Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The Dutch Freedom Party has called for a return to the Guilder, becoming the first political movement in the eurozone with a large popular base to opt for withdrawal from the single currency.

Dutch Freedom Party pushes euro exit as €2.4 trillion rescue bill looms,
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 9:50PM GMT 05 Mar 2012, Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9124815/Dutch-Freedom...

Spanish revolt brews as national economic rearmament begins in Europe
Spain's new prime minister has looked into the abyss and recoiled.

"My guess is that Germany's refusal to countenance any form of EU subsidies, debt-pooling, or fiscal union -- other than policing the budgets of captive states -- has definitively broken the EMU spell. Latin nations by increasingly regard talk euro of solidarity as humbug. It has been a nasty shock. The era of national economic rearmament in Europe has begun"

Enough is enough. Please stop defaming Germany out there in the blogosphere.
The Germans are not engaged in a mercantilist conspiracy to subjugate and milk southern Europe. They are not conducting “warfare by other means”, or heaven forbid, trying to establish a Fourth Reich.

Germany is the ultimate victim of EMU
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard , December 2nd, 2011, Telegraph

"Northern League leader Umberto Bossi threatened to set off “revolution” if money is taken from pensioners to bail out Rome, a reminder his party began life calling for an independent state of “Padania” in the North.

The skirmishes came as president Giorgio Napolitano summoned key party leaders for urgent talks and hinted at the drastic step of appointing a salvation government.
“The country is in danger,” said Emma Marcegaglia, head of the business lobby Confindustria. “If the government is not able to agree on reforms tonight, the implications are self-evident.”

Optimism over Europe’s "grand plan" to shore up EMU was widely said to be the cause of yesterday’s torrid rally on global markets, lifting the CAC, DAX, Dow, crude and copper altogether.
This is interesting, since Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has given an iron-clad assurance to the Bundestag that no such plan exists and that Germany will not support any attempt to "leverage" the EU’s €440bn bail-out plan to €2 trillion, or any other sum. ...

The dangerous subversion of Germany democracy
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, September 28th, 2011

"The euro should not exist," said Stephane Deo from UBS. It creates more costs than benefits for the weak. Its "dysfunctional nature" was disguised by a credit bubble. The error is now "painfully obvious".

My solution - like that of Hans-Olaf Henkel, the ex-head of Germany's industry federation (BDI) - is to split EMU into two blocs, with France leading a Latin Union that keeps the euro. This bloc would devalue but not by 60pc, yet uphold its euro debts intact. The risk of default and banking crises would decrease, not increase.

Now we know where the tipping point lies. Debt becomes poisonous once it reaches 80pc to 100pc of GDP for governments, 90pc of GDP for companies, and 85pc of GDP for households. From then on, extra debt chokes growth.

Stephen Cecchetti and his team at the Bank for International Settlements have written the definitive paper rebutting the pied pipers of ever-escalating credit. “The debt problems facing advanced economies are even worse than we thought.”

For fifty years Germany has invariably stumped up the money required to keep Europe’s Project on track, responding to unreasonable demands with grace and generosity.

It is clear the German public is in no mood for any such formula. A YouGov poll shows 59pc of Germans oppose all further bail-outs. The majority want to see Greece expelled from the euro and 44pc want Germany to withdraw from EMU.

"Given the rising euroscepticism in the population, it is too politically dangerous to toy with the explosive subject of eurobonds." 


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
7:58PM BST 15 Aug 2011