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Who are these people?

How deluded can you get?

José Manuel Barroso said that the UK is "closer than ever before" to entering the single currency, because of the fallout from the global financial crisis.

He told French radio that "people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about" membership, adding that the country was sufficiently pragmatic to drop its traditional hostility to the currency if there was a strong economic case.

"I\’m not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me: \’If we had the euro, we would have been better off\’," Mr Barroso said in an interview.

During the boom interest rates would have been lower, leading to a greater boom. Vide Ireland and Spain.

Currently, during the bust, interest rates would be higher than they are now, making the bust worse.

We\’ve used a depreciation in the currency to give us a fiscal boost, something that wouldn\’t have been possible if we didn\’t have our own currency.

So who are these idiots thinking that being in the euro would have been a better idea?

5 thoughts on “Who are these people?”

  1. He told French radio that “people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about” membership

    Once again, we see the EU train of thought. The people would overwhelmingly reject Euro membership, but who cares. They don’t matter.

  2. Sadly, I’m not surprised by the attitude of Barroso towards the British peoples’ opinion.

    During the boom interest rates would have been lower, leading to a greater boom. Vide Ireland and Spain.

    Unfortunately our rates were not high enough to prevent the high inflation we have had over the last year or so (CPI and RPI), never mind to discourage the stupid borrowing that fueled an unsustainable debt and property price driven boom in the first place.

    BTW: If high oil and commodity prices shouldn’t really have counted in saying our inflation was high, I hope we are not including the fall in these prices when worrying about possible deflation.

    Currently, during the bust, interest rates would be higher than they are now, making the bust worse.

    Would higher interest rates now make the bust shorter? Governments are desperate to sustain past levels of spending and borrowing, and this will only delay the inevitable. Deflation now, hyper-inflation in a couple of years time?

  3. It’s foolish not to think about options, including joining the euro.
    It’s foolish to abdicate responsibility and assume that “someone else” knows better how to run the economy. Worse than that, it’s treasonous for elected politicians to hand over control to someone their voters didn’t elect.
    I remain convinced, too, that the original reasons for not joining still apply: our pattern of trade is different, our housing finance is different, our banks are different. In such situation, retaining control of interest rates and a floating exchange rate is essential.
    I do believe that our savings-rate is not high enough, meaning that banks have to use wholesale markets for finance rather than our own money. But that’s another story.

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