I don't think the self-serving chatterers are going to talk their way out of this one.
Should we expect to see a dramatic fall in the US$?
Nikkei's up slightly. The others are down about 1%. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
12 month pound vs euro:
I still need to start my "Countdown to Yen-Dollar Parity" series one of these days. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Well done us.
It's politics and self-image. Although the mid-level business community is for joining, the angry Daily Mail proles aren't, and the feckless rich aren't. With the Tories practically guaranteed a win in 2010, there's no pressure at all to join - they're certainly not going to propose it because their base would skin them alive.
It's more important to most of the population to cultivate a narcissistic image of specialness than it is to deal with reality. So we're going to sail through 1:1, it's going to be the ECB's fault because of something or other, and we're going to carry on down to the floor - wherever that is.
When I went to the LibDem conference last September there was a Very Serious Person™ from The City in the audience at the European Policy session who pointed out that if there were a serious crisis "which the current hiccup isn't" (paraphrased: I felt like slapping the guy to wake him up) then the UK should join the Euro. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
But given that we de facto are already in the eurozone (we're mutually pegged so tight to the Bundesbank ECB that the only difference is a trip or two to the local FOREX anyway...) I suspect we could join as soon as we could get the new notes and coins in circulation.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Larry Kudlow is my favorite. The perfect example. Always wrong. The opposite of his prediction always occurs. It must be the cocaine, because no one could be that stupid naturally. If he told me the sky would be blue tomorrow, I'd almost leave the apartment expecting red. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
On the other hand, the wisdom of the ages teaches about fools and their money. Then, too, that great American OT Barnum (or was it WC Fields) said, there's a sucker born every minute. I think these pundits are functionally nothing more than carny barkers.
