What precisely went on we will never know, but you can be assured that when Sarkozy, Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti meet, in Strasbourg of all places, they are up to no good.

The headline outcome of the "Merkonti" meeting is that France and Germany have agreed to stop arguing in public over whether the ECB should do more to rescue the eurozone from a deepening sovereign debt crisis. They would also not seek to change its inflation-fighting mandate when they propose changes to EU treaties to strengthen economic governance. The pair also demonstrated their public backing for Monti.

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The markets can be irrational at times, as a milestone UK bond rates actually fell below German ones today.Osborne may gloat temporarily,but as one commentator colourfully put it we are in the position of Wile E Coyote as he hangs in the air after running over the cliff edge.

The EU powers have so far been behind the game all the way and the new suggestion of euro...sorry "stability"...... bonds is way behind what everyone was suggesting months,nay a year ago.The horse has already bolted, it s just too late.

So they are preparing to cast out Greece and anyone else who dare step out of line fiscally.It is the reverse of the sinking ship ettiquette as the weakest will be thrown from the lifeboats first.Though to be honest it would be doing them a favour in the long run.

Pity they didnt think about this in the beginning,and it is difficult not to be smug.....well maybe not that difficult.

Is there an instance in which even one anal-yst (A man so focused on his own navel that his head is, paradoxically, up his own arse?) has been proved to have been correct about anything? I don't ask merely to be boorish or troublesome; I merely seek reassurance that our future is not determined by those whose vision is clouded by the shit that is their last tax payer funded lunch.

I think it might be better put that the markets occasionally offer the appearance of rationality - although this is entirely coincidental. I would not generally regard it as a sentient beast.

Watching the trio on the box I could not but help remember this:

Hey PEP, are you in Germany at the mo?
Have the German people realized that the only future in which they keep their AAA rating and a lid on inflation is if they, the Germans, leave the euro.
They will have to pay for the rest but it will cost twice as much if they stay in the euro.
Can they see this yet??

What I have not been able to ascertain is who is buying these bonds? I read somewhere that China has only $100 billion of loose change as the rest of their $3 trilion surplus is being used to prop up their state and the USA has nought, but $15+ trillion debt. Who has these readies?

Your pension fund!!

I do not think anyone with a sound mind will buy them,so Merkel is intent on sorting this out the hard way.She wants to make the eurozone members act within their means,(there is a novel concept)She will enforce fiscal discipline by imposing final approval of all national budgets.Germany is basically taking control....anschluss.Once fiscal discipline has been restored they might start selling eurobonds.

Game on.

The boneheaded and incessant dive to the bottom in all public standards is a central ethos in a non-democratic massive bureaucratic monster like the EU, one only has to look to the Soviet [Communist] tyranical paradigm, for how it eventually turns out.

Apparats in the Soviet era were lavished with perks and special concessions at GUM soviet 'super store' and girls, whatever they fancied.

In Britain, we have a similar caste of arrogant overpaid fools who value their services inordinately.



Not peanuts? Or peanuts? - but we know what you really mean me old son.
Ho ho!

And it gets better.........



Get out, golden handshake, continue working - whats not to like??

Britain, is a Soviet of the Brussels communist bloc.

Jeremy Warner is in full doom mode this morning...





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... aches.html
Bulletins about stocking up on the tinned food and buying a rifle may follow.....

One notes that further political subordination of formerly self-governing peoples is called 'economic governance' or 'fiscal integration'.

So speaks the bureaucratic mind.

Mkts may not always be right and during periods of mania they can be very wrong, but generally the decisions of millions of people outweigh the ideas of a few.

It will be the mkts that bring down the EU, as they are now doing.

From what's public, it appears that Merkel has conceded the principle of euro-bonds. Just not today.

Sandy,

Pension funds should invest our funds wisely. Buying Eurozone bonds is not wise.

On another tack, how will Irish independence nationalists view Merkozy? As legitimate targets?