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

[Hamishbear]

Posted on Chat but felt this may be a better place.

So, the bailouts can't continue indefinitely, what happens next?

What's the best case scenario and how will it affect us in the short term and long term?

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

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?

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.

Claig, you say we do have money, I'd argue we don't - it's all imagination, monopoly money, fairy dust. What happens when people realise, that's the question? See the below:

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.

Thanks Claig - interested on your take on clip posted above when time. Thanks again

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.

The Eurozone will not collapse, because it is an elite project. They didn't create this European Union in order to see it collapse. Even Cameron and Osborne are calling for a closer union for the Eurozone, and there are unlikely to be any referendums in case the public vote the wrong way. The elite will make the Euro even stronger, after they have got countries to hand over more of their national sovereignty. The elite are not at the mercy of events or the mercy of the "markets"; it is the people who are at the mercy of the "markets".

The elite are steering the ship; they are on course for a closer fiscal union and a closer political union. They created the "perfect" storm and when they have got what they want, they will create calm and the Euro will end up stronger. The elite's money and livelihood is not at any risk, it is just the poor old public's money that is.

niceguy2, our capitalists created the factories in the Far East, where the goods are made which we then buy. They took our jobs and exported them overseas. It is part of the globalisation plan.

The green, globalisation plan is to impoverish our own people, to shut our own factories, coal mines, steel plants and shipbuilding capacity and replace them with a "service sector", such as our "financial sector". It is a plan to create low growth for the public, in order to impede the public's growth. It is a plan to even out living standards across the world, to transfer wealth from rich countries like Germany to poorer countries like Greece, in elite created political unions that control hundreds of millions of people from one central point.

The elite are green, they want low growth. They don't want the public to continue their population explosion and good living and growth. They want austerity, to slow the masses down. They want a high life, but only for them, not for us. Some of them don't even know how much pension our old people get. They increase old people's heating bills with their "green" carbon taxes and think the old age pensioners can make do on £30 pensions.

They call the wealth transfer form the rich countries to the poor countries "fair". They want to charge the rich, insustrialising countries green "carbon taxes" because they say that these countries are "harming the planet", and they give carbon credits to the poor countries, who are not industrialising. They want a stop to industrialisation and development. They say that is not "green". They want a stop to the progress of the people, and they call themselves "progressives".

They say the wealth transfer is "fair". But they won't be transferring any of their wealth. It will just be the workers in the developed world who will be doing all the transferring under the green carbon tax plans.

It must be really hard for you Claig when you look around and everywhere you see a conspiracy.

It's not hard at all. That is the real world. It is how it has always been and always will be. The people are not in control. They are against the banker bailouts, against the carbon taxes, against the austerity. The Greek and Spanish people march in their millions to express their disapproval. Some even vote in extremist parties in disgust. But the people aren't in control. The same old Establishment coterie of ex-bankers and ex-public school boys are still in charge.

The elite are in control, just like in Roman times, the patricians rule the plebeians.

Claig, please describe the world, as you see it, for a CEO banker (but hired gun) in 20 years and say, someone who earns 30k a year in admin. Both have 2 young children. I am interested as to how you see things playing out in real terms and an analogy I can understand (just me being a bit dim and not economically minded rather than your explanations).

Its interesting watching BBC. I was on holiday recently and saw a program on BBC News which was in the same vein as this thread; more of a when it will happen rather than if.
I don't watch BBC normally as I'm in Ireland and only watch Irish news. (Although many people do have BBC!).
In Ireland its not doom-mongering at all about the future of the Euro.
I'm not saying one is more accurate than the other in predicting the outcome, but its interesting how the peception in one country is completely different in another.

The unelected EU leaders will stop at nothing to keep this failed project going. In the meantime they will watch the entire EU become bankrupt. Germany wants assets (ie gold) and in order to get them it will keep on lending non-existent moneyto countries that can never pay it back. Then Germany can seize assets instead.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9298180/Europes-debtors-must-pawn-their-gold-for-Eurobond-Redemption.html

Hopefully, things will collapse sooner rather than later. Meanwhile on a daily basis, we are becoming poorer and our freedom is being slowly taken away. Sadly, I think our dcs will have a very different life to the one people of my generation enjoyed. The cuts have barely begun.

The BBC has an obvious pro-EU bias and deflects attention towards Syria at every opportunity. Try watching Russia Today news. Bet we dont see this on the Beeb.
www.rt.com/news/spain-miner-bazooka-protest-256/

I think civil unrest and starvation are on the horizon. Here and in the rest of the EU.

When the EU does collapse, we will have 20 years or so of massive pain and struggle to rebuild our economy. Its a cycle.

I follow a few blogs from supposed experts. Put simply, moving away from the Euro situation for a moment, there's a big problem with indebtedness. America is the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world etc. I'm no rocket scientist but does it not stand to reason we are coming to crunch time? We can't go on printing money, we can't go on as the media are so fond of saying 'kicking the can down the road'.

For what it's worth, I think we are heading towards the biggest recession we've ever known. A dip followed by a depression if you like. I think we've been burying our heads i the sand. Even what many would consider the very well off are going to be affected. Only the top 1% may not be.

On the plus side I don't think it will be the 'end of the world as we know it', I think it will be a time of terrible turbulence, rioting as we've never seen before in the UK and elsewhere. Then I see things getting better again, how I am not sure. I see the West developing a real work ethic as people realise the only way their children can be competitive on a global stage is by being keen, hungry, intellectually interested. A move away from the 'bread and circuses' the British public have been dining out on for so long. I see a return to family values and what's truly important, a move away from celebrity culture, materialism and excess.

If I am way off beat please explain one thing, how can this indebtedness continue?

Good point, SuperSesame. The BBC is the elite broadcasting channel. It spreads doom and gloom because this enables more talk of austerity and cuts. The BBC is also green and broadcasts lots of climate catstrophe programmes with vanishing ice caps and pictures of ploar bears.

The BBC also broadcast the recent over-hyped scare story about racism in Poland and Ukraine and had Sol Campbell saying something like some people might "end up in coffins" if they went to the Euros. Channel 4 yesterday interviewed Africans living in Ukriane, who said they had been to lots of matches and never had any problem. One English black person who went to watch the Euros said he felt sorry for the Ukrainian people who had been unfairly tarred with this brush, and the football commentator, Stan Collymore, said he had travelled by train across the Ukraone and expereinced no racism at all; people had shown him into their homes and had gone out of their way to be helpful.

Doom and gllom and scaremongering are the stock-in-trade of the elite. They use these tactics to control the masses.

Yes, I think the elite have got very tough times planned for teh ordinary people, in order to prevent their progress.

Under teh progressives, social mobility declined even more than under Thatcher, and it will decline much more. They are making access to education more expensive and more difficult. They are putting ordinary people into huge debt for things that once were their right. They will give us much more gren taxes, even when teh green con is shown to be a scam. They will meter our water, and the poor will pay for every drop. They will increase fuel bills and water bills and they will create recycling refuse bills. They will tax and tax and squeeze and squeeze the poor and the middle. They will put them further into debt, to hold them back from progressing. They will close more factories, move more jobs abroad, and they will increase workfare and internships and blame the feckless poor.

Just like the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, said that she had less sympathy with the suffering Greek people than with Africans, our elite will have little sympathy for us.

The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and the middle will be squeezed and get poorer too.

We will be called "job snobs" and some will think our pensions are £30 a week, and they will think that even that is too much.

The Governor of the Bank of England said we will have have 10 hard years. I think the elite may want that to last longer.

The elite will ahve no sympathy, just contempt. Those of us lucky enough to have a job will be increasingly taxed. 10 years is optimistic, more like 20 years IMHO.

Got to work now but really glad to see this being discussed on here . Its important but most people I know seem to have a head in the sand approach (I know bread and circuses is over-used but it is also very true).

Good point, kissmyheatheass, about bread and circuses.

And now we have the Olympics, so everything is alright.

So, kissmheathenass and Claig etc the question is if you think a deep recession will last 10 or 20 years when do you think it will really begin to kick in? Next year? When will people begin to realise the true gravity of the situation?

I think the recession is artificial, created by this financial speculative boom, for which the regulation was 'light touch'. I think the heat is being turned up on countries like Greece and Spain. But, I think that the elite will eventually turn the heat down. I think we will then see a return to growth. So, it could be that cuts and budget cuts are implemented, and then we begin to return to a low level of growth. But the austerity policies such as longer working life, lower pensions, cust in benefits etc. have been implemented by the elites all over Europe, so that these can no longer be reversed by the public. After that, we are likely to see more green taxes and carbon measures and power and water metering to keep the public paying more.

Once a closer political union has been achieved and cuts in workers' rights have been achieved, I think we may see a return to growth, and may avoid a deep recession or depression. It all depends how far the elite want to go in removing people's rights and reducing their living standards.

I think the fact that Hollande is talking about growth is a sign that the mood is changing and Europe will be allowed to grow again. It is only a matter of time before Merkel or the next German leader agrees. The poker bluff against Greece and Spain and Italy etc. will then have been won, deep cuts, forced privatisations etc. and reduced workers' rights will have been completed, and the EU will then be able to take its foot off the brake on growth and allow the people to breathe again.

The debt is a way to keep peoples and countries in line. Once they do as wished, then all of these problems will begin to disappear as more money is pulled out of hats and from up sleeves and the "markets" do as they are told.

It's all so depressing and scary . Especially if like me, the whole financial structure of the markets/politics are impossible to understand.
A few months ago I heard an economist on the radio saying that there would be war in Europe within 10/20 years if the Euro went and politics became even more polarized.
When I listen to political commentators and economists putting their differing points across, it frightens me even more, everybody is sure that their way is the right and only way to end this, but the views are so different and nobody agrees on any one point.
All politicians look hopelessly incompetent, wafting around the World from crisis meeting to crisis meeting, whilst nothing happens. I don't see this crisis/depression ending at any time in the near future.

Claig, hat sounds more optimistic on a micro level (for the individual) than the way I see things playing out. Every few years we have a recession, the recession in 2007-8 was bad because there was so much debt, there will be another recession in 2013-14 and debt is up to the ceiling so surely it will be far worse?