On this date in 2003 the last flight by a British Airways Concorde carrying paying passengers flew in to Heathrow. Hundreds of Thousands of people made sure that they could see - and hear - this spectacular aircraft for a last time. There were a few more final flourishes, including one in which half a dozen of the 'planes flew up the Thames estuary towards the airport; then that unique sound vanished from the skies. A few of the aircraft have been kept as museum pieces, but they are naturally regarded as relics rather than as harbingers of great things to come.
The aircraft were first mooted in the nineteen fifties, and a joint venture was sealed with France; long before Britain was admitted to the Common Market that was to mutate into the European Union. Harold Wilson's Labour government strongly considered aborting the project, on cost grounds; but it was decided that this joint exercise with France, that would put Europe ahead of the USA and the USSR, was too important to abandon. Tony Benn, in a short episode of ministerial office, returned from conversations in Paris to report that the project would definitely go ahead: and that the name of the craft would be spelt in the French way - with an e on the end - to stand for Europe, enterprise and a whole string of other e-words that I cannot remember [and it is not worth looking them up].
To fly in Concorde was a very special experience. It was all-first-class [except on specially booked flights] and the space in the cabin was extremely limited. There were four carefully-designed small seats in each row, with a relatively narrow aisle and a low ceiling. Takeoff was spectacular and the craft quickly got to supersonic speed, which was shown on an indicator at the front of the cabin. The westbound journey to New York took almost four hours: which meant that the 'plane arrived in America a little earlier [on the clock] than its takeoff time from London. I was intrigued to find that a lot of people booked westbound flights on Concorde to enjoy the experience of 'beating time'; then they traveled eastbound on less cramped aircraft.
Some people became inter-continental commuters - a few, mostly media figures, on a weekly basis - and claimed to feel no ill-effects from the experience.
The venture was demonstrated soon to be uneconomic. It became a flag-flying exercise for British Airways, Air France and their sponsoring governments. There were no orders from alien airlines, and while the USA and USSR developed and even tested supersonic passenger jets there was no marketed competitor to Concorde.
The context in which this happened was that of the cold war. With the development of nuclear weapons, the competing powers of NATO and the Warsaw Pact needed aircraft that could deliver such weapons with minimum chance of being intercepted before they got over their target. The development of fast fighter 'planes reduced the chances of even supersonic bombers being successful; so began the concentration on inter-continental ballistic missiles. The British and French governments decided jointly to try to create a market for supersonic aircraft in commercial use: and Concorde was the spectacular result. But it was never cost effective. The amount of the most highly-refined fuel needed to get it [and keep it] airborne, in ratio to the number of passengers who could be carried, was never going to be economically efficient. Commercial aircraft constructors saw the future in large-bodied, relatively economical sub-sonic 'planes: of which the Boeing 747 and the European Airbus became the best-known workhorses.
Some of the technology that was developed for supersonic flights was of use generally in the aircraft industry: but that knowledge was mostly acquired from the bomber programmes; Concorde was not needed from that point of view.
As the small stock of planes aged, so maintenance costs increased, fuel efficiency declined and it became clear that passengers in general preferred the relative economy and comfort of wide-bodied aircraft in which first-class passengers could have beds, business class could have comfortable divans, and everybody had space to move around. The British and the French had proved what could be done. Tens of thousands of people had enjoyed the unique experience. But that was that.
Was it sad? Not particularly. It was they way of the world: 'how the cookie crumbles'.
Was it wasteful? Yes, but nobody much minded.
National pride was enhanced.
France was helped to develop the capability to build big, twenty-first century aircraft for which the Brits made some of the parts.
France can still design and build fighters: Britain has surrendered that capability.
The relative efficiency of the bureaucracies of the two states was sharply differentiated by the whole venture. The French remain focused, chauvinistic and effective. The British have remained indecisive and have continued to axe promising projects every time austerity is called. The British are probably the better engineers: but that fact is always eclipsed by political reality.
Showing posts with label Harold Wilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harold Wilson. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 October 2017
Saturday, 12 August 2017
Not Another Party, Please!
When it looked as if Jeremy Corbyn was leading Labour to the expected [and deserved] electoral catastrophe a couple of months ago, siren voices were calling for a split in the party; which could lead to the 'moderates' joining up with the LibDems and hoping to attract some Tory Remainer MPs; and thus forming a coalition that could reverse the Brexit decision. The depth of politicians' squalor was again confirmed when Mrs May lost the election and Labour was beefed-up as being a potential governing party. So, although Labour MPs are viscerally split between those who are keen to compromise with Corbyn and those who know him for what he is [an unreconstructed Marxist who has a wide range of casuistic devices], the party has been held together by the fragile cement of ambition.
Subsequently, other voices have been raised - now, within the Tory ranks - hoping to cobble together an anti-Brexit coalition. As with the SDP, it would be impossible for such a party to gain traction with the electorate; even if they had a period of years available to make the attempt. As it is, the Brussels clock is ticking down to March 2019; and the chances of getting Mrs May to understand anything of the ruin to which she is driving the nation are minimal. There is not time enough to reconfigure British politics, or to educate the prime minister.
The great majority of MPs, mostly with regret, accept that the referendum vote was decisive. The question was whether the UK should "leave the European Union" or "remain in the European Union". There was no definition of the European Union. It was left unstated whether the European Economic Area, or the European Economic Community [the common market and customs union] - as Mrs May now says is inextricably the case - were included in the vote. This is the basis on which honest men and women who accept the referendum result can legitimately believe that the vote was to withdraw from the political aspects of the EU - the Parliament, the Commission and the Court - but not to undermine the economy by withdrawal from the economic area.
From everything that I have heard and read in recent weeks, there could well now be a strong majority of the electorate in favour of splitting the economic from the political aspects of the Union. The Economic Community pre-existed the Union, and membership of that club was clearly accepted in the referendum on withdrawal that was held under Harold Wilson's premiership. The electorate was not allowed an opinion on the transmutation of the Community into the undemocratic morass of Brussels under the nomenclature of the Union [and with the intention that the Union should become 'ever-closer': which means 'ever less accountable to the people']. I believe that a national petition - a reflection of the People's Charter of the 1840s - might be the most effective way of proving to the boneheaded Brexiteers that a very clear majority of the nation is capable of making the distinction between the Community and the Union.
If that could be proven, I like to think that majority of MPs have sufficient dregs of integrity then to act as representatives of the nation, and compel the government [whether the present shoddy shower, or a coalition containing the heavily-compromised Corbyn] to make a sensible and mutually beneficial deal to remain in the Community.
The issues of the European Court and of migration would remain to be resolved; but they will be much easier to define within the context outlined above. Time is short, but there is enough time to implement this suggestion of a People's Charter, deploying the resources of up-to-date social media.
Subsequently, other voices have been raised - now, within the Tory ranks - hoping to cobble together an anti-Brexit coalition. As with the SDP, it would be impossible for such a party to gain traction with the electorate; even if they had a period of years available to make the attempt. As it is, the Brussels clock is ticking down to March 2019; and the chances of getting Mrs May to understand anything of the ruin to which she is driving the nation are minimal. There is not time enough to reconfigure British politics, or to educate the prime minister.
The great majority of MPs, mostly with regret, accept that the referendum vote was decisive. The question was whether the UK should "leave the European Union" or "remain in the European Union". There was no definition of the European Union. It was left unstated whether the European Economic Area, or the European Economic Community [the common market and customs union] - as Mrs May now says is inextricably the case - were included in the vote. This is the basis on which honest men and women who accept the referendum result can legitimately believe that the vote was to withdraw from the political aspects of the EU - the Parliament, the Commission and the Court - but not to undermine the economy by withdrawal from the economic area.
From everything that I have heard and read in recent weeks, there could well now be a strong majority of the electorate in favour of splitting the economic from the political aspects of the Union. The Economic Community pre-existed the Union, and membership of that club was clearly accepted in the referendum on withdrawal that was held under Harold Wilson's premiership. The electorate was not allowed an opinion on the transmutation of the Community into the undemocratic morass of Brussels under the nomenclature of the Union [and with the intention that the Union should become 'ever-closer': which means 'ever less accountable to the people']. I believe that a national petition - a reflection of the People's Charter of the 1840s - might be the most effective way of proving to the boneheaded Brexiteers that a very clear majority of the nation is capable of making the distinction between the Community and the Union.
If that could be proven, I like to think that majority of MPs have sufficient dregs of integrity then to act as representatives of the nation, and compel the government [whether the present shoddy shower, or a coalition containing the heavily-compromised Corbyn] to make a sensible and mutually beneficial deal to remain in the Community.
The issues of the European Court and of migration would remain to be resolved; but they will be much easier to define within the context outlined above. Time is short, but there is enough time to implement this suggestion of a People's Charter, deploying the resources of up-to-date social media.
Monday, 3 July 2017
A Long Week
Harold Wilson, allegedly the Queen's favourite prime minister, said "A week is a long time in politics".
The present prime minister must be finding the weeks constantly elongated as events turn against her and more of her ministers begin publicly to cavil at the inheritance of Osbornian austerity that almost cost the Tories the election. The precarious position of the party in parliament makes it almost impossible for the leader to dismiss querulous ministers; and the chancellor [whom she expected to be able to dismiss, following an electoral triumph] is now in a position strongly to influence the Brexit discussion.
A delegation from the City of London is off to Berlin this week, to make an assessment of the appetite of the Germans for a form of Brexit that would leave the UK firmly within the European Economic Area. The shock of the Brexit decision has been followed by months of assiduous work in the City, and there is no doubt that the loss of [at least] tens of thousands of jobs from the financial services would be a calamitous blow to the whole British economy. The financial bubble that has been inflated ever since 1986 in compensation for the destruction of the materially-productive bulk of the economy has provided a support mechanism for the economy, and its removal would have utterly catastrophic consequences. The chancellor is now fully aware of this; but it is doubtful if the prime minister could comprehend this: it is also questionable whether all three Brexit Ministers - Davis, Johnson and Fox - fully understands the importance of the point. Certainly the insouciance displayed by Davis on the matter is alarming.
But the clock has been ticking, and those who are capable of recognising the signs of impending crisis have begun to read them the same way. A minority of Labour MPs also showed last week that they have a pretty good idea of the problem, when they voted against the party line to stress their concern that Corbyn's left-wing contempt for capitalism could impose on the Labour party an interpretation of Brexit that would plunge the country into chaos and a whole era of impoverishment. A tiny number of extreme lefties would be happy to impose the hair shirt austerity of the Stalin era in Russia on the British nation; but they would not have many followers, and the Momentum movement has not yet gained sufficient power to unseat all the rational Labour MPs if there were to be an early general election.
All the rational Conservatives have come to realise that their precarious alliance with the Paisley faction must last for at least the two years while the Brexit negotiations continue. If the government can gets its act together in the next month, recognising that the maintenance of momentum in the economy depends on being in the European Economic Area [on the best terms that can be negotiated: though they will not be ideal], there is a chance that they will gain sufficient goodwill in the mass of the population to have a chance of winning an election. That is conditional on the change in policy that I mentioned yesterday: there needs to be more money for public sector workers' pay, as Gove and Johnson are not pointing out. And there must be a resolution of the student fees issue: the reckless promise of Labour in the last election, simply to abolish those fees [and probably write off the debts owed by past borrowers] puts the Tories in an impossible position as long as they retain the Osborn line; so they are going to have to admit that so many holes are being poked in austerity that it might just be wise to admit that the policy is not acceptable.
Wars are fought by selling government bonds, to buyers who accept the extreme urgency of the situation. The present situation is no less alarming than a war. The government must be willing to replace austerity by a combination of flexibility on key areas of public spending and a massive investment in infrastructure, coupled with the development of a facility for the state [directly and through the banking sector] to invest heavily in all the firms that have credible business plans to advance technology and innovation. Mrs May's early decision to let Japanese speculators buy ARM was a very bad indication of her incomprehension: she needs to be educated; otherwise, like Anthony Eden, she needs to be taken away on leave. And there are not many weeks left for one or the other of these steps to be taken. The Tory party has saved itself by ruthlessness in the past: the era of "you've never had it so good" followed on very soon after the Suez catastrophe. They need to find the same strength again: with or without Mrs May.
The present prime minister must be finding the weeks constantly elongated as events turn against her and more of her ministers begin publicly to cavil at the inheritance of Osbornian austerity that almost cost the Tories the election. The precarious position of the party in parliament makes it almost impossible for the leader to dismiss querulous ministers; and the chancellor [whom she expected to be able to dismiss, following an electoral triumph] is now in a position strongly to influence the Brexit discussion.
A delegation from the City of London is off to Berlin this week, to make an assessment of the appetite of the Germans for a form of Brexit that would leave the UK firmly within the European Economic Area. The shock of the Brexit decision has been followed by months of assiduous work in the City, and there is no doubt that the loss of [at least] tens of thousands of jobs from the financial services would be a calamitous blow to the whole British economy. The financial bubble that has been inflated ever since 1986 in compensation for the destruction of the materially-productive bulk of the economy has provided a support mechanism for the economy, and its removal would have utterly catastrophic consequences. The chancellor is now fully aware of this; but it is doubtful if the prime minister could comprehend this: it is also questionable whether all three Brexit Ministers - Davis, Johnson and Fox - fully understands the importance of the point. Certainly the insouciance displayed by Davis on the matter is alarming.
But the clock has been ticking, and those who are capable of recognising the signs of impending crisis have begun to read them the same way. A minority of Labour MPs also showed last week that they have a pretty good idea of the problem, when they voted against the party line to stress their concern that Corbyn's left-wing contempt for capitalism could impose on the Labour party an interpretation of Brexit that would plunge the country into chaos and a whole era of impoverishment. A tiny number of extreme lefties would be happy to impose the hair shirt austerity of the Stalin era in Russia on the British nation; but they would not have many followers, and the Momentum movement has not yet gained sufficient power to unseat all the rational Labour MPs if there were to be an early general election.
All the rational Conservatives have come to realise that their precarious alliance with the Paisley faction must last for at least the two years while the Brexit negotiations continue. If the government can gets its act together in the next month, recognising that the maintenance of momentum in the economy depends on being in the European Economic Area [on the best terms that can be negotiated: though they will not be ideal], there is a chance that they will gain sufficient goodwill in the mass of the population to have a chance of winning an election. That is conditional on the change in policy that I mentioned yesterday: there needs to be more money for public sector workers' pay, as Gove and Johnson are not pointing out. And there must be a resolution of the student fees issue: the reckless promise of Labour in the last election, simply to abolish those fees [and probably write off the debts owed by past borrowers] puts the Tories in an impossible position as long as they retain the Osborn line; so they are going to have to admit that so many holes are being poked in austerity that it might just be wise to admit that the policy is not acceptable.
Wars are fought by selling government bonds, to buyers who accept the extreme urgency of the situation. The present situation is no less alarming than a war. The government must be willing to replace austerity by a combination of flexibility on key areas of public spending and a massive investment in infrastructure, coupled with the development of a facility for the state [directly and through the banking sector] to invest heavily in all the firms that have credible business plans to advance technology and innovation. Mrs May's early decision to let Japanese speculators buy ARM was a very bad indication of her incomprehension: she needs to be educated; otherwise, like Anthony Eden, she needs to be taken away on leave. And there are not many weeks left for one or the other of these steps to be taken. The Tory party has saved itself by ruthlessness in the past: the era of "you've never had it so good" followed on very soon after the Suez catastrophe. They need to find the same strength again: with or without Mrs May.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Back to the Mighty Markets
The Morning Posting
Though the media are still saying that the European Union and the Eurozone are under all sorts of threats from 'the Markets', the immediacy and seriousness of the threat is being downgraded. Back in prehistory Harold Wilson said that "a week's is a long time in politics": and time seems to be moving more quickly in this century. Commentators have not stopped mentioning the fact that 'markets' are a major source of pressure on the politicians and their advisers as they forgather again in Brussels; but they have been forced to respond to the demand of their readers and listeners for the nature of the threat to be specified. The press and broadcast commentators have begun to admit that the risk is not from 'markets' as such, but from individual users of and traders in financial instruments who tend to pursue a form of herd behaviour.
Throughout economic history there has been a series of 'bubbles' when far more investors have offered far more money than has seemed sensible after the event, for 'assets' that suddenly seem so attractive that almost every investor wants a slice of them. Nineteenth and Twentieth-century History regarded as absurd the boom in shares of ownership of black tulip genetics in seventeenth-century Holland: but it seems slightly less absurd today when it can be viewed as a 'false dawn' of the modern capabilities of genetic engineering. No doubt, there will be future bubbles in shares in businesses that make breakthroughs in the application of genetic science. Early in the eighteenth century, even though Scotland had already experienced a boom and a horrible bust of shares in a company for colonisation in Central America, the whole of the now-United Kingdom experienced a huge bubble in the value of shares in the South Sea Company. People who bought the shares early and then sold while the market was still rising made fortunes. Then far more people found their family nest-egg of gold or silver coins, or sold assets to get cash, which they became desperate to spend on shares: so there appeared people willing to create companies in which they sold shares - even including a company 'whose purposes will duly be disclosed'. Suddenly someone recognised that most of these companies had no real assets: some had paid dividends out of the money shareholders had given them, but there was no evidence that they would yield dividends even for a couple of years. The most percipient few investors were able to sell the shares for at least as much as they paid for them, but then more and more people tumbled to the truth and sought to sell: a sales panic ensued and most of the new companies vanished. The South Sea Company survived, in a much diminished state; then over the decades the lesson was shelved. The nineteenth century saw a succession of 'railway booms' as that technology spread around the world; Brazil had a 'rubber boom' [ended when Brits stole rubber genetics and installed plantations in Malaysia and Ceylon]; and the twentieth century had alarming stock-market booms and crashes. The dawn of a new millennium brought the dot-com bubble, and then followed uncontrolled expansion of a huge range of financial instruments which inevitably led to the greatest crash of all.
In every case the markets in which assets have been sold were simply media: the booms and busts were caused by the human psyche. Economists and journalists have written extensively about 'sentiment' and 'animal spirits', which was wholly appropriate: they also wrote about 'market sentiment' which was absurd.A major complicating factor is the fact that investors' optimism or pessimism is influenced strongly by cheerleaders: media commentators, 'analysts', rating agencies, Central Banks' statements and actions, government policy, opposition warnings and the lucubrations of Warren Buffet and other 'sages' or 'gurus'.
Market participants' behaviour could become so irrational that they sold Euros or Italian Government Bonds regardless of how much of the purchase-price they had lost, ignoring the fact that Europe is more than rich enough broadly to maintain the exchange rate of the Euro against the US Dollar and the Yen; and Italy is rich enough to unwind any perceived excess of government debt over a period of years. Any such asset-sellers would hurt the funds for which they are responsible, perhaps irreparably. Thus it is in their interests to preserve the medium-term 'value' of their holdings. As long as the Eurozone governments can show that they have the capability of maintaining medium-term assets-in-being [having dumped Greece, which is an unsustainable basket-case] they do not need to assemble trillions of dollars-worth of cash-on-the-table today. So they won't pile the cash up pointlessly: they don't need to. Markets have nothing to do with it. Market participants need strong nerves and common sense, and if fund managers should begin to behave destructively their employers should get rid of them - without any bonus or severance packages beyond the statutory minimum.
Evening Posting
After this afternoon's European Union 'summit' meeting no mighty new bail-out fund has been created, no immediate step has been taken towards 'fiscal union' of the Eurozone, and Italy has been forced into a humiliating promise to retrench further than had been intended by the busted Berlusconi government. The crunch on Greece is still being prepared; and there may yet be weeks of chatter before the banks are softened-up sufficiently to take the write-down of Greek state debt that will be necessary whether or not some means are found to keep Greece in the Euro The German Parliament has accepted a minimalist proposal from the Chancellor, who is far more concerned about German public opinion than she is about relations with France [though her speech this morning bizarrely referred to a threat that there could be a return to the era of wars in Europe if the EU should collapse].
After this evening's non-news had broken the immediate reaction of participants in 'the markets' was to raise stock prices a little. The politicians have made it clear that they are concerned to preserve the Eurozone: but are nowhere near panicking: they would not be stampeded into the sort of measures that US politicians [in particular] have been demanding from them. The eurorats' favoured technique of proceeding at snails'-pace towards consolidation of all power and wealth in their own hands has worked again.
Though the media are still saying that the European Union and the Eurozone are under all sorts of threats from 'the Markets', the immediacy and seriousness of the threat is being downgraded. Back in prehistory Harold Wilson said that "a week's is a long time in politics": and time seems to be moving more quickly in this century. Commentators have not stopped mentioning the fact that 'markets' are a major source of pressure on the politicians and their advisers as they forgather again in Brussels; but they have been forced to respond to the demand of their readers and listeners for the nature of the threat to be specified. The press and broadcast commentators have begun to admit that the risk is not from 'markets' as such, but from individual users of and traders in financial instruments who tend to pursue a form of herd behaviour.
Throughout economic history there has been a series of 'bubbles' when far more investors have offered far more money than has seemed sensible after the event, for 'assets' that suddenly seem so attractive that almost every investor wants a slice of them. Nineteenth and Twentieth-century History regarded as absurd the boom in shares of ownership of black tulip genetics in seventeenth-century Holland: but it seems slightly less absurd today when it can be viewed as a 'false dawn' of the modern capabilities of genetic engineering. No doubt, there will be future bubbles in shares in businesses that make breakthroughs in the application of genetic science. Early in the eighteenth century, even though Scotland had already experienced a boom and a horrible bust of shares in a company for colonisation in Central America, the whole of the now-United Kingdom experienced a huge bubble in the value of shares in the South Sea Company. People who bought the shares early and then sold while the market was still rising made fortunes. Then far more people found their family nest-egg of gold or silver coins, or sold assets to get cash, which they became desperate to spend on shares: so there appeared people willing to create companies in which they sold shares - even including a company 'whose purposes will duly be disclosed'. Suddenly someone recognised that most of these companies had no real assets: some had paid dividends out of the money shareholders had given them, but there was no evidence that they would yield dividends even for a couple of years. The most percipient few investors were able to sell the shares for at least as much as they paid for them, but then more and more people tumbled to the truth and sought to sell: a sales panic ensued and most of the new companies vanished. The South Sea Company survived, in a much diminished state; then over the decades the lesson was shelved. The nineteenth century saw a succession of 'railway booms' as that technology spread around the world; Brazil had a 'rubber boom' [ended when Brits stole rubber genetics and installed plantations in Malaysia and Ceylon]; and the twentieth century had alarming stock-market booms and crashes. The dawn of a new millennium brought the dot-com bubble, and then followed uncontrolled expansion of a huge range of financial instruments which inevitably led to the greatest crash of all.
In every case the markets in which assets have been sold were simply media: the booms and busts were caused by the human psyche. Economists and journalists have written extensively about 'sentiment' and 'animal spirits', which was wholly appropriate: they also wrote about 'market sentiment' which was absurd.A major complicating factor is the fact that investors' optimism or pessimism is influenced strongly by cheerleaders: media commentators, 'analysts', rating agencies, Central Banks' statements and actions, government policy, opposition warnings and the lucubrations of Warren Buffet and other 'sages' or 'gurus'.
Market participants' behaviour could become so irrational that they sold Euros or Italian Government Bonds regardless of how much of the purchase-price they had lost, ignoring the fact that Europe is more than rich enough broadly to maintain the exchange rate of the Euro against the US Dollar and the Yen; and Italy is rich enough to unwind any perceived excess of government debt over a period of years. Any such asset-sellers would hurt the funds for which they are responsible, perhaps irreparably. Thus it is in their interests to preserve the medium-term 'value' of their holdings. As long as the Eurozone governments can show that they have the capability of maintaining medium-term assets-in-being [having dumped Greece, which is an unsustainable basket-case] they do not need to assemble trillions of dollars-worth of cash-on-the-table today. So they won't pile the cash up pointlessly: they don't need to. Markets have nothing to do with it. Market participants need strong nerves and common sense, and if fund managers should begin to behave destructively their employers should get rid of them - without any bonus or severance packages beyond the statutory minimum.
Evening Posting
After this afternoon's European Union 'summit' meeting no mighty new bail-out fund has been created, no immediate step has been taken towards 'fiscal union' of the Eurozone, and Italy has been forced into a humiliating promise to retrench further than had been intended by the busted Berlusconi government. The crunch on Greece is still being prepared; and there may yet be weeks of chatter before the banks are softened-up sufficiently to take the write-down of Greek state debt that will be necessary whether or not some means are found to keep Greece in the Euro The German Parliament has accepted a minimalist proposal from the Chancellor, who is far more concerned about German public opinion than she is about relations with France [though her speech this morning bizarrely referred to a threat that there could be a return to the era of wars in Europe if the EU should collapse].
After this evening's non-news had broken the immediate reaction of participants in 'the markets' was to raise stock prices a little. The politicians have made it clear that they are concerned to preserve the Eurozone: but are nowhere near panicking: they would not be stampeded into the sort of measures that US politicians [in particular] have been demanding from them. The eurorats' favoured technique of proceeding at snails'-pace towards consolidation of all power and wealth in their own hands has worked again.
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