Seems the burghers of Brussels have made another enemy.

[hutch--]

In OZ we are getting stung with the reverse, mineral exports to China have forced up the exchange rate and the profits in the mining sector are huge but at the price of making everything else we export much more expensive and thus less competitive. This in turn reduces employment as more things go offshore which has led to what is called a 2 speed economy. Mining is raging while the rest of the economy is slowing.

The upside is you can buy a lot of stuff here very cheaply due to the exchange rate but at the price of not being able to make money.

[K_F]

In practice, they have nothing to offer, except "financial services" :(
 

There was a time when British-was-Best.. that centre of the universe indoctrination thing.
The USA is doing the same thing, soon it will be China....

I get the same story here, and if the quality and price balance is not right, I just tell them to fog off....
'Oh!! how unpatriotic..'
'Fog Off and take your BS somewhere else ...'  :icon_mrgreen:

[Gunther]

Hi anunitu,

I think that what we are passing through is not just an economic downturn,but the beginning birth pains of a complete change in our entire system. The world economy as it now stands is weak and most likely unmaintainable over the long term. I think the economy we have now will transform into something so different that we may end up passing through a violent period while we adjust to our brave new world. 

The question is: what kind of change? What we can see is a long row of wars and civil wars all over the world. A lot of these asymmetric wars have simply an economic background which is hiding to the broad audience. It is only a question of time to see a "system explosion" in Greece or Spain. With the ESM ( European Stability Mechanism in English or Mécanisme européen de stabilité in French) we didn't help the people in Greece or Spain, but we did only rescue the banksters with their deadly finance products in the poison cabinets.

Gunther 

[anunitu]

Can't argue with that Gunther,we really need a major change but that may end up being the dreaded "New world order" type thing. Looking at the whole EU thing,that might not work out so well. World Government scares people even looking at the U.N. people are scared that the U.N. will take control.

[Gunther]

Hi anunitu,

Can't argue with that Gunther,we really need a major change but that may end up being the dreaded "New world order" type thing. Looking at the whole EU thing,that might not work out so well. World Government scares people even looking at the U.N. people are scared that the U.N. will take control.

but a world government won't solve our problems. That's for sure.

Gunther

[hutch--]

Amen to that, I distrust anything with "World" on the front of it. WHO, WWF, WTO and of course the new WORLD order, any flavour. Global level grabs for power are always dangerous, its just the modern name for EMPIRE and we have seen many come and go, Chinese (many variants), Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Mogul, Roman, Holy Roman, Ottoman, Moorish Andelusia, Spanish, English, American, Soviet etc etc ....

People around the world are highly diverse in resource, capacity, education, culture and any single system will fail to address their needs and that is even if that is the intent, historically EMPIRE was for the purpose of exploitation and the trappings of civilisation were for the convenience of the administration, not the administered.

[Gunther]

Amen to that, I distrust anything with "World" on the front of it. WHO, WWF, WTO and of course the new WORLD order, any flavour. Global level grabs for power are always dangerous, its just the modern name for EMPIRE and we have seen many come and go, Chinese (many variants), Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Mogul, Roman, Holy Roman, Ottoman, Moorish Andelusia, Spanish, English, American, Soviet etc etc ....

People around the world are highly diverse in resource, capacity, education, culture and any single system will fail to address their needs and that is even if that is the intent, historically EMPIRE was for the purpose of exploitation and the trappings of civilisation were for the convenience of the administration, not the administered.

wise spoken, Steve. That's exactly my point of view.

Gunther