I have it on very good authority - oh, alright then, I guess - that Richard North of EU Referendum gets up at 3.00 a.m. every morning and reads every newspaper in the world before knocking out a couple of blistering blog posts before breakfast! Honestly, I don't know how he does it. Given the name of his blog you will not be surprised to know that most of his posts are on the sorry state of Europe. I gave up on Europe some time ago. Well, I tried, dammit, I tried to make sense of what was happening but, not being an original thinker, I had to rely on the 'experts', much as Richard North does. But today he has done what I did, metaphorically, some time ago which was to throw my hands in the air, shrug and admit that I haven't a clue what's going on. Today, Dr. North likens it to a game of three dimensional chess and with the sort of typical petty larceny for which this blagging blog is (in)famous, I hereby give you his illustration of it:
However, the EU shenanigans are more like a game of three dimensional chess played by several different players all of whom cheat and lie and many of whom believe the game should end in radically different ways. Hence, Dr. North's difficulties in trying - and boy, does he try! - to explain to us all exactly what is going on:
What is becoming very clearly apparent – if it was not already so – is that the eurocrisis is being played out at multiple levels. Only some of those are visible, with by no means all of the players declared.
No one is in possession of the complete facts, those who have some will not necessarily understand them, and some of what is being passed off as fact is actually disinformation – or outright lies. This is very much a case of, if you think you understand what is going on, you haven't been listening. (My emphasis)
He refers to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's latest in The Telegraph in which the different monetary requirements needed to bail out Spain sound like an auction: I have e40bn here - ah, e250bn over there - and now e350bn - but wait, a late estimate just in - e370bn to e450bn! The two main European stability funds, EFSF/ESM, claim they can raise a further e500bn between them in addition to what has been promised to Greece. But what happens when Italy wobbles? The Chinese are not sticking around to find out:
The Chinese issued their own verdict on Thursday. The country's sovereign wealth fund said it will not buy any more debt in Europe until the region takes radical steps to restore credibility. "The risk is too big, and the return too low," said Lou Jiwei, the chairman of the China Investment Corporation.
"Europe hasn't got the right policies in place. There is a risk that the euro zone may fall apart and that risk is rising," he told the Wall Street Journal. The EFSF had hoped to sell yuan `Panda bonds' but this may prove hard.
This decision must have been taken at the very highest levels in the Chinese government because an enormous amount of Chinese trade - and thus jobs and wealth - depends on the European market. Even so, Richard North reminds us that the Chinese are not called 'inscrutable' for nothing so even their 'final' decision might not be the last word! He continues by pointing out the complexities which arise from all the very different pressures being applied in different directions by the 'nation states' inside the euro zone. Added to this, Dr. North bewails the "shoddy reporting" by most of the British MSM:
This tiresome trivialisation is a further element to the three-dimensional chess game. One has to deal not only with events, but with the way they are reported, the reports themselves creating their own reality as people prefer them to the real thing.
The trouble is that when the "real" reality intrudes, it will come as a dreadful shock, accompanied no doubt by squawks of "betrayal" from people who feel they have been misled.
As my title states quite clearly, if a highly intelligent man like Dr. North, who spends most of his days watching every move on this three dimensional chess game, has more or less given up trying to work out what is happening then I am totally unashamed to sum the whole farrago up in the words of a song by The Who (although I'm not too sure who The Who are!)
The song is over
It's all behind me
I should have known it
She tried to find me
This song is over
I'm left with only tears
I must remember
Even if it takes a million years
Unfortunately the memories of most politicians stretch back no further than the previous election - and their vision only reaches as far as the next one!
XX if you think you understand what is going on, you haven't been listening. XX
I only NEED to know one thing, and that is MY fucking tax money, instead of being used to give MY Granny a decent pension, is being used to give scumbag fat, lazy, bastard Greeks the oportunity to retire at 50 after working hard DOING fuck all, all their life.
Whats more to know, besides where the most effective target for a nuke is in Greece?
(Use same explanation and final solution for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or any other sponging bastard country.)
Posted by: Furor Teutonicus | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 14:51
Indeed. Many people seem to find it hard to understand that a billion is ever-so slightly larger than a million, and that a trillion is even slightly bigger than that. They are unwilling or unable to understand the size of the hole into which the €-zone has dug itself.
Whenever some innumerate buffoon starts lobbing the -illions around interchangeably, I usually bring the nonsense to a swift halt with this:
A million seconds is about 12 days.
A billion seconds is about 32 years.
A trillion seconds is, therefore, 32,000 years.
Posted by: Webwrights | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 14:56
Crikey! Teutonic fury from one side and terrifying mathematics from the other. I'm outta here!
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 15:04
"I gave up on Europe some time ago."
Me too. The big picture can be better than analysis when the subject is so complex, so I'm with your first two commenters. Forget chess, the EU is a crock, stuffed with crooks and nutters - what did we expect?
Posted by: A K Haart | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 15:39
The best thing the UK can do is to keep our heads down, agree to nothing and DO nothing. Sooner or later the whole thing will go tango uniform and then we can do lots of things.
Posted by: backofanenvelope | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 18:01
I think, Gentlemen, that between the five of us we have the makings of a cabinet - or better still because it suits my style - a junta!
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 21:06
Personally, I prefer The Song Is Ended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yro1SAbHfQk&feature=related
Posted by: dearieme | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 22:12
The same is true for Blighty's banking system, but the truth (that we've known all along) is finally starting to be formally acknowledged: -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/9321796/UK-and-Europe-languish-in-a-zombie-bank-malaise.html
SoD
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Saturday, 09 June 2012 at 23:33
You are a sweet, old-fashioned thing, DM!
Crikey, SoD, that's grim reading!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 09:51
Poignant, wunnit?
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 11:21
'Twas!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 12:24
By the by, if we are about to plunge into another Great Depression, maybe we should consider the - ah - cultural features of the last one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKZw59lbGUY
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 12:54
Great evocative song but not the best rendition I ever heard. Reminds me of 'One more for the road'.
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 18:14
I don't get up at three ... honest!!! Five, sometimes ... :-)
Posted by: Richard North | Monday, 11 June 2012 at 08:15
If you say so, Richard, but either way your blog is a bracing read every morning for which many thanks.
Posted by: David Duff | Monday, 11 June 2012 at 08:29