Black Swans and What Should Happen Next?
June 29, 2016
Ireland was the only member state to hold referendums on The Treaty eventually passed as Treaty of Lisbon in October 2009. Already post Brexit there are calls for greater political union in Europe I’m guessing aimed at removal of Article 50 removing the means for member states to withdraw:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/28/the-brexit-and-article-50-cnbc-explains.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-eighth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
Given the appalling way Ireland was saddled with no debt write down or debt sharing of Ireland’s bill for financial collapse carrying 42% of European financial losses that otherwise would have been carried by German and French banks the case for putting a referendum on membership of the EU has become compelling.
Added to the losses Ireland will incur through Brexit and added to the negative stance within Europe to Ireland’s corporation tax and arguments below, the Irish deserve a referendum to vote on their future within the future imposed on them by membership of the EU.
Ireland should also have a democratic say in any negotiations between the EU and the UK on Ireland’s future relationship re trade and borders. This is another compelling reason for providing a referendum on IREXIT.
Sinister intervention in Ireland by the European Commission on Water Charges forcing them upon the Irish electorate in spite of their declared wishes is an example of an erosion of democratic control of Irish affairs by unelected bureaucrats in the EU.
It’s not precisely the directive to have a certain water policy that galls but the audacious intervention in Irish sovereign taxation affairs that directs us to have separate water charges with a private, commercial monopoly running it.
How we raise the money through taxation should be a matter for Ireland alone. Water charges per se should not be part of the remit of the EU.
There is also the fear of undue influence by private commercial interests in the affairs of the EU wishing to dismantle public services to allow private commercial interests to loot public services for commercial gain.
This is not what membership of the EU was meant to be.
That the Irish derogation for water charges no longer applies is a result of Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly’s refusal to ask for a derogation:
“In accordance with Article 9.4 of the Water Framework Directive our exemption is embedded in the 2008 River Basin Management Plan. Any renewal or cancellation of the exemption is done in the next 7 year RBMP. And it is the Minister for the Environment who assembles and submits this plan.
This 2015 River Basin Management Plan is due on be handed into Brussels by New Years Day. Both the Irish government and the European Commission are expecting that Minister Kelly will not renew the exemption and will instead include domestic water charging as part of Ireland’s strategy.”
Kelly built no houses for the homeless and gave away our water to private, commercial interests. Enough said of compliance, obedience and incompetence as certain politicians hand over national assets without thought for our national interests or the good of the people.
Meanwhile Enda Kenny is back from his trip to the UK where he successfully alienated the full Brexit movement’s future government by his interference in UK sovereign affairs.
How come Kenny was not asked to walk the plank after his election results is another question. A weak, Irish zombie government of those rejected at the ballot box is not helping in these turbulent times.
He was quoted by one remain politician in the Johnathan Dimbleby “Great Debate” that Kenny said border controls would have to be introduced if Brexit won as if the Irish government would insist on them. Fearful images of Armageddon, barbed wire and Berlin Walls were part of his politics of fear.
Only the most limited if any border controls should be introduced.
Can you figure out how Scotland reconciles its wishes for independence with membership of the EU. They already have more independence and will have more independence in their relationship with the UK than they would ever get disappearing down the rabbit hole of the EU.
This blog celebrates the restoration of the democratic wishes of the British people that have arguably saved democracy itself from extinction. Congratulations to all Brexit campaigners who fought so well against so overwhelming odds.
Congrats to the UK on managing to drop the value of sterling. This will have a very positive effect on exports and reduce imports and should yield a healthy balance of payments result for the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
“The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
- The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
- The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
- The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.”
While this blog campaigned virtually alone in Ireland for Brexit, pollsters and pundits and politicians got it wrong.
Not foreseeing the consequence of Brexit many in the Brexit camp have experienced a state of Black Swan paralysis and currently flounder in limbo unable to navigate a future path to address the issues Brexit has posed. At least that’s what Minister Noonan would have you believe disdainfully scorning Brexit campaigners for lack of future planning.
Not so. The description however does appear to describe well the remains of Noonan’s position on these matters.
Welcoming the positive affirmation of democracy that is in Brexit this blog will address these issues and point a way forward at least on 2 fronts.
Firstly, the UK will go through a process of disengagement with the EU while at the same time arrogating to itself responsibilities in areas previously controlled by the EU. This will require institutional changes and the inception and setting up within UK of parallel lines of responsibility within its own institutions of government and this may take some time to set in place.
It will have to renegotiate its fishery policy with the EU insisting that its borders be respected.
Independent self-government managing its own affairs responding to its own needs and mindful of the needs of the world at large is well within the remit and capabilities of the British people and its representative parliamentary democracy.
The UK needs time to apply its creative energies to this task.
Secondly, given the sad outcome of 2 great performances by both the northern and southern Irish soccer teams at European level our thoughts should wonder at what could be achieved by one single Irish team.
With Brexit our thoughts should be with joining northern Ireland as a single commonwealth entity with equal if not more independent stance than currently enjoyed by both Wales and Scotland. For this we need IRexit.
The sad state of political leadership in southern Ireland is missing the brilliant contribution that could be made by outstanding politicians such as Sammy Wilson or Teresa Villiers in the north.
Southern Ireland cannot afford to be a member of a failing EU with its largest trading partner and neighbour outside the EU; this combined with the fact our island of common interest is split in two. This could be an opportunity of ending “never the twain can meet”.
The second front upon which changes need to be made should be focused on the EU rather than the UK or Ireland.
Consider the following on the EU commission:
“The Commission remains politically answerable to Parliament, which has the power to dismiss it by adopting a motion of censure. The Commission attends all the sessions of Parliament, where it must clarify and justify its policies. It also replies regularly to written and oral questions posed by Members of Parliament.”(1)
It is noted here that a session of the European parliament is due to be convened to discuss all issues relating to Brexit.
This is much overdue following the emergence from the shadows of Angela Merkel announcing a summit of leaders including only France and Italy following Brexit. Leadership by proxy of Europe by Angela Merkel has emerged more and more into visible light since the financial collapse of southern, peripheral European states such as Greece, Portugal and also Ireland.
To observers such as yours truly this only adds to the belief that the EU is government by proxy of Europe by Germany. The implication for dodgy banks in Germany, France and especially Italy with debt to GDP hovering at 120% must have been high on the list of concerns.
Members of the European parliament apart from ex member Nigel Farage are generally a disenfrancised lot with no powers other than to rubber stamp what unelected and mysteriously lobbied and influenced members of the EU Commission allow them to rubber stamp.
But here is an opportunity for the members of the European parliament to censure the mishandling of Brexit by the commission and dismiss the EU commission.
Not a likely scenario but one I advocate. A more likely scenario is the highly paid MEP’s will churlishly say little if nothing and do less.
The European Commission has been woefully remiss in its treatment of David Cameron in its refusal to allow independent derogation for UK comply with massively deficient policies on emigration.
The EU commission has woefully mishandled the refugee crisis. It has been compromised by Germany’s go-it-alone policy.
It has allowed geopolitical concerns particularly in the alliance of inner core members such as Germany, France and Italy to exert undemocratic control over the now compromised independence of the European parliament.
It has sat by and allowed the banks of Germany and France to dictate undemocratic terms to the people of Greece.
It has allowed itself to be the pawn of external forces that have lobbied and compromised its independence challenging its role as a policy maker in Europe.
It has failed to shape policies to rebalance Europe and instead has sharpened the divide between northern and southern Europe.
It has had no effect on independent European monetary policy that instead through the European Central Bank followed a go-it-alone policy arguably in favour of monetary policies promoted by Germany looting peripheral members of the EMU.
“New EU rules on economic and financial governance help to Union resources clean up and strengthen the banking sector.”(1)
These rules show how compromised the European Commission is with lobby groups and so-called experts from the banking sector, Goldman Sach’s, Morgan Stanley, influencing and setting policy: those meant to be the subject of regulation choosing their own regulations.
The EU commission has become a toxic brake on European progress and become the pawn of shadowy lobby groups.
The EU commission is not an elected and democratic body but is instead leading member states along the path of totalitarian policies reminiscent of the previous USSR.
Dismissal of the EU commission pending its reform should be high on the agenda of next meeting of the European parliament. This is not likely to happen with even less likelihood of reform that will challenge special interest groups.
A little word on how the European Commission and the ECB have failed to help us in solving our housing crisis. Instead the following scenario is being played out across Europe in countries such as Ireland.
“The financial raiding of the American middle class is moving full steam ahead. The ridiculous structure of the banking bailouts and artificially low-interest rates caused hot money from banks and big investors to crowd out regular families in the housing market. Now here we are 7 years after the official conclusion of the Great Recession and regular American families are financially struggling while banks and big investors thrive. Today 11 million Americans spend half of their income on rent. Another 21.3 million spent over 30 percent of their income on rent. With millions of properties being bought by investors since the Great Recession hit, all that has happened is a mega transfer of wealth. You don’t build equity by renting but many people are simply priced out from buying a home.”(3)
In Ireland the European Commission has done nothing to support Ireland’s growing housing crisis.
It silently supports massive Quantitative Easing QE by the European Central Bank which has led to depreciation of the euro against other currencies.
With negative interest rates this has contributed to a global currency crisis increasingly pillaging the assets of savers and public services though austerity.
It has turned a blind eye to the odious terms imposed on Greece for its bailout while silently supporting the Highest EU debts as a proportion of GDP (2014 Q4)(4) debt levels of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus and Belgium. Italy at 120% debt to GDP of particular interest.
EU commission needs to be dismissed.
Its management of monetary matters left to the ECB is a failure and its consequences grow more toxic by the day.
A monetary backdrop to the work of the EU commission is a global fiat currency inflated to kingdom come by the Central Banks through Quantitative Easing.
A return to a gold standard or a similar bitcoin related inter currency standard to stabilise markets and give rise to fair savings and investment in R&D is required.
This is outside the remit of the European Commission and beyond the means of the ECB but its policies favour the maintenance and continuance of this failing currency system.
In a casino driven financial economy that is a bar to further human progress with the European Commission fronting a European banking system that has become the bad bank of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve; austerity imposed on the people of Europe ; funding the rich 1% with further giveaways through Draghi’s Quantitative Easing, its time the EU itself considered its future with debt levels described by above graph.
But it would appear through lobby groups and shadowy interests pulling the strings of the EU commission both in the case of banking regulations and the above Irish Water debacle, that the EU itself is fixed upon the path of maintaining the current system of looting and pillaging the middle classes.
The concept of private ownership ownership itself as it was in the USSR may become a distant memory for those who remain in the EU…
Congrats to Brexit saving democracy itself from extinction under the above.
- How EU Works: https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/singapore/documents/more_info/eu_publications/how_the_european_union_works_en.pdf
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-27/alan-greenspan-u-k-brexit-a-terrible-mistake
- http://www.mybudget360.com/share-of-income-spent-on-rent-at-record-high-11-million-spend-half-income-on-rent/
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/11705720/European-debt-crisis-Its-not-just-Greece-thats-drowning-in-debt.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
- Japan’s Prime Minister Abe warns of global recession: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-summit-idUSKCN0YI03R
- Currency Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_war
till again…
Brexit and Kafka’s Castle
June 5, 2016
“Ms Coppinger referred to Mr Noonan’s previous comments to the committee where he said that “vultures provide a very good service in the ecology through cleaning up dead animals that are littered across the landscape”.
Enda Kenny meanwhile has refused to carry out an inquiry into the smoking gun of Nama’s involvement in sale of NI portfolio to the Cerberus vulture fund. Hard to believe the interests of Irish taxpayers appear to be served more in NI and the UK in these investigations than shady coverups on the home turf led by Kenny and Noonan.
Cerberus won the auction by offering Stg£1.241bn for loans linked to the Northern Ireland properties. The reserve price was Stg£1.24bn. The issue has also raised troubling questions for RTE’s Primetime.
The markdown could have been as high as $5bn.
“Another Stormont committee is carrying out a separate investigation into a controversy surrounding Cerberus’s purchase of Nama’s loan portfolio in Northern Ireland.”
The sale is also being investigated by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
This sale is also subject of investigation in the US.
While a red carpet is rolled out for vulture funds and shady dealings in NAMA we turn a blind eye to, taxpayers are being hosed with a media onslaught from another quarter:
The trickle of propaganda from the Irish media led by RTE is turning into a daily flood of stories campaigning against Brexit with cataclysmic claims this will lead to the collapse of the global economy, collapse of the EU.
If such a litmus test of the global economy and the EU leads anywhere near such fearful outcomes, then there already is something rotten in the global economy and EU institutions that requires lancing. Voting for UK to stay in the EU will not avoid such outcomes.
Currently the global economy and the EMU are on the brink of failure. Japan, Russia, South America and the EMU(European Monetary Union) even the USA all belong to the list of ever increasing debtor economies that drift towards economic collapse as debt levels ceaselessly rise and choke the remainder of the living economy.
The rise of shadow banking since 1970, deregulation and a mushrooming global financial sector that grows bureaucracies and casino usury economics is a now an ever present danger to world growth and development. Derivatives, stocks and bonds the chips of modern finance have overinflated values by 50%, commodity prices due to manipulation by TBTF (Too Big To Fail) banks have fallen to values as low as those that triggered the collapse of Lehman’s that began the financial collapse of Wall Street in 2008.
In Europe, peripheral nations are hoovered of public taxes to service the lender bailout banks of Germany and France. Insider nations such as Italy, Spain and France are also in decline and at risk of submerging due to lack of economic growth.
Democracy itself struggling under the snake eyes of economic collapse in Greece and elsewhere across Europe has seen a rise of militant right wing opposition movements from Austria to France to Germany itself toi name a few.
Should Britain vote to join the totalitarian and anti democratic movement that grows within the EMU that bank rolls the rich with QE(Quantitative Easing) and imposes austerity on the poor, the middle class a disappearing species?
Increasing taxation and disappearing public services in health and education are the hallmark of a growing totalitarianism as evidenced in Ireland’s recent water controversy debacle.
Bureaucracy, unfair process, futility of dissent, absurd undermining of common sense and democratic will of the people lead inevitably to a failed totalitarian experiment we’ve already experienced with a failed USSR now failing within its newer incarnation, the EU.
Ireland was led by the ECB into financial collapse then we were stuck for the bill for this. Our politicians cosseted and enticed by Brussels with low tax, political appointments to the European parliament and its various commissions with extraordinary salaries seize the opportunity for unelected office.
Yet these politicians in the European parliament have no power to propose or pass laws as the European parliament itself is controlled by mysteriously unelected bureaucrats.
Thousands and thousands of bureaucrats and administrators in the European Commission and yet we’ve had financial collapse, deregulation of our construction industry, pyrite and mica collapsing residential property across the country.
We have ghost estates and a useless government enthralled with their subsidised salaries from Europe unable to get a write down on unfair and odious debt levels heaped upon us from Europe.
Croneyism, protectionism and the barriers they create are costing European consumers higher prices for foods and goods protecting uncompetitive industries and preventing competition.
Every continent is outgrowing Europe with its protectionism, over regulation, tariffs and trade barriers the World Trade Organisation tries to tackle.
Switzerland did not join the EU and is wealthy and successful on the free trade agreements it has negotiated with Latin America, China and America. Europe’s biggest companies are in Switzerland and it has a very successful financial sector.
This must trouble the scaremongers faced with accounting for Switzerland’s success.
No doubt there is an elite of politicians and members of Ireland’s financial sector profiting immensely from European from membership of the EU. Given the losses already incurred and that lie ahead for Ireland’s 99% arguments that point towards returning prosperity should be treated with caution if not disdain.
In the EU decisions are taken from the top and imposed on the bottom. At the top an elite cadre of politicians aided by an even vaster cadre in their thousands of unelected bureaucrats regulate the agenda from the top and impose their will on the bottom 99%.
A perfect example of this democratic faultline is Irish Water the Irish people voted against in the last election. Its now been revealed to us that the European commission require water charges to be imposed on the Irish people in spite of the democratic will of the people.
Expect this unhappy circumstance to be but the tip of the iceberg. So much so the need for an Irish parliamentary democracy in such a system now has to be questioned if it has been so sterilised that it has no democratic usefulness in a european context.
Consider the success of Switzerland the polar opposite of the EMU. Multinationals proliferate successfully there. Incomes are more transparently equitable, low taxes and its a super democracy. The prime minister does not decide if a referendum is to be held. 50,000 signatures mean a referendum must be held.
None of this Irish Water nonsense. Politicians are forced to fulfill the will of the people not the will of a financial elite or the will of so-called enlightened bureaucrats unelected and based in Brussels.
UK’s referendum on 23 June many people voting will have felt the frustration of Kafka’s K, with some unknown purpose defined by the unknown asked to vote for some unknown quantity defined by an unknown and distant European bureaucracy sent to them by the unknown sending them into the unknown.
Hopefully they will vote against caving in to remaining in the EU and emerge from its growing shadow to work towards a renaissance and development of a new democracy bringing prosperity to the people of the UK.
But see how big business including banks and the multinationals and those from the services industry have infiltrated the EU to demand through lobbying their special interests including successful ratification through the EU and the World Trade Organisation in The Brussels Business link below.
Their special interest represent an attack on the very fabric of democracy and national governments ensuring that absurdly any investments be protected from national laws. National laws including setting taxation nets to protect the public are now subsidiary to WTO and EU commission laws that require compensation to large corporations should national parliaments pass laws requiring fair taxes.
Secrecy and lack of transparency is the hallmark of this new Orwellian EU dominated by the interests of multinationals seeking to topple the influence of democracy itself.
As stated in one of the links below, “in democracy, it is one man, one vote; in Brussels, it is 1 euro, one vote. The ‘think tanks’, friends of Europe, research labs, lobbying groups are filled with representatives of companies lobbying their own special interest. These are the unelected unknowns creating this new Orwellian world pillaging and looting the remains of democracy with democratically elected powers that be already bought by financial interest groups.
The irony is the very success of these interest groups is self defeating as evidenced in the decline of Europe in recent years with the vast problems it faces ensuring a high probability of its own self destruction.
In recent years efforts have been made to reform the EU. In particular trojan efforts were made by Commissioner Kallas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siim_Kallas
He tried for a number of years to bring legislation forward for a Register of lobbyists to enhance transparency and legitimacy in decision making. In the end such efforts were watered down and the European Transparency Commission introduced a voluntary code. Who blocked it, no one knows.
Similar efforts at reform were made following the financial crash of 2008 and a think tank to consider regulation was set up of members ‘wise men’. It transpired all members of the think tank were connected to all of the leading financial and banking institutions including Lehman’s and Goldman Sach’s financial institutions that had most to lose through regulation. Regulations proposed amounted to zero. Not a single member of the think tank was in favour of regulation.
Europe has become a tool of the 1% to exercise their control over the 99%. Democratic control of Europe is slipping away fast. Perhaps the UK referendum is Europe’s last chance to not only save the UK but also Europe itself from the Orwellian unknown unknowns that lie ahead.
European slow metamorphosis into an entity not imagined in its creation is one that needs to be brought under democratic control before freedom and democracy are lost and Europe’s dream becomes a nightmare. Europe has already had its share of such nightmares.
Martin Durkin’s documentary on Brexit contains many of the above arguments in favour of leaving the EU. See link below.
Draghi’s Keynesian Monetary policy stealing the public’s money through printing fake counterfeit QE
(1)
(2)
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/martin-enda-must-launch-nama-inquiry-34773223.html
(3) Finian Cunningham
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2015/07/18/520005-german-panzer-banks-crush-greece-washington-winces/
till again…..
Colmbrazel's Blog 