Upping the ante - by Richard... Thursday, February 16, 2012

Upping the ante - by Richard... Thursday, February 16, 2012

Long after it had become evident to a number of seasoned observers (although still not to others) that Germany was trying to force Greece out of the euro, the BBC reports on Greece's Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos complaining that some eurozone countries no longer wanted Greece in the single currency.

The Guardian, is amongst those who have belatedly noticed what is going on. It has Venizelos him noting: "We are constantly being given new terms and conditions" - picking up on more detailedBloomberg report.

This changes the dynamics of the game, as all the member states are supposed to be keen on Greece staying in the euro. As ZeroHedge observes, the decision to withdraw had to be made by Greek's own politicians, with no detectable fingerprints from the real assassins.

Essentially, in going public, Venizelos has trumped Merkel's hand, and then upped the stakes by declaring that all the demands set by the country's international lenders have now been met. In particular, leaders of both parties in the Papademos coalition, including conservative leader Antonis Samaras, have given written undertakings that the austerity measures will be implemented, election notwithstanding.

As to the eurozone ministers and their "conference call", few details have emerged from what turned out to be a marathon three-hour session. There is talk, though, of "specific mechanisms to strengthen the surveillance of programme implementation", which may have in them the makings of yet another hurdle.

Short of the Greeks buckling, however, it looks as if the Eurogroup will have run out of options and be forced on Monday to approve – in principal – the bailout deal. Merkel and her northern allies have until then to engineer still more excuses for the Greeks to drop out.

Somebody is going to have to play a pretty powerful wildcard, as the tenacity and sheer staying power of the Greek political classes, with the backing of the EU commission, seems to have been seriously underestimated.

That card may be the Greek people, who are already buckling under the strain and have long ago lost faith in their politicians. Whether they can pull the plug, though, remains to be seen in a game that gets more complex by the hour, with many more twists and turns to come.

Adding to that complexity is the expected news that Sarkozy is seeking re-election. Slated as a supporter of Greece's bid to stay in the euro, he will be playing an intensely political game, with an eye on his domestic audience.

There, French sentiment will start to matter. If Sarkozy starts to see electoral advantage in dumping Greece, he could end up back alongside Merkel. Then we will be seeing the "motor of intergration" up against the commission – the EU equivalent of a rock meeting a hard place.

Once more, it thus seems, as the very final plays were beginning to emerge, rabbits are being pulled out of hats at breathtaking speed. And most of them may be speaking French.

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A world-wide disease - by Richard... Wednesday, February 15, 2012

I actually wish it could be said that this sort of problem was unique to Britain. But sadly, the disease is world-wide.

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Level-pegging? - by Richard...

The Guardian seems to think (if it can ever be accused of such a process) that the Heartland Institute's $1.25 million fundraising target for climate "denial" is a big deal. It is strangely silent, though, about the $100 billion-plus - five times the cost of the Manhattan Project - expended on the promotion of climate change dogma.

However, we can understand their concern. Given the disparities in scientific credibility between the two sides - for instance, here - and the need for the warmists to propagandise, the extra amount is required to overcome the inherent weaknesses in the warmist case.

But there can be no greater illustration of the weaknesses than that fact that the warmists feel threatened by the tiny (relatively) sums contributed to the "deniers". I suppose they feel that, in equivalent terms, the funds are effectively level-pegging.

UPDATE: Heartland Institute responds.

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An ever decreasing circle of relevance - by Richard...

It seems that I am not the only one puzzled by the running order of stories in the MSM today and the prominence given to The Boy's hysterie du jour - the "prime minister's agenda to curb excessive drinking".

Boiling Frog shared our puzzlement, having previously remarked on how the MSM had given so much prominence to Bafta footage and the death of Whitney Houston, even as Athens burned. These comments were based in part on a post by The Talking Clock, leading TBF to conclude that the MSM "is retreating rapidly into an ever decreasing circle of relevance".

One might also ask why it is that Cameron has chosen to make noises about "binge drinking" at this particular juncture. With the European, if not global, economic system about system about to implode, one might think that there were more important things, with which to concern himself.

It is researcher and commentator Dennis Ambler in one of his invaluable e-mail circulars, however, who points out that this is primarily a UN agenda. To that extent, The Boy is simply responding to his tranzie masters – and in so doing keeping the more important issues off the front pages, as an obedient media cravenly follow his lead.

The media itself is much in the news these days and, by coincidence, we saw recently the retirement of Tom Curley, Associated Press chief, who was then invited to reflect on the state of the media by The Guardian.

Curley sees one of the main problems besetting the media as the speed of the news cycle – defined as the "period of time when all the people interested in a story had access to it". When he was a cub reporter in the 1960s, he estimates it was 12 hours. Latterly, "until about 11 September 2001, it was three hours," he says. But, he adds: "Now it's 30 minutes. You might say if you are a certain age – with Twitter and Facebook and all that type of stuff – it's three minutes".

Reflecting on the downturn in newspaper revenues and the enormous contraction in the US newspaper industry, his concerns have turned to seeking how to attract revenue from the web. And, in so doing, the man seems besotted with speed. "The purpose", he says, is to get in step with the social media flow of the news. In the past you would update a story 12 times in a 24-hour cycle. Now it's possible to update it 200 times, and each time you do that on the web it drives traffic".

Before retiring, Curley had considered moving over into academia and, had he done so, one of his research papers would have focused on what he perceives to be the failure of financial journalism in covering the economic downturn.

"I don't think we did a good enough job, and we may not be doing as good a job as we should be on the salaries and people who have been basically taken over by the taxpayers and are still managing to pay themselves large sums of money", he says.

But what he does not concede (although he might have been prevailed upon to do so), is that this failure to do "a good enough job" extends well beyond financial journalism. Rather than speed, he might therefore consider breadth, accuracy and relevance - reporting on stories and issues that really matter.

Almost on cue, we then find, via The Boiling Frog again, the BBC catching up with the story of Greece being forced out of the eurozone - nearly three days after we first broached the idea, and then only because a Greek politician had complained that this was happening.

This should have been lead item on the front pages of every newspaper that has pretensions to that title. Instead, the focus on soft news, trivia and politician-driven agendas, is driving readers away and the likes of us to distraction.

Perhaps not trivia, but we saw a few days ago a complaint by Trevor Kavangh that Sun journalists had been treated like suspected terrorists by the police. He may have been right to do so, but you would have to have a heart of stone not to smile, at least a little bit.

Given the abject failure of the media to do its job properly, it has been taking money under false pretences for years - and for many journalists, locking them up is the least of their desserts. When they start producing relevant reports on real news again (insofar as they ever have), then we might feel some sympathy.

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Not self-promotion - by Richard...

I'm in danger of doing a Montford here, but this is just a fun way of saying that the book is finally on sale. It is not self-promotion (honest guv!) – just information. That we have (briefly) made the number-one slot is something mentioned only in passing - entirely routine!

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Tension in the ranks - by Richard...

One of the mistakes analysts can make when assessing European politics is to treat the European Union as a monolithic block, or one which is capable of being dominated by any one country – such as Germany. If nothing else, the current crisis clearly demonstrates that neither is the case, with the Financial Times reporting on the tension evident between the commission (as guardian of the treaties) and member states.

Thus we have Olli Rehn, "the Commission's top economics official", warning that there would be "devastating consequences" if Greece defaulted, and pleaded for eurozone governments to approve the bail-out quickly. According to the FT, officials are saying that Rehn has support from the ECB and the French government.

On the other hand, there is a group of eurozone governments, particularly those that retain triple-A credit ratings, that has "lost faith Greece will ever deliver its end of the bargain". Hardline officials in Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, we are told, are increasingly urging a Greek default.

What is interesting here is that, despite the apparent closeness of Merkel and Sarkozy, to the extent that they have been seen as one, under the soubriquet "Merkozy", France and Germany – the motor of integration - seem to be odds over Greek default.

This positions the commission as "piggy in the middle". Its primary objective is to maintain the integrity of the eurozone. More particularly, it is desperate to keep the "bicycle" moving – the oft' used analogy for progress towards full political integration. The moment the bicycle stops, so theory holds, the rider falls off.

For all its powers though, the commission must doff its cap to the two principal players, France and Germany, and when they are at odds, the power of the community as a whole is weakened. And that is happening just at a time when unified, co-ordinated action is needed.

The commission is only too well aware, though, of the psychological significance of a country departing from the eurozone.

The dynamics of European political integration have been sustained more than anything by one word: "inevitability". In Thatcher's time it became "TINA" – there is no alternative – but that amounted to the same thing. Greece falling out of the euro will destroy the myth of inevitability and signal the start of the decline of the EU, towards its eventual collapse.

And that is actually why the impending default of Greece - followed by its departure from the euro – is (or should be) the top news item. Whatever the outcome, we are seeing history made.