The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

EUROFACTS … 30 November 2009
LISBON TREATY COMES INTO FORCE TODAY, TUESDAY
The Lisbon Treaty, which has 99% the same legal effect as the EU Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, comes into force on tomorrow, 1 December.
The European Union Act 2009 was published at the end of October. This Act implements [...]

Is America the new Russia?
☞ The Financial Times
By Martin Wolf

☞ Ruminations on banking
ft.com/maverecon
Professor Willem Buiter
The auto-da-fé of the unsecured creditors is coming to a US bank near you…
Too big to fail means too big…
The repatriation of cross-border banking…

Below for your information are some points relevant to Ireland’s current Banking crisis and Finance Minister Lenihan’s proposed NAMA “bad bank” scheme which are excerpted from an article by Willem Buiter, Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics. The full article, dated yesterday, 8 April, titled “The green shoots are weeds growing [...]

The Banking Crisis: Set up temporary “good” State Banks to lend to businesses and households and let the existing insolvent Irish Banks go bust
The present policy of Ireland’s mainstream politicians will lead to economic bankruptcy to be followed by political bankruptcy
The Irish Banks are fundamentally insolvent without continual infusions of Irish taxpayers’ money.

Two similar articles from newspapers on the political Right and Left forwarded for your information by Anthony Coughlan:
TELEGRAPH
Tuesday 24.2.09
ECB faces mutiny from national bank governors as recession deepens
- The European Central Bank is capitulating.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
For months the ECB held sternly to the high ground of orthodoxy as the US, Japanese, British, Canadian, [...]

DAILY TELEGRAPH
Monday 23.2.08
If Der Spiegel is correct, the German finance ministry is drafting rescue plans to prevent default on the edges of the eurozone leading to a full-blown collapse of Europe’s monetary system.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
This is an entirely appropriate policy in economic terms. One dreads to think what would happen if the world’s twin reserve [...]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/4285331/Help-Ireland-or-it-will-exit-euro-economist-warns.html
Daily Telegraph
Help Ireland or it will exit euro, economist warns
A leading Irish economist has called on Dublin to threaten withdrawal from the euro unless Europe’s big powers do more to rescue Ireland’s economy.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
19 Jan 2009
David McWilliams, a former official at the Irish central bank, has said that Ireland could withdraw from the euro [...]

(1.)
http://newsweaver.ie/bloxhamresearch/e_article001314795.cfm?x=bf0GvBb,bcgrvNVl
Bloxham Morning Note
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Company/Economic News
Strategy – Lex pointing out Ireland’s weakness
The weakness of Euro membership for Ireland is highlighted into today’s Lex column. With the UK doing what is needed to adjust to the new economic reality and devaluing its currency, Ireland is unable to devalue its currency to restore competitiveness. Therefore [...]

LISBON - NOT JUST ANOTHER EU TREATY

Below are the two key sentences of the amendment which you will be asked to put into the Irish Constitution on Thursday 12 June. If people vote Yes they will be giving the European Union the constitutional form of a Federal EU State, in which Ireland would [...]

HOW THE LISBON TREATY WILL AFFECT…
YOUR PAY
1. Lisbon will copperfasten the December 2007 Laval/Vaxholm judgement of the EU Court of Justice, which makes it illegal for Governments or Trade Unions to enforce pay standards higher than the minimum wage for migrant workers. At the same time Lisbon would give the EU full control of immigration [...]

WHAT THE TREATY OF LISBON WOULD DO
“France was just ahead of all the other countries in voting No. It would happen in all Member States
if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between people and governments…There will be
no Treaty if we had a referendum in France, which would again be followed [...]