The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

From www.german-foreign-policy.com Newsletter, 12 May 2010 .

BERLIN: Following the passage of the 750 billion Euro bailout package, the debate on Germany’s leaving the EU monetary union has become more intense. Business representatives confirm that German industry, which exports heavily to other countries within the Euro zone, has up to now greatly benefited [...]

The financier and businessman Emmett O’Connell, formerly of Aminex and Eglinton Oil and still successfully engaged in the international mining business, has long held the view that abolishing the Irish pound and joining the eurozone was the biggest policy error ever made by the Irish State. The Greek crisis and its drastic implications for the [...]

On Monday May 3rd, the Irish Times carried an article by Nobel Economics Prizewinner Paul Krugman on “The Euro Trap”. Its main contention was that the euro-realists and euro-sceptics who had warned against the dangers of abolishing national currencies to form an EU currency union were being proved right by current events.
The austerity [...]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7591027/Greek-aid-in-doubt-as-German-professors-prepare-court-challenge.html
Greek aid in doubt as German professors prepare court challenge
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Daily Telegraph
15 Apr 2010
A quartet of German professors is to preparing to challenge the EU-IMF rescue for Greece at Germany’s constitutional court as soon as the mechanism is activated, claiming that it violates the ‘no-bail-out’ clause of the EU Treaties.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/461663a0-5613-11df-b835-00144feab49a.html
Europe’s choice is to integrate [...]

The article below from the Financial Times points to the lack of public debate across the EU on the real implications of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty’s proposal to abolish national currencies and replace them with the euro.
In Ireland’s 1992 referendum on the Maastricht Treaty the main thrust of public debate was [...]

This is going to be the most important week in the 11-year history of the euro-currency, according to Financial Times associate editor Wolfgang Munchau in the article below.
A Greek default on its debts now looks virtually inevitable, the only question being when.
The Irish Government has agreed to contribute €480 million to the joint [...]

Ghosts of debt and jobs will haunt economy
The Irish Times - Tuesday, December 29, 2009
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1229/1224261354227.html
Morgan Kelly
OPINION : By 2015, Iceland will almost certainly be a lot better off than Ireland because it dealt decisively with its banks.
For grand corruption, though, we will have to look to Nama. By allowing the banks to dictate the terms [...]

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.