When Eurozone collapses, what next? (feels more when than if)

Claig. Actually the money has been transferred. But it's not as simple as from poor to rich. Much of our money has gone to the far east. Everytime we buy our widgets from China or latest smartphone from South Korea we're sending our money abroad. It's fine if our economy over the last 30 years was fairly balanced as those economies would have been buying our goods/services in return.

But what's really happened is we've simply bought our goods and hidden our uncompetitiveness by borrowing money.

Only manufacturing can create wealth in our economy which explains why Germany has bounced back so quick with their high tech, high value brands like BMW, Audi, Bosch etc. Whereas we've concentrated on services which shuffles money around rather than create it.

The problem isn't the rich exploiting the poor. It's perfectly possible for the rich and poor to get richer at the same time. But we need a decent economy to do so and right now it's all wrong.

We have money to pay taxpayer subsidies to rich landowners who erect windfarms on their land. That is real taxpayer money from teh hardworking people of this country into the pockets of a rich landed elite. We pay high BBC salaries and expenses and taxi fares. We have lots of money, but we are cutting the benefits of the public, not saving Coryton oil refinery and risking thousands of hard working people's jobs, while bailing out bankers with billions and paying fat cat pensions and bonuses.

A country will exist for hundreds of centuries into the future (there is no "tipping point", the "planet" will not be destroyed by catastrophic climate change) and therefore our credit is good and we will be able to pay any current spending back over the future, just as we paid back our war loans over decades.

Instead of helping companies to benefit from free labour stacking shelves etc., we could invest in public industry, create some nationalised companies and put people to useful, productive work in those companies.

Instead of lending money to banks at low interest rates in teh hope not guarantee that they will lend it to businesses, we could give cheap longterm loans to major businesses and employers instead, on the proviso that they create new jobs (not shelf stacking ones, but ones that improve the infrastructure and needs of the country as a whole).

Every few months money money is pulled out of the hat to bail out teh banking system. There is money, it is just not going to the best places to create real growth.

The European taxpayer money that is "bailing out" Greece and Spain, is not "bailing out" their peoples, it is bailing out bankers. Their people are losing their jobs and are losing their benefits and are losing their homes and medecines. That money is going back to banks and bondholders. The "markets" keep jacking up the rate of interest that these countries have to pay, in the full knowledeg that taxpayer funds will be given to these countries to pay the ever higher interest rates being charged. There are banking and bondholder winners, and the people are losers.

Money has not disappeared into a black hole, it has just been transfereed from those who don't have to those who do. The rich have got richer on the backs of the poor, the taxpaying public has bailed out those who created teh crisis in the first place.

Unfortunately, some of the privilieged elite are out of touch, and they bail out bankers and give them taxpayer life rafts, while leaving the public to fend for themselves.

"Job snobs" shows how out of touch they are, and wouldn't have been out of place from Marie Antionette.

Which also begs the question, if he thought it was £30, how did he expect old age pensioners to live on that, and why wasn't it a priority to treble or quadruple it, rather than supporting more windfarms?

I like Clegg, but in some ways he is out of touch. He thought the old age pension was £30. He represents thousands of pensioners and doesn't know their circumstances. I bet he knows all about climate catastrophe and the benefit of windfarms, but when it comes to day to day things like the price of milk and the size of the old age pension, he has gaps in his knowledge.

It is about priorities. The people, jobs and growth come first, "saving the planet" can wait.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1056736/The-old-age-pension-Thats-30-isnt-Nick-Clegg-condemned-touch-TV-blunder.html

We are no better than Europe and only the ability to print has saved us. I can,t help thinking osbornes latest scheme of fund to lend is a bank bail out by stealth.

And they call unemployed people who only want a future and question stacking shelves for free, "job snobs". These people who went to Eton and Oxford and studied PPE and don't know the price of a pasty, let alone a packet of peas.

'Shelf-stacking is how supermarkets replenish... valuable job. Would you prefer empty supermarkets?'

For a valuable job like shelf stacking, I think supermarkets should pay at least the national minimum wage. I don't think government should be supplying people to supermarkets to do this valuable job for no pay. I think government should be creating new, real jobs and training people for them, rather than acting as a supplier of labour which is not even paid minimum wage.

I think the government should be developing plans for growth, and not for a growth in free labour.

How much did the Jubilee cost the nation and how much do we pay the BBC presenters? We are not bust.

If we were really bust, we would stop foreign aid, we would stop spending on wars. we would not build new billion pound rail lines. Of course we are not bust. There is lots of money for quantitative easing and loaning to banks. Life goes on and the wheels of finance continue to turn. It is about where they decide to spend that money - in propping up bust banks or in investment in industry and the public good.

'So the idea is to reinflate a burst bubble?'

Isn't that what quantitative easing and bank bailouts were all about. There was no burst bubble in industries where people were productively making cars and other goods. The bubble was only in the speculative world of finance where bonuses spiralled, while billion dollar bets went bad. The world of derivatives and hedge funds, where some individuals were paid millions and were then bailed out by the hard working public when all their clever ruses flopped.

Stop reinflating the banker bubble, cut their bonuses, retract some of their banking licences if they can't operate without public subsidy.

Reinflate the real economy, the one where people work hard everyday without expenses for duck ponds and moat houses.

Wind farms with no charm, shelf stacking and more sackings, taxpayer money blown on quantitative easing while old people can't afford heat and in winter are freezing. Is that what they mean by their slogan "creating a progressive future"? Has Orwell's newspeak and doublespeak taken over our media airwaves? Is there no one to say "the Progressive has no clothes"?

Shelf-stacking is how supermarkets replenish... valuable job. Would you prefer empty supermarkets?

So the idea is to reinflate a burst bubble?

Governments across Europe do not have the money to invest in major projects, and adding to debt - when UK has been accruing its highest ever peacetime borrowing in recent years just to meet the coalition's 'austerity' levels of spending seems unsustainable, and I doubt the money exists.

QE is essentially paid for by savers. About £18b so far in UK, and the biggest hit is on pensioners and those approaching retirement whose potential annuity is going be far lower than they may have hoped.

what claig said. 100% brilliant idea claig.

i'll have a think about the OP's question when I'm on the school run and post later...

Napoleon said the English were a nation of shopkeepers. Are we now to become a nation of shelf stackers? Surely we are capable of more than that? Has nobody get any better ideas than that? If that is all they can think of to create growth, no wonder some people are starting to pack their bags.

Instead of spending taxpayer money on workfare for people to stack shelves, open up govt funded companies that produce real goods - TVs, cheap laptops for every school child, pots and pans, knives and forks, all of the essentials. Employ people in real jobs, like the excellent Remploy does. Instead of workfare, how about a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, producing things that the country really needs. Shelf stacking can wait, in a time of low growth and crisis, shelf stacking is like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

'Pumping in money is expensive (and who could afford to be the backer?)'

But who can afford to pump billions into quantitative easing and now yet another 100 and something billion loans to banks on the promise that they will lend it to businesses. Businesses and banks are already siting on piles of cash, but they won't invest it. Give teh money to real businesses, to building firms, manufacturing and technology firms. Start a space programme, build new towns, dismantle windfarms, build new roads and airports. Fix the leaks in the water pipes. Get people back to work on useful productive things. Stop teh ability of bankers to make billion dollar gambling losses with the people's productive cash.

'Where is the growth going to come from?'
Growth will come from a stimulation in demand and technological advances that increase productivity and deliver innovation. The time of teh elite's plan for green low growth should be ditched, it is time to help the people and humanity grow and time to end the suffering. Listen to the people, not the low growth elite. socialist, climate enthusiasts with their curbs on growth, technology and capitalist enterprise.

The comparison to WW2 is interesting. For UK had rationing until 1954 and only paid off its war debt in 2006. The length of the cost of the debt, and the time it took to re-establish even food supply shows a shadow over generations.

Pumping in money is expensive (and who could afford to be the backer?), and effect uncertain - post WW2, there was obvious need to rebuild bombed out cities and massive consumer demand to replace domestic items after 5 years of make do and mend. It's simply not the same now. Where is the growth going to come from?

You're right, WetAugust, it's not a socialist projetc - it is an elite project. What has changed is that most of our socialists are now a tiny part of that elite. There was a time when many socialists were against entry, back in the days when Ted Heath and the Tories were for entry. And still today, Arthur Scargill and that type of socialist are against it. But those socialists are a small voice when compared to the Establishment socialists.

See the idiots have finally rolled out the 'big bazooka'.

That should delay the inevitable collapse of the Euro for at least...em... 3 days?

Some people just cannot admit the idea was dopey from the start - we're now in scorched earth territory as this could bring down Germany too (as it will be the prime provider for these 600billion euros that will be going down the plug hole.

Hopefully the parliamentarians of Holland and Germany that will need to ratify this will see sense. The other members that will also need to ratify it would be beneficiaries - so no problems there then.

I agree with you Claig - up to a point. I don't see the UK joining. In fact it's amusing to see the former exponents all backing away from their former stances rather rapidly . As for it being a Socialist experiment - Ted Heath took us in and he knew exactly what the Common Market / EC / EEC/ EU's ultimate aim was.

However as a longstanding, politically active Eurosceptic, it's nice that I'm no longer considered mad / looney /rabid Little Englander

The Eurosceptics were right and so were the climate change sceptics. But the socialists disagreed with them both, and followed their elite masters.

Livingstone, the socialist, seems to have changed his tune. Everybody knew all along that the entire European project was a political project, and the socialists who wanted fiurther integration and our entry into the Euro must have known that very well, when they chatted with their socialist counterparts in the rest of Europe.

The socialists carried out the policies that the elite and the bankers wanted, as they always do.

The Euro was a stepping stone to further political union. Everybody knew that, and that is why the Eurosceptics alone were against it, while the socialists championed it.

The elite want a closer political union; the socialists will do what the elite say, and a closer union is on the way.

Everybody knows that austerity can't work. When Germany was destroyed after the Second World War, the victors didn't impose more austerity and more cuts and more payments to the banks; they created a Marshall Plan to pump in investment and create growth.

When the heat has been turned up sufficiently, when the elite have sent a message and countries forge a closer union, then the heat will be turned down, and the German economic powerhouse will start a programme of investment which will strengthen the entire Eurozone.

Where will it leave us?

We will probably end up joining it in the future. Listen to the socialist, Mandelson. These things are decided above the heads of the socialists by their elite and capitalist banking masters.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mandelson-kicks-off-new-proeuro-campaign-7712259.html