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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:02:10 AM

RealityLicks

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If we entered the euro, there would be even fewer goods to be moved by freighters.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:07:50 AM

LadyEllen

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How so RL?

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:09:36 AM

celticlord2112

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quote:

We need the Euro now.

Doesn't that assume the Euro survives?

Some of the economic news I have been reading speculates the Euro and ECB might yet become casualties of the European dimensions of the global credit crunch. To be honest, I have no idea how realistic a scenario that might be, but so far the ECB seems to have left banking rescues to the central banks of the EU member nations--I don't see that as building confidence in the Euro anywhere.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:10:02 AM

Aneirin

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I don't quite know where it comes into his, our currency being worth anything, but it used to in the metal it was made from. Our silver coloured coins were at one time silver, I have a few old shillings which are silver, the old sixpence, that was silver and some other coins. At one time what was a silver coin was the metal silver, what was gold coloured was gold and what was copper was copper. Now, no more, even our copper coloured currency can be picked up with a magnet. Our currency is not even worth it's face value.

Now you may be lucky, some of our currency out there, the copper coloured coins, one pence and two pence is still copper, but it is being replaced as the banks get it back, they are taking copper and replacing it with base metal with a light coating of copper on top to give the impression. You can find these coins by running a magnet over copper coins, they stick, then it's not copper.

Interestingly, if one was to get a quantity of our real copper coins, it is worth more in scrap value than the face value, that coinage stands to move with the metal markets, whereas the new stuff just decays, I have seen rust on a penny.

These copper coins whilst they last hark from a time when our currency was worth the face value, and given todays metal markets, the currency could be a commodity to be bought and sold.

Interestingly, stirling came from 'easterling', the coinage adopted by King Henry the second as being of a reliable high grade of silver, it formerly used in a region of Germany and traded with Britain in exchange for cattle and grain as far back as the twelth century. The king set about to adopt the silver alloy as the standard for English currency and recruited the Easterling silver metal refiners from Germany to create silver coins for England. Easterling silver became stirling silver, and then the currency being made of the stuff came to be called stirling, which is our currency now.

But I agree, ditch stirling, as currency is currency, our stuff is decreasing in value daily, plus having lost it's monetary value in metal, is worth nothing, it is just a unit of something to be paid in and pay in, and it is easier to care for than say chickens.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:15:11 AM

LadyEllen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

quote:

We need the Euro now.

Doesn't that assume the Euro survives?

Some of the economic news I have been reading speculates the Euro and ECB might yet become casualties of the European dimensions of the global credit crunch. To be honest, I have no idea how realistic a scenario that might be, but so far the ECB seems to have left banking rescues to the central banks of the EU member nations--I don't see that as building confidence in the Euro anywhere.

This is indeed a problem CL - the whole thing has been set up with limited centralisation of powers for the ECB.

But right now if we're to change currencies as we must in my opinion, it makes more sense to go with the Euro than with USD

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:22:02 AM

celticlord2112

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quote:

But right now if we're to change currencies as we must in my opinion

How does changing currencies address the immediate economic problems?

In fact, Britain's status as an importer nation would be helped greatly by the decline in the pound.

All changing currencies would likely accomplish is to extend/perpetuate the existing market distortions that make imported goods cheaper than domestic goods. Britain, like the US, has a functioning manufacturing and industrial sector (RL's cited statistics are categorical evidence of that). A falling pound will help that sector in the near and longer term.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:28:25 AM

LadyEllen

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Our trade deficit tells a different tale.

Our manufacturing base is next to nothing compared to other comparable countries. There is no money and we now lack the skills required to rebuild that base.

In the long term yes we really ought to move towards a situation where we can have an export surplus, but in the meantime all this means vast increases in the cost of living or importers going bust and a reduced standard of living because we lack enough food let alone cheaply produced plastic junk.

What you say is true, but are we prepared to face the consequences of continuing with the pound? At the macro level it might make sense given the above caveats about our ability to recover and prosper from our exports in a global recession and in the absence of any capacity to rebuild manufacturing, but at the micro level it means enormous and very real problems for people who choose governments.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:34:50 AM

celticlord2112

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/interestrates/3551387/ECB-cuts-to-2.5pc-and-mulls-printing-money.html

The value of the Euro seems dubious right now, based on news such as this.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:36:18 AM

RealityLicks

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If you want a trade surplus, some importers going to the wall is part and parcel. It's wrong to assume that the pound is a liability, or the many erstwhile supporters of the euro would be in evidence now - like the CBI etc. But they clearly don't agree with LE's views.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:44:39 AM

LadyEllen

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The way to produce a surplus is not by so reducing your imports that the entire economy that relies on those imports is undermined. The way to do it is to increase your exports and gradually replace imports with domestic production.

The problem we have in increasing our exports I have stated, and the Treasury would seem to agree that our export growth potential is very low. Meanwhile our imports are crashing at an alarming rate which will have knock on effects throughout our importer/consumer economy.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:47:46 AM

LadyEllen

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the key is the value of the Euro against other currencies - notably in this instance against Sterling.

the problem is that as the Euro falls against the dollar, the pound is falling against the Euro. the markets are clear, they have most faith in the dollar, less in the euro and still less in the pound.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:51:46 AM

RealityLicks

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

The way to produce a surplus is not by so reducing your imports that the entire economy that relies on those imports is undermined. The way to do it is to increase your exports and gradually replace imports with domestic production.

Says who? The economy does not rely on imports, the guy at Truck Drivers Weekly, that you quoted earlier, does.

quote:

The problem we have in increasing our exports I have stated, and the Treasury would seem to agree that our export growth potential is very low. Meanwhile our imports are crashing at an alarming rate which will have knock on effects throughout our importer/consumer economy.

E

Exports are not simply grommets and there will not be a return to metal-bashing or exporting raw materials like coal. It's about value-added manufacturing, like aerospace and a huge area that you've ignored - education - which earns the country billions.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:51:58 AM

celticlord2112

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quote:

the key is the value of the Euro against other currencies - notably in this instance against Sterling.

Very true. And if the ECB starts "printing money", the value of the Euro will do the deep dive pretty quick. The ECB may have found an alternate solution to your concerns about the relative strength of the pound to the Euro--although one that might just drop the UK in the grease regardless of which currency is used.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 6:53:48 AM

RealityLicks

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quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/interestrates/3551387/ECB-cuts-to-2.5pc-and-mulls-printing-money.html

The value of the Euro seems dubious right now, based on news such as this.

Good article. The ability to control interest rates is key, as ever.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 7:11:13 AM

LadyEllen

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FYI m'dear, the "guy" at International Freighting Weekly, which covers all modes of transport to and from the UK, relies on healthy international trade and employs tens of thousands. Contrary to most people's impressions and excepting that odd case of container ships returning to China near empty, the freight industry relies on exports and imports - there being no such thing as a "backload" in reality.

Since we running a huge trade deficit and almost every product in every shop has been imported here (including milk and dairy products by the way, another thing we're no longer self sufficient in due to the supermarkets price fixing below cost and driving farmers out of business), its a little odd to say our economy doesnt rely on imported goods?

Exporting aerospace? Think again, most of it is owned by foreign companies and the word is that most of it is being shipped off to China or India in the next couple of years. I have a friend in the UK division of Boeing so I hear the buzz on that. Contrary to popular opinion we do not have any monopoly on added value manufacturing and we are under threat there from India, which is turning out 500 engineering graduates for every 1 we produce.

Exporting education? Think again - if the customers have no money due to a global recession, how will they pay? The same goes for all exports as the Treasury forecast denotes and our commentator from the EEF said.

We'd best start government funding for pop bands and authors.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 7:30:56 AM

RealityLicks

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Still not seeing the urgent necessity of switching to the euro in that post, sorry.

Education is worth more to the economy as an export than you seem to imagine. How many Indian graduates come to Britain to study engineering? Greater awareness of what UK plc is might help your level of gloominess. The emerging economies are being persuaded to part with their surpluses in the things we do well, not the things we did yesterday. "Such is the order of things" to quote someone somewhere.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/internationalstudents/story/0,,2171234,00.html

Right, I'm off out to boost the economy. Have fun.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 8:56:34 AM

calamitysandra

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Phoenixpower

with being from a country (germany) who experienced the change from the currency from Deutsche Mark into Euro I can only laugh about the wish to implement the Euro. Today when I go home to germany I am ok with the prices as simply living expenses in UK are ridicioulusly high and so I am fine with the prices over there. But I still do remember and am aware about how much the prices increased when we got the Euro and changing sometimes the currency from Deutsche Mark into Euro it still shocks me at times how expensive it got. In germany I know plenty people who aren't happy that we got the euro, and whilst I was living in Ireland I heard the same song. I do agree that the currency exchange is ridicioulus since quite a while as I realised it when I went to greece in august with 2 service users, but that doesn't make me wish the euro to here as even england would follow the examples from the euro-countries and increase their prices even more. I prefer more the option back to the past currencies how it was before the bloody euro came.

Yes, it seemed like it was the Euro making things more expensive. And while that is true for some instances, foremost eating out, as the change was used as a convenient moment to rise prices, looking back, considering the price developments since the change, I do feel that it was more of a "bump" in the road. Prices were going up anyways. They might have gotten a boost when the Euro came, but the increase would have happened regardless. A bit more slowly perhaps, but no true difference in the end.

Yes, when I convert my grocery bill back into DM, I always get a slight shock, but honestly, I do not feel that the Euro is to blame. We only realise it sharper. The change came fast and sharp, and if we look back, due to the conversion we feel the increase stronger.
It would not have been so obvious if the currency had not changed and the increase would have been a bit more gradual. but the results would have been the same.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/5/2008 9:47:11 AM

Politesub53

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

Even Mandelson isn't clamouring to join the euro tomorrow.

You believe a single word the guy says? Crikey, when even his colleagues dont?

A sneaky, lying, manipulative, corrupt snake like Mandelson shouldnt be trusted, ever. He's been forced out of government twice for his sneaky, lying, manipulative, corrupt ways - and its a travesty that he's back there now at all, let alone as a Lord.

Indeed, if his consummate skills as a sneaky, lying, manipulative, corrupt snake were not so required by the Brown government (that he despises) in their efforts at maintaining control of the party and headlines, he wouldnt be there at all.

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Even Clegg isnt clamouring to join the Euro. Dare i say U-Turn.

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/7/2008 10:14:18 AM

celticlord2112

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/3659788/Euro-membership-does-not-boost-trade.html

Euro membership might not be the cure you seek, at least if this is any guide....

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RE: time for the Euro - 12/7/2008 10:51:20 AM

Politesub53

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

Our trade deficit tells a different tale.

How so ?........ In 2001 the deficit was a record £7.7bn, its now around £4bn. That seems like an improvement to me.

Even Brown isnt so keen on joining at present. Thats means no major party leader is inclined for change.

quote:

However, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman insisted: "Our position has not changed. We have no plans to change our position.
"We see benefits of euro membership but the five economic tests have to be met," he said, referring to tests on economic convergence and other matters set by Brown when he was finance minister under Tony Blair.
Any decision on whether to join the euro "will be based on whether it is in Britain's economic interest," said the spokesman.
Once a highly-charged issue, the euro debate has fallen off the domestic agenda in recent years and now rarely surfaces.
Although Blair was warm to the idea, Brown is seen as being firmly against joining and there is little sign that public opposition has waned.