of Britain’s financial sector.
“Limitless boom years in the City will never come back,” he warns. “The City will have to be reregulated, work at a more measured pace and seek protections for its vulnerability to the flows of capital.”
He accuses governments since the 1980s of being “abject in their obsequious desire to do what the City needed”.
Pandering to these vested interest, he says, created a flawed economic strategy that “made the rest of the British economy wholly subservient to the gravity-defying, golden-egg laying potential of the City”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Cleggs phrase "volatile global capital flows" is clearly code for speculation, I think.
**
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90908dc6-e72d-...ck_check=1
Euro could ‘anchor’ economy, says Clegg
By Alex Barker and George Parker
Published: January 20 2009 23:26 | Last updated: January 20 2009 23:26
Britain must prepare to ditch the pound and join the euro in order to salvage the public finances and prevent the “permanent decline” of the City, Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat leader, said on Tuesday.
Predicting that debate over the euro could soon return with a vengeance, Mr Clegg argued that joining a “major reserve currency” would protect Britain from its “extremely dangerous” exposure to volatile global capital flows.
In an interview with the Financial Times, he said public opinion could “turn on its head” and swing against the pound as the “sheer brutality” of the crisis prompted the public to yearn for the stability offered by the eurozone.
“In that context of people just longing for clearer rules, for reliability, for stability, for certainty, you might just find that becoming part of the reserve currency on our doorstep might become part of the recipe . . . by which we put the British economy back together on a more sustainable footing.”
The Lib Dem leader’s attempt to put the euro back on the Westminster agenda is likely to be seen as a nuisance by nominally pro-European ministers and as a red rag to eurosceptic Conservatives. Polls still show the public staunchly against joining the single currency, in spite of the recent plunge of the pound.
Mr Clegg’s enthusiasm for the euro could cause problems for the Lib Dems as they prepare for the European elections in June. While the party is the biggest cheerleader for the European Union in the Commons, there are internal divisions over how loudly to express their passion for the European project.
Mr Clegg says he is not pushing for immediate entry and admits that the past housing bubble might have been even worse had Britain been tied to eurozone interest rates.
But he says the “page has been turned” in economic policymaking, highlighting the need for an “anchor” against the “incredibly vulnerable exposure to international financial markets”. Refusing to discuss the euro is a “failure of political leadership”, he says.
Turning to the public finances, he argues that preparing for currency union could also provide a vital path to fiscal sustainability.
“The strict rules attached to the euro could emerge as one of the best ways to persuade the markets that we will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, put the public finances in order”.
“The euro is no magic wand, the eurozone is not immune, but it is irresponsible not to appreciate the new vulnerabilities to the British economy, which are huge, which are immense,” he says.
“People will be asking themselves questions about the footloose, fancy-free world of City banking, but also whether it is right for the UK to be in quite such an overexposed environment where the currency is bobbing up and down violently.”
In a scathing attack on leading figures in the City, Mr Clegg slammed the “shameful elevation of greed and corporate overreach”, with chief executives hypnotised by the “vain belief that size matters”.
“It makes you livid, it beggars belief that the one industry that is supposed to count your money in and out cannot say how much money it has lost.”
Mr Clegg, whose father was a banker, on Tuesday told a breakfast of City luminaries that the debate over the euro would be essential in shaping the future of Britain’s financial sector.
“Limitless boom years in the City will never come back,” he warns. “The City will have to be reregulated, work at a more measured pace and seek protections for its vulnerability to the flows of capital.”
He accuses governments since the 1980s of being “abject in their obsequious desire to do what the City needed”.
Pandering to these vested interest, he says, created a flawed economic strategy that “made the rest of the British economy wholly subservient to the gravity-defying, golden-egg laying potential of the City”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14