91–100 of 240 posts
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The whole western bank system is a confidence trick. Never head off fractional-reserve ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
Can you name a banking or finance system that has ever existed that wasn't? Are there non-western banking systems that are better?
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%.
How can Switzerland survive on 16%? That is my question.
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For that to happen, Europe would need to go federal. You can't have a legislative parliament in the current system because it'd violate the constitutions of a large proportion of the member states to delegate sovereignty somewhere else. This is the big challenge. People complain about the lack of powers for the EU Parliament, but largely aren't willing to support a model that'd make it possible. This is also why the…
This sort of argument is merely playing with words and has no intellectual merit. The EU's directives MUST be passed into law due to the treaties involved. A country cannot simply refuse to implement directives it does not agree with, without also leaving the EU. Failure to obey the rules is met with fines and other forms of punishment. Whilst a handful of lawyers may pretend this is not a transfer of sovereignty, no…
You may consider that just playing with words, but it makes the difference between being legal, and being a violation of constitutional law of a large number of member states, and as a result it makes a substantial difference in how the EU can be legally structured.
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%.
How can Switzerland survive on 16%? That is my question.
Gross income CHF 120'000 minus deductions you end up with 100K taxable income and the total tax burden (federal, cantonal and communal) is about 11K.
Edit: the same example for a canton with higher taxes (Bern) gives a total tax burden of 22K
[0] http://www.estv2.admin.ch/e/dienstleistungen/steuerrechner/s...
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…
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?
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The limit is 100k Euro. There is a fund to save deposits under 100k if a bank collapses. The problem is that there is no enough money to save every single depositor under 100k if enough banks are in trouble. That in Italy and everywhere else.
That limit either was, or was very close to being, ignored in Cyprus. You'd be foolish to bet €100k on that limit being hard if the shit hits the fan in Italy (which is a lot bigger than Cyprus and doesn't have anywhere near as much dirty Russian money they can grab instead). Also, the limit is for nought if Italy leaves the Eurozone and your savings are forcefully converted to "New Lira" (which are then "protected",…
That makes no sense at all. Just don't keep cash and invest everything except for a small contingency fund.
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> there are laws saying banks cannot receive state aid > every rule is meant to be broken if the situation warrants it Why did anyone bother with the rule in the first place then? Wasn't this exactly the kind of situation it was supposed to cover? It's not like an Italian financial crisis was off the radar when this rule got written. > Does that really mean we should let a massive bank (or multiple banks) go bankrupt…
1. What works for (relatively) small Cypriot banks will probably not work for larger system banks. The bail in rules worked well in part because the Cypriot banks held a lot of foreign, Russian deposits. If Deutsche goes bust.. winter is coming. 2. Bankruptcy will lead to local deposit funds having to reimburse €100,000 per person, per bank. Which will ultimately be paid for by the taxpayer. It might actually be chea…
How, exactly? And if that's the case, isn't it already the failure that we're letting DB hold the world hostage?
The world would be a different place if post Lehman governments would have let banks collapse
Why does the solution to this scary, foreboding fate always revolve around making sure the bankers stay fabulously wealthy?
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Why does additional population require additional money?
Because deflation is seen as more risky than inflation. In principal prices could drop to stretch the spending power of money, so that the money supply didn't need to increase along with population. In practice this is seen as risky as during the period of transition to lower prices you risk going through a period of economic slowdown and reduced spending power of the population. These problems are especially problem…
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I really do not have context about Italy and Economist, but this issue has been predicted and talked about by others. Here is one of them. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/italy-and-systemic-failure/
I fear the EU will use the (huge) Dutch pension funds to bail out Italy. Just last week the Dutch parliament hurriedly accepted EU regulations that allow the Dutch pension funds to move to other EU countries, which would put them out of scope of Dutch (strict) regulation and could possibly be used in the future by the EU to bail out countries like Italy. One way to achieve this would be by requiring a certain percent…
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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…
There was one point where the EU commission president stuck his fingers in his ears and walked away when being asked about Brexit by journalists. That would be career suicide for a politician, but not for EU bureaucrats. That's the sort of contempt they hold for the populace of the EU, they couldn't care at all.