It’s easy for Merkel to insist that Italy has to strictly follow EU rules since she doesn’t have to win an Italian election.
The Euro just seems like a complete failure. Giant economies are limping along with 20% unemployment, unable to recover 8 years after the recession. In contrast the US has managed an OK recovery, now closing in on full employment.
The problem is that each EU national leader is accountable only to voters in their own country. When countries have opposite interests there’s no good way for resolving the disagreement.
The only way it could work would be if Europe-wide economic policy were made by the European Parliament so that taxation and bank regulation would be made coherently across the continent by accountable representatives. But voters, probably correctly, want to maintain national control. But that makes the shared currency a noose.
"The Euro just seems like a complete failure. Giant economies are limping along with 20% unemployment, unable to recover 8 years after the recession. In contrast the US has managed an OK recovery, now closing in on full employment."
You are aware that the problem with the EU banking reforms (or lack off) was also that the UK didn't wanted stricter rules with regards of the city of London... ? They even wanted an exemption.
In this regards I find it really intellectual dishonest that over the pound they are pointing fingers to the failure of Europe as they were part of the problem to begin with.
I do hope that from the moment that the UK stops dragging their feet and leave the EU it will be able to make swifter decisions instead of losing energy in constant oppositions.
Full Employment only calculates people who are actively looking for work; anyone else is not part of that calculation.
To make an easier example, if 20 people are in a room, and 9 say "I'm employed", 1 says "I'm looking for work", and the other 10 say "I've been out of work for so long I'm not even looking), then that means:
90% employment (10% unemployment rate); but the labor force participation rate is only 50%.
Add another 5 people people to the mix (people that recently turned 18), and suddenly you have full employment, even if you have 10 of those 25 not looking for work or unable to work.
So to say "The US has an OK recovery and is closing in on Full employment" is an empty saying because you can have statistical full employment and have half of the population not holding a job.
I'm not strongly opinionated on what's wrong with the euro currency, but this is a pretty major issue with the EU generally. There isn't a coherent democratic polity, it's being governed like a trade agreement while acting like much more.
I think Brexit highlighted this big hole. Who spoke for the EU? You'd occasionally see a headshot with a "EU President" title attached to it, which would then be dismissed in favour of the opinion of Merkel or Hollande who didn't even notionally represent the Brttish in any way.
If the EU is to govern so much, it needs a polity that Europeans jointly elect, with representatives that genuinely represent the EU, not local interests. The EU needs a face, parties with cross-border support, democracy, mandate... Even the UN has more of this than the EU. At least it has a face representing it.
I'm not sure this leads to better monetary policy (I don't really believe we confidently know what better monetary policy is), but I do think it's necessary if the EU is going to govern so much.
As a foreign living in Germany I do appreciate the mentality that things "should be done the correct way", but many here don't understand you cannot just change a country's culture by forcing them to strictly follow EU rules.
As it has already been proven by the lumping economies in the southern Europe, people will suffer and everyone will just make use of black market for jobs and goods to survive at any cost or just leave the country thus making it even poorer in available resources to lift it up.
Now Italy is also in the game.
Assuming the Brexit works for the UK, I am just waiting to see who's next.
This is totally wrong. The current unemployment of EU is at 9%. That's the same unemployment rate of 2002-2004 before the "Great Recession" of 2007-2008. Then YES, the EU is recovering, but slowly and not all the country recover well.
We all suffered from the recession, even in Switzerland where we have the less unemployment rate. This was not because of the EU, but because all bank was infected with subprime then this had slow done all the economies, US and EU.
It would already help a lot if the European commission was democratically elected and if the European parliament was given the power to make laws. (It sounds like a joke, but the European parliament cannot propose new laws - even though that's the usual purpose of a parliament. It is the commission that proposes new laws in the EU.)
The problems Europe faces are structural, the same as Japan's. I'm on my phone and in vacation so don't have enough time to comment, but tgat's enough saying that Europe being behind the US has almost nothing to do with the Euro, it's just that the Americans work more (for better or for worse), there's a lot less labor regulation (for better or worse) and that's a totally different spirit present in America (I'm European). Capitalism can only win if it grows, like it does in the States, but the people of Europe have decided that it was time to take a break and start enjoying life for a moment (for better or worse)
What does Merkel got to do with bad risk management and lax lending criteria by Italian banks? I struggle to find a link between your comment and the article.
If you think the US has managed a recovery, I'm afraid you're in denial. The US unemployment picture is horrible, but being masked by official government figures that ignore the people who've given up looking for work, and including people working less than full time at marginal jobs.
> "The only way it could work would be if Europe-wide economic policy were made by the European Parliament so that taxation and bank regulation would be made coherently across the continent by accountable representatives. But voters, probably correctly, want to maintain national control."
There's a plan from the leaders of the EU for creating a Eurozone Treasury by 2025.
"Today, the five Presidents – European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, together with the President of the Euro Summit, Donald Tusk, the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz – have revealed ambitious plans on how to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as of 1 July 2015 and how to complete it by latest 2025. To turn their vision for the future of EMU into reality, they put forward concrete measures to be implemented during three Stages: while some of the actions need to be frontloaded already in the coming years, such as introducing a European Deposit Insurance Scheme, others go further as regards sharing of sovereignty among the Member States that have the euro as their currency, such as creating a future euro area treasury. This is part of the Five Presidents’ vision according to which the focus needs to move beyond rules to institutions in order to guarantee a rock-solid and transparent architecture of EMU. Delivering a Deeper and Fairer Economic and Monetary Union has been one of the top 10 priorities of President Juncker in his Political Guidelines."
"Unsustainable fiscal policies not only endanger price stability in the Union, they also harm financial stability. In the short run (Stage 1), the five Presidents propose the creation of an advisory European Fiscal Board which would coordinate and complement already existing national fiscal councils (see Annex 3). It would provide an independent analysis, at European level, of how budgets perform against the economic objectives set out in the EU fiscal governance framework. In the longer term (Stage 2), a common macroeconomic stabilisation function should be set up to better deal with shocks that cannot be managed at the national level alone. It would improve the cushioning of large macroeconomic shocks and make EMU more resilient. Such a stabilisation function could build on the European Fund for Strategic Investments as a first step, by identifying a pool of financing sources and investment projects specific to the euro area, to be tapped into."
"Finally, while euro area Member States will continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures along national political choices, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy. A future euro area treasury could be the place for such collective decision-making."
The suggested Eurozone Treasury is meant to require changes to EU treaties. The question is, if the Euro continues to cause economic problems in its current form, will governments go along with the creation of a Eurozone Treasury or will they move away from greater economic integration?
The Economist has often badmouthed Italy. The title is way too sensationalist. The comment section also highlights this ethnic bias. I will never forget their insulting cover from years ago: http://static.fanpage.it/socialmediafanpage/wp-content/uploa.... Just clickbaits and provocations.
There's just been three digs at Berlusconi on the NA cover (plus another on the EU cover that wasn't on the NA cover that I'm aware of)--one of which was nothing more than an addition on the bill of bailouts of Eastern Europe saying "Silvio to go (if only)".
In 1998 alone, there are 5 digs at Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Three in 2000 at Bush, and several more over the course of the presidency (to be fair, Bush kinda was an easy target for this sort of stuff)--and they endorsed him. Vladimir Putin has also been a sore point for them (Vlad the Impaler all the way back in 2003? I'd forgotten Putin's been around that long...). The 2008 Super Tuesday issue had Mike Huckabee shaking hands with a pig in a field of mud.
That's not counting the number of world leaders or potential world leaders they hate... which tends to round to about all of them. The Economist doesn't try to represent facts neutrally, but rather finds something to criticize about everything (even things they like, usually because it's not as far as could be gone) to exhort people to do what they think people should be doing.
Sure, Berlusconi has had it a lot, but that's because he's the rare example of a (to them) incompetent leader actually gaining power and keeping it for a long time. If someone like Trump or Le Pen or Farage were to be elected, you'd see equally, possibly more, relentless negative coverage of them. Hell, they're still appalled that Trump actually won the nomination.
They have 20% of the deposit, but they are warranting the money of the financial assets they created.
With lever effect, this account to 50 x more money.
In France, banks systematically do all their possible to block customers to access the money from their life insurance contracts.
There is as much fraud in bank industry in Europa as there is in food industry in USA.
the big problem in Italy are taxes, I pay 38%, but for more than 55k you pay 41%, how politicians pretend Italy can survive? In Switzerland you pay 16%.
38% is the marginal rate; that is, if you earn less than 55k you aren't paying 38%, you pay 38% on income between 28k and 55k. If you do the math, you are paying somewhere between 25% and 31%, probably less because of various returns that you get ("detrazioni").
In fact the actual % is around 35% on 75k euro income, and it doesn't reach 41% until around 200k euro (where the marginal rate is 43%).
In the US, if you earned $50k you'd have a federal income tax around 15%, plus a state income tax (around 5% for California), plus possibly a municipal income tax (around 3% for New York City for example). We're already at 23% and you're getting much worse healthcare than in Italy (even assuming your employer is paying for it, which is not a given) and hardly any retirement plan.
If you're employed the problem is that Italian wages are low (especially in IT), not that taxes are high. Really, taxes in Italy are only high for self-employed people.
... and they do not mean you pay 38% if you're below 55,000. With the tax bands above, you'd pay ~32% if you earn 55,000
That does in fact place Italy quite high, but OECD ranks Italy below Belgium, Austria, Germany and Hungary in overall tax wedge amongst OECD countries [2] (note that if the numbers look surprising, it is because the OECD is ranking based on total tax wedge including employers social security payments, which often seems weird if you're used to comparing based on the contracted salary - these tax rates are not the percentage paid on the salary in your employment contract, but by the sum of your salary and the employers contributions). Looking only at the actual income tax, it'd rank much lower - it's not a particularly high income tax level relative to the average income.
Switzerland is low in proportion in large part because its overall income levels are very high, and it's income from other sources is very high.
The bigger problem in Italy seems to me to be that you have on of the least progressive income systems I've seen, so low earners gets hit particularly hard.
I really doubt you only pay 16 % of taxes in Switzerland. When talking about taxes, especially comparing between countries, you need to be very careful about what you are talking about.
FWIW, income taxes are 40 % for income above ~32k, and the UK are not considered heavily taxed in Europe.
if italy gets into trouble the EU will just force its members to give up more sovereignity so it can deal with the issue. they will go along because only the EU would be strong enough. which is very bad for the populist nationalist exiteers who have been causing so much trouble lately.
well therein lies the problem. they knew they could never sell that to the public so they created a union which explicitly allowed member nations a great deal of autonomy. Part of the BRexit and possible exits of the French and Dutch is because the politicians in Brussels are trying to end run that agreement and impose it.
America had one super super advantage, it started out by rebelling against one nation and winning. Then the second advantage Europe never had made it easier to stick together, it has a common language. It also does not have hundreds of years of brutal wars between member states that Europe has experienced and experienced within just a few generations.
So unless they really can convince countries to cede the majority of their sovereignty and go to the routes of states in the US there will always be strife and situations like this.
I will say, the current restrictions and such they do have run contrary to allowing for any individual nation getting out of trouble without a lot help
Oh noes a bank is in trouble? Well not to worry, tax payers will gladly bail it out, while the bankers collect their bonuses and leave "for the next big challenge". Fuck I love banking.
You're beef should be with government (crony-capitalism), not banking. A bank can't force you to bail it out, only government can do that. The "force" 100% resides with the government, not the bank.
Two lessons: US banks are much better capitalised in the eyes of the market, and it is Deutsche Bank, not any Italian bank, which appears to be the biggest risk to European (and global) banking systems. It has a balance sheet of 1.6 trillion, supported by a market equity valuation of only 16 billion. Deutsche also has a reported 55 trillion notional of derivatives exposure.
Sources: Yahoo finance for assets as of 2015, Bloomberg terminal for latest valuation.
I am really amazed and frighten everytime I read anything about politics - economics on HN.
So we see all this BS about "work less", "meditation", "how trees calm us down", etc. but in fact when you do read across the lines you only see a crowd of hypsters totally obsessed with economics, money-money-money, free market, productivity, basicaly : materialism as the holy grail.
Allo ? Is there any European in these comments ?
I mean, we all know the USA where a European colony from the XVI century, but the country as it is today seems to be born only 250 years ago, and maybe more acurately with the secession war and the yankees take over. That my friend is just nothing, dust in the wind, in the scale of history.
So we have this bunch of unsocializes nerds IT guys asking for every European nation to give up their own culture and souveirgnty for a centralized Federal State, certainly in the model of the glorious USA, and if possible infeodated to it. What's the next move, maybe get rid of any state currency to go all the way with bs bitcoins ?
France was born in 496 when Clovis was baptized as a catholic. Our history and culture is not about cars, movies, fast foods and Wall Street. Just come and visit to check it out and learn a few things about the history of the world.
There is more than Banking and Wall street and metrics and GDP in life. Actually, let me correct this, these are all the things which are actually not Life. So just respect the right of a nation to exists as it is and to give to her childrend what her parents gave her since centuries.
So Brexit is all in the rage now, great, the world is collapsing, maybe Germany will engage war with UK and laucnh a bunch of V2, who knows ? Bullshit. UK will go fine walking away, much better in fact that France and Germany are right now, our corrupted politics just fear that all the nations figures that sooner or later and ask to leave EU asap.
LET ME REMIND ALL THE HN READERS OF SOMETHING RIGHT NOW : Brexit is no a unique event, some want not to remember that France, Netherlands and Ireland had their own "Brexit" moments and the EU did denied the rights of these people to leave. I urge you to refer to the 2005 french referendum about the EU constitution, who was rejected by the french people, just to have it passed a few month later by the parliament denying any direct democratic right to the nation. That went also in the Netherlands. And they made people of Ireland vote twice, just till they vote what they wanted them to.
Please, do not make Europe another heartless Silicon Bullshit Valley with absolutely no history except the atrocious gold rush and the infamous tech boom. Facebook is not history, let us keep Pascal and Academie Française in lieu of Snapchat and Tinder, if you please, in the name of the french people.
It's all hearsay...but, an inlaw (wife's uncle) who passed recently had a lot to say about his native greece, the work ethic, and why he decided to stay in Germany (he and his wife did have a place in Greece).
Those stories over the years dovetailed almost word for word with former colleagues who actually moved to Milan and other places in Italy to work.
Personally, the US approach to work is kinda backward as are other areas, balance should be most important. But, the article and stories I've heard over the last 10 years just ring a bit. I know this is about banks, but the larger culture is at play -- just like in the US, Enron, Lehman, etc. were extremes of those values we espouse.
Be aware: the above links point to press releases from the Citizen's Electoral Council - this is the most batshit insane political party I am aware of in Australia.
You don't get to print and distribute pamphlets talking about lizard people running the world and then get to be taken seriously.
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
The Euro just seems like a complete failure. Giant economies are limping along with 20% unemployment, unable to recover 8 years after the recession. In contrast the US has managed an OK recovery, now closing in on full employment.
The problem is that each EU national leader is accountable only to voters in their own country. When countries have opposite interests there’s no good way for resolving the disagreement.
The only way it could work would be if Europe-wide economic policy were made by the European Parliament so that taxation and bank regulation would be made coherently across the continent by accountable representatives. But voters, probably correctly, want to maintain national control. But that makes the shared currency a noose.
[+] [-] glenndebacker|9 years ago|reply
You are aware that the problem with the EU banking reforms (or lack off) was also that the UK didn't wanted stricter rules with regards of the city of London... ? They even wanted an exemption.
In this regards I find it really intellectual dishonest that over the pound they are pointing fingers to the failure of Europe as they were part of the problem to begin with.
I do hope that from the moment that the UK stops dragging their feet and leave the EU it will be able to make swifter decisions instead of losing energy in constant oppositions.
[+] [-] gortok|9 years ago|reply
January 2008 Labor Participation Rate: 66.2% July 2016 Labor Participation Rate: 62.7%
62.7% participation means 94 Million Americans are not working. (Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/labor-force-...)
Full Employment only calculates people who are actively looking for work; anyone else is not part of that calculation.
To make an easier example, if 20 people are in a room, and 9 say "I'm employed", 1 says "I'm looking for work", and the other 10 say "I've been out of work for so long I'm not even looking), then that means:
90% employment (10% unemployment rate); but the labor force participation rate is only 50%.
Add another 5 people people to the mix (people that recently turned 18), and suddenly you have full employment, even if you have 10 of those 25 not looking for work or unable to work.
So to say "The US has an OK recovery and is closing in on Full employment" is an empty saying because you can have statistical full employment and have half of the population not holding a job.
[+] [-] netcan|9 years ago|reply
I think Brexit highlighted this big hole. Who spoke for the EU? You'd occasionally see a headshot with a "EU President" title attached to it, which would then be dismissed in favour of the opinion of Merkel or Hollande who didn't even notionally represent the Brttish in any way.
If the EU is to govern so much, it needs a polity that Europeans jointly elect, with representatives that genuinely represent the EU, not local interests. The EU needs a face, parties with cross-border support, democracy, mandate... Even the UN has more of this than the EU. At least it has a face representing it.
I'm not sure this leads to better monetary policy (I don't really believe we confidently know what better monetary policy is), but I do think it's necessary if the EU is going to govern so much.
[+] [-] pjmlp|9 years ago|reply
As it has already been proven by the lumping economies in the southern Europe, people will suffer and everyone will just make use of black market for jobs and goods to survive at any cost or just leave the country thus making it even poorer in available resources to lift it up.
Now Italy is also in the game.
Assuming the Brexit works for the UK, I am just waiting to see who's next.
[+] [-] madshiva|9 years ago|reply
We all suffered from the recession, even in Switzerland where we have the less unemployment rate. This was not because of the EU, but because all bank was infected with subprime then this had slow done all the economies, US and EU.
[+] [-] Hermel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|9 years ago|reply
It certainly is a issue that those countries can't devalue their currency anymore, but devaluing is not a miracle cure.
[+] [-] cpr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|9 years ago|reply
There's a plan from the leaders of the EU for creating a Eurozone Treasury by 2025.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5240_en.htm
"Today, the five Presidents – European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, together with the President of the Euro Summit, Donald Tusk, the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz – have revealed ambitious plans on how to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as of 1 July 2015 and how to complete it by latest 2025. To turn their vision for the future of EMU into reality, they put forward concrete measures to be implemented during three Stages: while some of the actions need to be frontloaded already in the coming years, such as introducing a European Deposit Insurance Scheme, others go further as regards sharing of sovereignty among the Member States that have the euro as their currency, such as creating a future euro area treasury. This is part of the Five Presidents’ vision according to which the focus needs to move beyond rules to institutions in order to guarantee a rock-solid and transparent architecture of EMU. Delivering a Deeper and Fairer Economic and Monetary Union has been one of the top 10 priorities of President Juncker in his Political Guidelines."
"Unsustainable fiscal policies not only endanger price stability in the Union, they also harm financial stability. In the short run (Stage 1), the five Presidents propose the creation of an advisory European Fiscal Board which would coordinate and complement already existing national fiscal councils (see Annex 3). It would provide an independent analysis, at European level, of how budgets perform against the economic objectives set out in the EU fiscal governance framework. In the longer term (Stage 2), a common macroeconomic stabilisation function should be set up to better deal with shocks that cannot be managed at the national level alone. It would improve the cushioning of large macroeconomic shocks and make EMU more resilient. Such a stabilisation function could build on the European Fund for Strategic Investments as a first step, by identifying a pool of financing sources and investment projects specific to the euro area, to be tapped into."
"Finally, while euro area Member States will continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures along national political choices, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy. A future euro area treasury could be the place for such collective decision-making."
The suggested Eurozone Treasury is meant to require changes to EU treaties. The question is, if the Euro continues to cause economic problems in its current form, will governments go along with the creation of a Eurozone Treasury or will they move away from greater economic integration?
[+] [-] wahsd|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Red_Tarsius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcranmer|9 years ago|reply
In 1998 alone, there are 5 digs at Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Three in 2000 at Bush, and several more over the course of the presidency (to be fair, Bush kinda was an easy target for this sort of stuff)--and they endorsed him. Vladimir Putin has also been a sore point for them (Vlad the Impaler all the way back in 2003? I'd forgotten Putin's been around that long...). The 2008 Super Tuesday issue had Mike Huckabee shaking hands with a pig in a field of mud.
That's not counting the number of world leaders or potential world leaders they hate... which tends to round to about all of them. The Economist doesn't try to represent facts neutrally, but rather finds something to criticize about everything (even things they like, usually because it's not as far as could be gone) to exhort people to do what they think people should be doing.
Sure, Berlusconi has had it a lot, but that's because he's the rare example of a (to them) incompetent leader actually gaining power and keeping it for a long time. If someone like Trump or Le Pen or Farage were to be elected, you'd see equally, possibly more, relentless negative coverage of them. Hell, they're still appalled that Trump actually won the nomination.
[+] [-] davidw|9 years ago|reply
Having lived most of the past 15 years in Italy, I think a lot of the criticism is justified.
[+] [-] diego_moita|9 years ago|reply
They've done that to a lot of British & American politicians.
They've been harder on Trump than they were on Berlusconi. And face it, both Berlusconi and Grillo were professional "pagliacci".
[+] [-] leoc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sremani|9 years ago|reply
Here is one of them. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/italy-and-systemic-failure/
[+] [-] jomamaxx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielvf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SFJulie|9 years ago|reply
In France, banks systematically do all their possible to block customers to access the money from their life insurance contracts.
There is as much fraud in bank industry in Europa as there is in food industry in USA.
[+] [-] djschnei|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fibo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonzini|9 years ago|reply
In fact the actual % is around 35% on 75k euro income, and it doesn't reach 41% until around 200k euro (where the marginal rate is 43%).
In the US, if you earned $50k you'd have a federal income tax around 15%, plus a state income tax (around 5% for California), plus possibly a municipal income tax (around 3% for New York City for example). We're already at 23% and you're getting much worse healthcare than in Italy (even assuming your employer is paying for it, which is not a given) and hardly any retirement plan.
If you're employed the problem is that Italian wages are low (especially in IT), not that taxes are high. Really, taxes in Italy are only high for self-employed people.
[+] [-] vidarh|9 years ago|reply
Because according to this [1] HSBC advice, these were the tax bands in force from 2013:
2013 National Income Tax Rates Taxable Income Band € National Income Tax Rates
... and they do not mean you pay 38% if you're below 55,000. With the tax bands above, you'd pay ~32% if you earn 55,000That does in fact place Italy quite high, but OECD ranks Italy below Belgium, Austria, Germany and Hungary in overall tax wedge amongst OECD countries [2] (note that if the numbers look surprising, it is because the OECD is ranking based on total tax wedge including employers social security payments, which often seems weird if you're used to comparing based on the contracted salary - these tax rates are not the percentage paid on the salary in your employment contract, but by the sum of your salary and the employers contributions). Looking only at the actual income tax, it'd rank much lower - it's not a particularly high income tax level relative to the average income.
Switzerland is low in proportion in large part because its overall income levels are very high, and it's income from other sources is very high.
The bigger problem in Italy seems to me to be that you have on of the least progressive income systems I've seen, so low earners gets hit particularly hard.
[1] http://www.expat.hsbc.com/1/PA_ES_Content_Mgmt/content/hsbc_...
[2] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...
[+] [-] cdavid|9 years ago|reply
FWIW, income taxes are 40 % for income above ~32k, and the UK are not considered heavily taxed in Europe.
[+] [-] mobiuscog|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpkeisala|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrNuke|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timwaagh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|9 years ago|reply
America had one super super advantage, it started out by rebelling against one nation and winning. Then the second advantage Europe never had made it easier to stick together, it has a common language. It also does not have hundreds of years of brutal wars between member states that Europe has experienced and experienced within just a few generations.
So unless they really can convince countries to cede the majority of their sovereignty and go to the routes of states in the US there will always be strife and situations like this.
I will say, the current restrictions and such they do have run contrary to allowing for any individual nation getting out of trouble without a lot help
[+] [-] ensiferum|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djschnei|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vegabook|9 years ago|reply
Sources: Yahoo finance for assets as of 2015, Bloomberg terminal for latest valuation.
[+] [-] gg97|9 years ago|reply
So we see all this BS about "work less", "meditation", "how trees calm us down", etc. but in fact when you do read across the lines you only see a crowd of hypsters totally obsessed with economics, money-money-money, free market, productivity, basicaly : materialism as the holy grail.
Allo ? Is there any European in these comments ? I mean, we all know the USA where a European colony from the XVI century, but the country as it is today seems to be born only 250 years ago, and maybe more acurately with the secession war and the yankees take over. That my friend is just nothing, dust in the wind, in the scale of history.
So we have this bunch of unsocializes nerds IT guys asking for every European nation to give up their own culture and souveirgnty for a centralized Federal State, certainly in the model of the glorious USA, and if possible infeodated to it. What's the next move, maybe get rid of any state currency to go all the way with bs bitcoins ?
France was born in 496 when Clovis was baptized as a catholic. Our history and culture is not about cars, movies, fast foods and Wall Street. Just come and visit to check it out and learn a few things about the history of the world.
There is more than Banking and Wall street and metrics and GDP in life. Actually, let me correct this, these are all the things which are actually not Life. So just respect the right of a nation to exists as it is and to give to her childrend what her parents gave her since centuries.
So Brexit is all in the rage now, great, the world is collapsing, maybe Germany will engage war with UK and laucnh a bunch of V2, who knows ? Bullshit. UK will go fine walking away, much better in fact that France and Germany are right now, our corrupted politics just fear that all the nations figures that sooner or later and ask to leave EU asap.
LET ME REMIND ALL THE HN READERS OF SOMETHING RIGHT NOW : Brexit is no a unique event, some want not to remember that France, Netherlands and Ireland had their own "Brexit" moments and the EU did denied the rights of these people to leave. I urge you to refer to the 2005 french referendum about the EU constitution, who was rejected by the french people, just to have it passed a few month later by the parliament denying any direct democratic right to the nation. That went also in the Netherlands. And they made people of Ireland vote twice, just till they vote what they wanted them to.
Please, do not make Europe another heartless Silicon Bullshit Valley with absolutely no history except the atrocious gold rush and the infamous tech boom. Facebook is not history, let us keep Pascal and Academie Française in lieu of Snapchat and Tinder, if you please, in the name of the french people.
I said.
[+] [-] known|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s17tnet|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|9 years ago|reply
Those stories over the years dovetailed almost word for word with former colleagues who actually moved to Milan and other places in Italy to work.
Personally, the US approach to work is kinda backward as are other areas, balance should be most important. But, the article and stories I've heard over the last 10 years just ring a bit. I know this is about banks, but the larger culture is at play -- just like in the US, Enron, Lehman, etc. were extremes of those values we espouse.
[+] [-] basicplus2|9 years ago|reply
America - Gone
EU - Gone
Canada - Gone
New Zealand - Gone
Australia - nearly gone - Turnbull was head of Goldman Sachs in Australia.
All thanks to Goldman Sachs etc
http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2014_03_20_Treasury_Bail_In.h...
http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2015_11_27_G20_Accepts_Bailin...
http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2016_01_06_EU_bail_in.html
http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2016_03_22_Bail_In_PR.html
[+] [-] shoo|9 years ago|reply
You don't get to print and distribute pamphlets talking about lizard people running the world and then get to be taken seriously.
[+] [-] smcl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] velodrome|9 years ago|reply
The movement of personnel between roles as legislators and regulators and the industries affected by the legislation and regulation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
[+] [-] pjc50|9 years ago|reply
Not true. Even on the one occasion this did happen, Cyprus, the bail-in only applied to value above €150k, hardly the ordinary depositor.