Douglas Carswell A French presidential election is due in a couple of weeks. Should one care? Will the outcome change anything? Not, I suspect, if incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wins. We’ll have more Euro summitry and muppetry.  More bailout and borrow economics. More talk of reform, without much change.  Not to mention, more of the Love Actuallywith  [ Read More ]

Douglas Carswell For almost two years this blog has called for a policy of default and decouple in response to the crisis in the Eurozone. How ministers and experts scoffed at the suggestion. How Treasury officials rolled their eyes.  Instead, they pursued a policy of bailout-and-borrow.  First under Labour, and then under the Coalition, billions  [ Read More ]

Douglas Carswell What do UK contributions to Eurozone bailouts, the failure to deport Abu Qatada and wind farms each have in common? They are, explained my constituent, “the sort of things I voted Conservative to stop. Yet they just seem to happen anyway”. No one voted to allow industrial-size wind turbines to march across the countryside,  [ Read More ]

Michael Smith Following on from his introduction to the big issues of Scottish Independence, foreign exchange specialist Michael Smith highlights the 3 options available for an independent Scottish currency: sterling, a scottish dollar and the Euro. Lots of articles about at the moment are discussing the implications of Scotland’s currency should it become independent. The  [ Read More ]

Douglas Carswell Saving the Euro, suggest ministers, will restore economic growth to Britain. It is, they imply, the most important thing we must do to ensure our own recovery. Perhaps if the single currency was such a panacea for growth, we’d have seen a little more of it in stagnant Euroland this past ten years?  [ Read More ]

John Redwood I have found there are are least 87 examples of countries leaving currency unions and establishing their own money since 1945. In most cases establishing an independent currency allowed the country concerned to set more sensible interest rates and exchange rate to help them grow. In every case it gave them more independence,  [ Read More ]

John Redwood Some say it is democracy – but not as we know it. It is true the Euro is a great device for bringing down EU member states governments. Recent victims include Ireland and Portugal, with the Greek government hanging by a thread. Electors can still change the people who are in a government,  [ Read More ]

Tim Worstall France and Germany have reached agreement to boost the eurozone’s rescue fund to €2tn (£1.75tn) as part of a “comprehensive plan” to resolve the sovereign debt crisis, which this weekend’s summit should endorse, EU diplomats said. The growing confidence that a deal can be struck at this Sunday’s crisis summit came amid signs  [ Read More ]