Dec 07 2011
A crunch-weekend awaits the Brits
News is that British Premier David Cameron will come out fighting at the upcoming EU Summit – for his banking sector. The Brits should hope Cameron is not too determined. If he is, he might end up administering his own political career and the U.K. economy nasty blows this weekend.
If Cameron paints himself in a corner, the U.K. might end up outside the EU. What might initially feel like “good riddance” to the Brits, will very soon turn out to have been the push-on-the-chest that the already-dead British economy needed to topple over and rot.
But, the fact that Britain needs the EU more than the other way around, isn’t the really funny part of this story. The really funny part is that the Brits might (this weekend in Brussels) get nailed by their banking sector for the second time in just a few years.
The first time, we all know what happened – the taxpayer saved the banks from being pulled down by their own greed. The second time will be when Cameron puts up such a fight for his banking sector at the Summit, that the 17 Euro countries turn their backs on him and proceed without Britain to write the rules for a “new EU”.
That’s when the Brits would have been nailed by their banks a second time.
I saved the funniest bit for last. If Cameron came out fighting for a part of his economy with a future (say, the alternative energy sector), that would still have been understandable. But, the banking sector (of every country around the world) is a shrinking beast. Also in Britain. And it will continue to shrink in coming years. Until banks do what they were originally mandated to do. And bankers are grey, little men again, with average IQs, and who rate just below the town preacher in the “trustworthy and honest” rankings. As they did back in the 1960′s.
To come out fighting for the banking sector, is somewhat silly. It somehow shows just how down and out the British economy is.
That’s also what I observe every time I buy the Financial Times and read it after I’ve finished reading my Financial Times Deutschland (FTD). While the FTD has sections on companies, industry, new energies, services sector, manufacturing (actually regular sub-sections on autos, ship-building, machine-building, armaments, pharmaceuticals, solar) and banking, the Financial Times reports on one sector only. Yes, the financial sector. That is, because it has nothing else to report about. The economy reminds of the other island-country down south without a business plan.
Anyway, so now Cameron is gonna come out smokin’ for a lost cause. Boy, I can’t wait for this. And, let’s hope he “gives in” quickly. If he doesn’t, this weekend might well end up terrible for the Brits.