Trajan
conscientia mille testes
apparently they are not feeling the love. They have had to guarantee 16 Billion Euros when the inital request was for 7 B EU, having thought ot thru they like say Germany are asking themselves, why should they?
A Finn Man Trying to Get Out
The EUs bailouts spark an uprising.
Apr 18, 2011
If you believe the members of the fastest growing political party in Finland, their country is the sucker, the sap, the patsy among the Nordic nations. Norway never joined the European Union. Sweden and Denmark opted out of using its currency, the euro. Finland, however, is a full member in every respect, and as such has seen its AAA-rated bonds used to guarantee the bailouts of profligate elites in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
Elections scheduled for April 17 in Finland have put the eurozone rescue plan (as they call it in Greek) or bailout (as they call it in German) on a collision course with a populist uprising. It is not possible to pull out by ourselves, says Timo Soini, the man who is leading that uprising. But it was a mistake to join. In the not inconceivable event that Soini becomes prime minister, Europes mechanism for paying off government creditors is going to get much trickier.
The European Council made a big accounting mistake last May. With the help of the IMF, it set up the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a 750-billion-euro fund to tide over Greece and any other member states that ran into financial trouble. The EFSF was supposed to be a safe, triple-A fund with a big cushion of equity. This meant that it could not lend all its moneyonly about 440 billion euros of it. But there are just six triple-A countries in the EU, including Finland. (The others are Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Luxembourg.) The equity that member states put up was more wobbly than assumed. The funds real bailout power was only half of what Europeans claimed it was. So a month ago, at a meeting in Brussels, the European Council told member states that they would have to roughly double their contributions.
That is where Finland comes in. Key EU votes require unanimity, and Finns are not happy being told that they need to guarantee 16 billion euros of a dangerous bailout fund rather than the 7.9 billion they were first asked for. Already Europes self-styled financial rescuers find themselves warming their hands over the pressure-cooker that is the German electorate. German voters, who are paying more than a quarter of the tab for the bailouts, are convinced that all the money theyve saved by cutting and scrimping over the past decade is now being commandeered to pay off the debts of a bunch of Mediterranean freeloaders. An increasing number of Finns feel the same way, although their tiny country covers only 2 percent of the bailouts. In Finland as in Germany, there is suspicion that the EU is turning into a transfer union, i.e., an arrangement by which high-earning countries transfer income and resources to low-earning ones.
continues at-
A Finn Man Trying to Get Out | The Weekly Standard
A Finn Man Trying to Get Out
The EUs bailouts spark an uprising.
Apr 18, 2011
If you believe the members of the fastest growing political party in Finland, their country is the sucker, the sap, the patsy among the Nordic nations. Norway never joined the European Union. Sweden and Denmark opted out of using its currency, the euro. Finland, however, is a full member in every respect, and as such has seen its AAA-rated bonds used to guarantee the bailouts of profligate elites in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
Elections scheduled for April 17 in Finland have put the eurozone rescue plan (as they call it in Greek) or bailout (as they call it in German) on a collision course with a populist uprising. It is not possible to pull out by ourselves, says Timo Soini, the man who is leading that uprising. But it was a mistake to join. In the not inconceivable event that Soini becomes prime minister, Europes mechanism for paying off government creditors is going to get much trickier.
The European Council made a big accounting mistake last May. With the help of the IMF, it set up the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a 750-billion-euro fund to tide over Greece and any other member states that ran into financial trouble. The EFSF was supposed to be a safe, triple-A fund with a big cushion of equity. This meant that it could not lend all its moneyonly about 440 billion euros of it. But there are just six triple-A countries in the EU, including Finland. (The others are Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Luxembourg.) The equity that member states put up was more wobbly than assumed. The funds real bailout power was only half of what Europeans claimed it was. So a month ago, at a meeting in Brussels, the European Council told member states that they would have to roughly double their contributions.
That is where Finland comes in. Key EU votes require unanimity, and Finns are not happy being told that they need to guarantee 16 billion euros of a dangerous bailout fund rather than the 7.9 billion they were first asked for. Already Europes self-styled financial rescuers find themselves warming their hands over the pressure-cooker that is the German electorate. German voters, who are paying more than a quarter of the tab for the bailouts, are convinced that all the money theyve saved by cutting and scrimping over the past decade is now being commandeered to pay off the debts of a bunch of Mediterranean freeloaders. An increasing number of Finns feel the same way, although their tiny country covers only 2 percent of the bailouts. In Finland as in Germany, there is suspicion that the EU is turning into a transfer union, i.e., an arrangement by which high-earning countries transfer income and resources to low-earning ones.
continues at-
A Finn Man Trying to Get Out | The Weekly Standard
