Harmony in the EU, Britain-Spain-Gibraltar edition

As if the EU didn't have enough problems right now, Britain is huffing and puffing over Gibraltar, one of its pitifully few remaining colonial possessions which Spain claims as their territory. Guy Jackson, Gibraltar row heats up as Spain, Britain make threats AFP 08/13/2013:

As the threats were made over the British-held territory, British warships began setting sail for the Mediterranean for a naval exercise that will see the frigate HMS Westminster dock in Gibraltar.

Helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious steamed out of Portsmouth, to be followed on Tuesday by the type-23 frigate HMS Westminster, which is set to arrive in Gibraltar within a week.

The defence ministry has stressed that the deployment of the ships for the exercise is "routine" and "long planned".

But in a hardening of Britain's tone, a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said the government was considering taking legal action over the checks by Spanish guards on the border of the rocky outpost on Spain's south coast.

BBC News breaks down the competing claims (08//12/2013):

Spain believes Gibraltar was taken in the context of a Spanish dynastic dispute and contests UK sovereignty over the entire peninsula. It also insists the cession in the Treaty of Utrecht 1713 did not include the isthmus with the airport on it and territorial waters.

Spain cites the UN principle of territorial integrity, through UN Resolution 1514 (XV) - which says "any attempt at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations".

This dispute has being going on a while, i.e., since before the American Revolution. A favorite trick of Britain, which they've also used in the Malvinas/Falklands, is to hold a referendum among the mostly-British inhabitants of the disputed territory:

There was a referendum in Gibraltar in 1967, which called on both Spain and the UK to take into account the "interests" of the people of Gibraltar. In it 12,138 of the 12,237 voters chose "voluntarily to retain their links with the UK". The referendum was condemned by the UN General Assembly, and not recognised by any international body or state. The UK promulgated the Gibraltar Constitution Order in 1969, in which it was stated that: "Her Majesty's government will never enter into negotiations under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their democratically expressed wishes."

This Stratfor video discusses the current conflict and its background in Tensions Rise Between Spain and the U.K. Over Gibraltar 08/05/2013:

Spain and Argentina have had high-level discussions about making a common united front against Britain over Gibraltar and the Malvinas at the United Nations. () The ongoing diplomatic controversy over Argentina's nationalization YPF, an energy company previously owned by the Spanish corporation Repsol, is a complicating factor. (Gibraltar y Malvinas, ¿juntos? 12.08.2013)

Tags: britain, eu, gibraltar, spain

Business Week's Peter Coy: "The austerity formula ... by and large isn’t working."

Peter Coy takes note of the elephant in the room that stomping the furniture, breaking the windows and knocking down the walls: "The austerity formula — cut spending, and growth will follow — by and large isn't working." (Austerity Has Diminished Britain — and Cameron, Too Bloomberg Businessweek 06/13/2013)

A G-8 meeting is coming up next week, and Coy thinks that the leaders will have enough sense to recognize that the Merkel-Cameron-Hollande-Troika austerity policies are a train wreck: "The big economies of continental Europe are shrinking or barely growing. Britain’s economy has expanded less than 1 percent over the past year. In the U.S., the chill of sequestration spending cuts is expected to reduce annual growth to 1.6 percent in the current quarter."

We can always hope.

Coy spells out how badly things have gone in Britain:

Cameron's big idea when he campaigned in 2009 and 2010 was to reassure global bond investors with promises of big cuts in spending that spared only the National Health Service and foreign aid, while raising the value-added tax on sales. Smaller deficits would lower interest rates, allowing businesses to borrow, invest, and hire. Interest rates fell, as promised, but growth never picked up because consumers remained overindebted, the banking sector was undercapitalized and in no shape to lend, and businesses didn't see enough demand to justify expansion. The European debt crisis, which suppressed British exports, was a factor. But so was the dampening effect of decreased government spending. Cameron envisioned a Big Society—his equivalent of compassionate conservatism—in which private charity would fill the hole left by government. That hasn't happened, either. As Spain and Greece have discovered, economic weakness cuts into tax receipts. So the budget deficit was still over 7 percent of gross domestic product in the year through March even though inflation-adjusted discretionary spending was down nearly 12 percent, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. [my emphasis]

This is no surprise to economists who still remembered basic macroeconomics. The idea that government austerity in a depression would be anything but harmful to the economy was demonstrated very effectively decades ago by Herbert Hoover and Heinrich Brüning.

But Coy proceeds to make this argument as though he doesn't realize its inconsistency with the section just quoted: "Some retrenchment was essential after the deficit surpassed 11 percent of GDP in 2010, a post-World War II high. The Conservatives argue that if Cameron goes wobbly in the knees now and eases up on austerity, the bond market might react badly, driving interest rates back up and worsening Britain's predicament."

When a depression starts, GDP shrinks. Debt doesn't shrink as fast as GDP, and automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance pay out more and tend to push the deficit and debt up. This is exactly what needs to happen in a depression. So what is Coy talking about when he says that "some retrenchment" was necessary just after he's described what actual harm resulted from the real existing "retrenchment" Cameron's government?

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, britain, david cameron, eu, euro, european union

Angie on Greece: kick the can, impoverish the people

German Chancellor Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel is trying to kick the can of the Greek debt problem further down the road. (Nicolai Kwasniewski, Griechenland-Kredite: Europa entscheidet sich fürs Weiterwursteln Spiegel Online 21.11.2012)

Since the Greek debt crisis broke out in 2009, Frau Fritz has been trying to do just enough to prevent Greece from defaulting, which could have set off some bad consequences for German banks and still could; to keep Greece in the eurozone; to avoid telling the German taxpayers that they were going to lose a lot of the money they've been loaning to Greece for the previous two purchases; and to insist on a brutal program of austerity that is crushing the Greek economy, impoverishing the Greek people and making the debt crisis unsolvable within the framework on which she's insisting.

And in doing so, she's been behaving with an arrogance and raw nationalism that every previous Chancellor of the Federal Republic had been careful to avoid.

Euronews provides a brief report on the latest drama, No agreement on Greek debt 11/21/2012:

As Wolfgang Münchau wrote last week, the period of being able to pretend to German voters that they aren't going to have to eat big public expenses to save the euro and handle the Greek debt issues is effectively over. But Frau Fritz is still trying to keep the game going. As Nicolai Kwasniewski explains, right now the European Central Bank (ECB) is basically keeping Greece afloat by buying Greek short-term debt. Greece is due another tranche of previously-committed aid to avoid debt default but Frau Fritz is currently blocking its distribution to Greece.

The official reason is that they need to do "further technical work on some elements of the package." The sticking point is that the IMF is insisting that the EU (i.e., Angie) recognize the reality that a large portion of the Greek debt has to be written off. Which means that Germany actually loses billions of dollars in their aide provided to Greece in the form of a loan. As Andreas Rinke and Lefteris Papadimas explain in Greece's lenders fail again to clinch debt deal Reuters 11/21/2012, referring to the meeting that just took place between eurozone finance ministers, the ECB and the IMF:

A document prepared for the Brussels meeting and seen by Reuters showed Greece's debt cannot be cut from 170 percent of GDP to 120 percent, the level deemed sustainable by the IMF, unless either euro zone member states write off a portion of their loans to Greece or the IMF extends its deadline by two years.

Germany and other EU states say writing down their loans would be illegal. The European Central Bank, a major holder of Greek bonds, has refused to take a "haircut" on its holdings.

Berlin contends a debt haircut would not tackle the roots of Greece's debt problems and would be unfair to other euro zone countries that have taken tough steps to improve their finances.

"It would cost money, it would be a fatal signal to Ireland, Portugal and possibly Spain, as they would immediately ask why they should accept difficult conditions and push through difficult measures ... and it would have consequences under budget law," Norbert Barthle, budget spokesman for Merkel's Christian Democrats said.

Without corrective measures, the Eurogroup document said, Greek debt would be 144 percent in 2020 and 133 percent in 2022.

Juncker said after a meeting a week ago that he wanted to extend the target date to reduce Greek debt by two years to 2022, but [IMF Director Christine] Lagarde insists the 2020 goal should stand. She is believed to favor euro zone member states taking a writedown.

Andy Dabilis reports in Eurozone Talks Break Down, No Aid for Greece Yet Greek Reporter 11/21/2012:

After 12 hours of talks in Brussels between Eurozone finance chiefs and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde failed to reach an agreement on how to manage Greece’s runaway debt and unlock a long-delayed $38.8 billion loan, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said he would meet with the financial bloc's leader, Jean-Claude Juncker.

A dismayed Samaras, who had rammed through the Parliament an unpopular $17.45 billion spending cut and tax hike program demanded by lenders in return for more aid, headed for Brussels on Nov. 21, hours after the long talks failed, to prepare for a Nov. 22-23 meeting of European Union leaders and to talk to Juncker.

John Psaropoulos elaborates in Greece Awaits Payout Decision The New Athenian 11/19/2012:

The decision to release the money was meant to have been taken at last Monday’s Eurogroup meeting. But that meeting was dominated by a dispute with the International Monetary Fund, which believes that Greece’s debt is not sustainable unless a large chunk of it is forgiven. Since banks and private sector lenders already forgave 107 billion euros last march, representing more than half of their Greek bond holdings, it is now incumbent on European governments to offer a discount, something the eurozone has been resisting.

Greece has taken a surprisingly soft stance on the restructuring of its debt. The IMF's insistence on official sector involvement was not grasped by the Greek side. Asked about it on Friday, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said "I don't have anything to say about that, thank you."

Reuters quotes ECB board member Joerg Asmussen as saying that the Eurogroup will not address the sustainability issue on Tuesday, leaving it to later meetings.

Europe is also consumed by larger concerns, namely a dispute between net contributors and net beneficiaries over the size of the next seven-year European budget. Fiscal hawks like Germany and the Netherlands want the roughly one trillion euro budget cut significantly. An emergency EU summit has been called for Thursday to resolve the dispute.

This scene with Greece gets uglier by the day. Frau Fritz forces the Greek government parties to fall on their swords politically and then kicks them in the teeth. (Kind of like the Republicans negotiating with Obama on the debt ceiling in 2011, come to think of it.)

The German Social Democrats (SPD) have a pretty pitiful record in dealing with the euro crisis, usually reinforcing the neoliberal/austerity framework that Frau Fritz is using to wreck the economies of euro "periphery" countries like Greece, as Rinke and Papadimas describe:

Any options that cost the German taxpayer more money come with a heavy political price tag with elections less than a year away and would have to voted through by an increasingly restive Bundestag.

"If we get the impression we are being cheated, we won't come to the rescue anymore when you need our support," Social Democrat leader Peer Steinbrueck warned in a speech to the chamber just before Merkel took the podium.

Until now Merkel has been able to count on the support of parties like the SPD and Greens to help push through controversial bailout votes in the lower house.

That is seriously pitiful on the SPD's part. It's no wonder that for all her spectacular mismanagement of the euro crisis, she and her party still lead the SPD in the polls.

Plus, Britain may be positioning itself to bolt from the EU altogether. (Jürgen Krönig, Warum Großbritannien die EU verlassen wird Die Zeit 21.11.2012) This in itself is a major failure of leadership on the part of Berlin, London and Paris. But there is a bright side. If the EU has a medium-term future, it will almost certainly have to be without Britain as a member. They are too little committed to the "European project" and too subservient to the US in foreign policy to be a full partner in the EU. The current point of open conflict is Tory Prime Minister David Cameron's push to limit the EU budget.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, britain, david cameron, eu, euro, european union, greece

Britain's success (NOT!) with austerity economics

Robert Hutton give s us a glimpse of state of the British economy under Prime Minister David Cameron's austerity economics during a depression in The Loneliness of David Cameron Bloomberg Businessweek 11/08/2012:

Cameron’s signature policy—an austerity plan meant to wipe out the structural budget deficit by the 2015 election—has caused pain among voters and is certain to cause more. The government will have implemented £37 billion ($59.11 billion), less than a third of the £126 billion of cuts planned, by the end of the fiscal year. Welfare payments for housing have been capped, forcing some poor people to move out of expensive areas such as London. Pay has been frozen for police, teachers, nurses, doctors, and other public-sector workers.

The success of the austerity plan depended on the economy returning to a growth rate of 2.3 percent in 2011 and 2.8 percent in 2012. It didn't; the economy is only now emerging from a double-dip recession. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research forecast on Nov. 2 that the economy in 2013 will be 5.3 percent smaller than forecast in 2010. The deficit-elimination target has been pushed back to the fiscal year ending April 2017. That means the government will go into the 2015 election promising further spending cuts and tax hikes.

You would think that at least Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel would be proud of him. But he's being so much of a pain in the rear on EU matters that he's probably not getting even that much out of this lovely experiment in austerity economics.

Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal have all had similar experiences.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, britain, david cameron, eu, european union

More on British Foreign Secretary William Hague and the EU

I previously posted this video of the PBS Newshour interview with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, British Foreign Secretary: 'We Should Be in Europe but Not Taken Over by Europe' 12/12/2011). But it's worth a bit more unpacking.

This portion of Hague's interview says a lot about Britain's lack of leadership in the EU over the years and more particularly about the bad faith of the current Cameron government toward the European project:

Well, Europe going forward, to me - if it goes in the right way - becomes larger, for a start. It includes the countries of the western Balkans and Turkey, actually, as members of the European Union. It emphasizes trade, both within its own single market and in a greater number of free-trade agreements with the rest of the world. Because the only way forward now for Western economies isn't government spending -we've reached the limit of that - and it isn't any monetary policy, other than what the European Central Bank can do. It is trade. It is the growth of enterprise. It's encouraging small businesses. It's opening up freer trade with the rest of the world. That is our vision of the way the European Union should be going. And Britain will continue to push that very hard. [my emphasis]

He puts two key points out into the open:

First, Britain now openly declares its view that the EU is and should be primarily a vehicle for neoliberal "free-trade" policies. The purpose of the EU from the start has been to promote peace and secure democracy in Europe. The economic integration, including the currency union, was always supposed to be a means toward the political ends. If Britain sees the EU as essentially nothing more than a big free-trade zone, then it really does reject the basic principles of the Union and they shouldn't be in it.

Second, trying to expand the Union further for the moment is a near-suicidal move. Which is entirely unnecessary, since Germany and France have gone very far toward insuring the end of both the eurozone and the EU with their foolish austerity politics and failure to come to grips with what would have been necessary to save the euro. But support for rapid EU expansion is something that Britain has pursued for years now, both to limit the pace of political integration and to keep in line with American foreign policy, whose main priority for the EU is to keep it weak enough to be unable to become a power strong enough to challenge the political hegemony of the US in world politics.

And he makes a point that may play well as propaganda for the American audience but is deceptive:

In Europe but not run by Europe has always been my mantra, if you like - has always been the course that I and my party [the Conservatives] have followed. So some people will say that. Others will say, oh, this is the beginning of isolation and so on. Neither of these extremes is true. The fact is that in Europe there are overlapping circles of decision-making - some countries in the euro and some not. We're glad we are not. ...

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I think that's the second time you've said you're glad you're not in the euro. And you seem to say it with special glee, if I - if that's right, or energy?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well, I say -

JEFFREY BROWN: Even with what's going on now, do you think this is exposing fundamental problems within the euro - eurozone?

WILLIAM HAGUE: The reason I say that particularly forcefully is because 10 years ago, when I argued in Britain that we should not join the euro, these same charges were made then that are made now: "Ah, you are isolating Britain in some way. You will lose influence in some way." Now it would have been a catastrophe for us to join the euro, and people can now see that clearly. And so we should have the same confidence in making our own decision now as we had then. Certainly the euro has fundamental problems, which do need to be addressed. If you create a single currency, inevitably you have to create some political mechanisms that follow that up - some greater fiscal controls among the countries involved, if you're going to make it work. That is what the eurozone countries are now trying to address.

Clearly, under the current conditions and rules of the currency union, Britain is demonstrably better off not being part of the eurozone.

But what Hague isn't saying is that the story of the euro also very much reflects Britain's less than full commitment to the European Union. If Britain had as serious as they claimed to be about making the European project work, they would have made active proposals to allow Britain to become part of the euro under terms that would have addressed the weaknesses of the current union, especially the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) as buyer of last resort of sovereign debt and the need for "eurobonds" based on the collective credit of the eurozone countries that could be used anywhere in the eurozone. Britain did not attempt any such thing.

Nor did they advance proposals that might have made a more workable constitutional arrangement for the EU that would have created or moved substantially toward a fiscal and transfer union during more prosperous times, which could have enabled the EU to sustain the political and economic shocks of a depression situation like the current one.

Even at the summit last week, Britain made no proposals that would have facilitated the changes within the current eurozone that might have saved the euro: the ECB as buyer of last resort, eurobonds, a fiscal/transfer union.

They certainly did not challenge the "Merkozy"/Herbert Hoover austerity economic dogma that is current destroying the EU, the eurozone, economic recovery and (in Greece and Italy) democracy. Because the Cameron/Hague government is completely committed to the same fool ideas about expansionary austerity.

Instead, Cameron went to the summit to get additional deregulation on behalf of the British financial lobby, scarcely pretending to care about the urgent crisis of the euro.

Finally, Hague leads of the section of the interview shown above this way:

There are huge concerns about the European economy, of course, here in America and in Britain there are huge concerns. But this is not a question for us of being isolated. On the whole range of global issues, and there's the European Union at work, the United Kingdom remains in a central and driving role. All the issues I've been discussing with Secretary Clinton this afternoon. But we won't sign up to everything, we won't sign up for everything that's not in our own interest. It wasn't in our interest to join the euro, definitely not. And it's not - it wasn't in our interest to sign up to the treaty that was on the table last Thursday night. [my emphasis]

Hague is Britain's chief diplomatic, so we have to assume he was choosing his words carefully there. There and elsewhere in the interview he frames Britain's role in the EU as one of cooperating when it is convenient from a narrow national-interest point of view.

But this is duplicitous. The EU is a transnational organization which explicitly surrenders national sovereignty to the larger EU organization. Cameron's proposals for new loopholes for Britain in the EU treaties is a recognition of that very fact. EU financial regulations are binding on EU members including Britain, not just on eurozone members. That's why he pushed for exemptions. One reason many critics are now faulting Cameron for his go-it-alone policy begun last week is that the EU doesn't need treaty changes from Britain to change financial regulations that affect the British financial industry Cameron was intending to protect.

So Hague blathering about how "we won't sign up for everything that's not in our own interest" is diplomatic smoke-blowing. Cameron didn't walk saying that he thought the summit's austerity economics and the ignoring of the needs of saving the euro were neither in Britain's interest nor that of the EU as a whole. He left because they wouldn't give them special new breaks on the regulation of Britain's financial industry.

Britain's diplomacy at the EU summit was neither strategically well-conceived nor tactically well-executed.

Tags: britain, david cameron, william hague

More on Cameron vs. Europe

John McDermott (Is this enough to save the eurozone? FT Alphaville 12/07/2011) points out one of the problems in Angela Merkel's EU-minus-one plan for imposing German supervision and austerity economics on the eurozone countries, which is doubts about whether the EU institutions themselves can be used to enforce treaty provisions not agreed to by every one of the EU members:

At any rate, the UK has blocked any new treaty for all 27 EU member countries, reportedly over its demand that the City be exempt from further Brussels financial regulation stemming from the new arrangements. Eurosceptics will be pleased but others will argue that Cameron runs the risk of missing the larger, more immediate threat to the UK economy, and – perversely – losing British influence in the areas where it is most required. In any case, it looks like a high watermark for UK involvement in the European Union.

It’s unclear yet what legal status the new 17+ group enjoys, and to what extent it can use EU institutions. To this observer, although the ECJ will be given new powers, it seems that without a new treaty we'’re left with little more than another Stability and Growth Pact.

And what British Prime Minister is saying publicly is not just that he's bowing out of participating in the "Merkozy" austerity treaty that the other 26 countries at the EU summit just agreed on.

As Nicholas Watt reports (Eurozone countries go it alone with new treaty that excludes Britain Guardian 12/09/2011, Cameron is saying he will try to block the other EU members from using EU institutions from implementing the Merkozy Treaty:

Cameron acknowledged there were risks in striking out alone. But he said Britain would protect its position by insisting that the institutions of the EU could not be used to enforce the new fiscal rules.

"While there were always dangers of agreeing a treaty within a treaty, there are also risks with others going off and forming a separate treaty. So we will insist that the EU institutions – the court, the commission – that they work for all 27 nations of the EU. Indeed those institutions are established by the treaty and that treaty is still protected."

Cameron indicated that Britain may go further and block the use of EU institutions if eurozone countries club together to shape financial regulations and labour laws.

The decision by Cameron will transform Britain's relations within the EU. Other projects, such as the euro and the creation of the passport-free Schengen travel area, have gone ahead without British involvement. But it is the first time since Britain joined in 1973 that a treaty that strikes at the heart of the workings of the EU will be agreed without a British signature. Britain signed the 1991 Maastricht treaty after winning an opt-out on the single currency and the social chapter. [my emphasis]

Tags: britain, david cameron, eu, european union

EU Summit

The latest EU Summit is over. Twenty-six of the 27 EU nations have agreed to make a new treaty outside the main EU one, which is called the Lisbon Treaty, to institutionalize austerity economics in their constitutions. In the middle of the worst economic period since the Great Depression.

Oh, and Britain balked at the treaty change.

This will not solve the euro's problems. Britain's refusal to go along is another big step toward the dissolution of the EU as it currently exists. The latest summit outcome is a prescription for accelerating the budding recession in Europe, aggravating the sovereign debt crisis, bringing down several of Europe's already-weak large banks, and sweeping away decades of patient diplomatic work to build peaceful and stable relations among European nations.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

The stock markets didn't seem to be much perturbed on Friday, for whatever that's worth. European stocks went up, and as of this writing the Dow Jones looks on track to regain its losses of Thursday.

But however the stock market processes things on a given day, this is bad news, politically and economically. Europe's latest solution for the euro and banking crisis there is to double-down on austerity economics. Continue doing what's turned an easily-manageable debt crisis in Greece to a existential crisis for the European Union and a real threat of another global financial meltdown. And no way does the latest deal create a firewall for the United States against Europe's economic and banking problems.

A world on Britain's balking. What British Prime Minister David Cameron refused to do in the wee hours of Friday morning was to agree to the EU Treaty change that Princess Angie von Merkel was demanding. If the blankety-blank neocons hadn't spoiled the word "objectively" for a generation or more, I might say that objectively it's not a bad thing that Britain is well down the road to splitting off from the EU completely.

But politics is politics, so it's much more complicated that that. In terms of the real purpose of the EU - to promote peace and democracy and cooperation among nations in Europe - Britain should have been a full partner in the EU. Given economics grow rates in the rising BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and demographic trends in the BRICs and the rest of the world, without an effectively unified European Union, Europe and its individual countries will be minor players, bit players even, in world affairs during the 21st century. Britain cutting itself loose from the EU - which is what's happening with this latest move - means that in foreign policy they are choosing to be a permanent appendage to the United States in foreign policy.

On the other hand, as long as Britain's political class seems completely locked in to Britain's being a permanent appendage to the United States in foreign policy anyway, and the US' global dominance foreign policy strategy inclines the US to favor a weak EU, achieving a politically unified EU with a common EU foreign policy would require forming a revised EU without Britain's presence. In that sense, Britain's own distancing itself from the EU is not a bad thing from the viewpoint of the EU project.

But today's EU leaders, especially Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy, have effectively made the political and foreign policy goals of the EU project secondary or tertiary themes. The "Merkozy" duo are turning the EU into an enforcement mechanism for neoliberal economics, to which even democracy has to be sacrificed, as we see in Post-Democracy 1.0 in Greece and Italy right now.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has been an anti-Europe jackass in his actions this week. He is pandering to the nationalism of the strong anti-Europe of his Conservative Party. And, of course, to the British financial lobby, commonly referred to as "the City of London" or just "The City," similar to how "Wall Street" stands for the US financial lobby. Dany Cohn-Bendit, head of the Green Party caucus in the European Parliament, says, "Cameron is a coward" for not facing up to the anti-Europe Tories.

We could say that it's a smart move on his part not to agree to writing arbitrary budget deficit and debt restrictions into a binding international treaty. But here's where we would have to say "objectively". Because Cameron is as committed to foolish austerity economics as Angie and Nick are. Cameron is using a disaster capitalism/shock doctrine approach in Britain, using the depression as an excuse to achieve neoliberal goals of deregulation and dismantling of the parts of the government that particularly benefit the 99%. And he was very public about poking the other EU leaders in the eye, declaring in Bushian style, "I said before I came to Brussels that if I couldn't get adequate safeguards for Britain in a new European treaty then I wouldn't agree to it. What is on offer isn't in Britain's interests so I didn't agree to it."

On the other hand, since the EU is obviously on the fast track to self-destruction, why shouldn't Cameron score some cheap political points with posturing against it? The real question is which will be the first eurozone country to tell Angie to take her Ordnungsökonomik and her austerity treaties and go jump in a lake somewhere.

Tags: britain, david cameron, eu, european union