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Wednesday 17 July 2019

Selmayr OUT - VdL squeaks in by 9 votes

Rejoice - Selmayr is OUT. The Telegraph, having the wool pulled over its eyes, reports 
Martin Selmayr, the German controversial secretary general of the commission, announced he would resign in accordance with Brussels tradition that dictates no two people of the same nationality can hold the EU’s executive’s most powerful posts.
It's rubbish of course. No such restriction applies to the head of the EU's 30,000 strong civil service - a permanent job normally awarded through competition - rather than the undemocratic political appointments of the five Presidents, fourteen Vice-Presidents and scores of Commissioners and their assistants.  The truth is that Selmayr's corrupt appointment by Juncker stuck in the craw of even the EU, so mired itself in corruption that such things normally go almost unnoticed. Politico EU has the true story
The procedure by which Selmayr and his boss, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, engineered his transfer from chief of Juncker’s cabinet to head of the entire Commission secretariat was an act of such chicanery and skulduggery that it stains the record of the entire Commission.

That Selmayr is, like von der Leyen, a German Christian Democrat, made the prospect of his continuing in office a provocation to those of other parties whose support she sought. But it was the nature of his ascent and his argument that the post is a political one that made his departure inevitable.
VdL herself was humiliated by the European Parliament, barely scraping in with just a 9 vote majority. Her 383 fell far short of the minimum of 400 that demonstrates the EP's confidence in the senior unelected functionary. Since she scored only 51% of the vote, we should expect the Remain lobby to call for a second vote - but of course this hypocrisy applies only to the Referendum result.

So the EU have lost a ruthless Machiavelli and gained a semi-competent duffer stained with a record of failure and corruption. Can't be bad.

More Corruption

Zero Hedge reports, in relation to the circumstances that have led to the relentless climb of gold (my emphasis)
Ultimately you are witnessing a massive expropriation of wealth from the middle classes to the wealthiest - 40% of the bank of England's money printing programme benefited the top 5%. These flows obfuscate the real demand and supply dynamics of the market - central banks are the baddest of bad actors. Using printed money to bid up the assets of the rich in order to manage outcomes is an utter perversion of capitalism. It blinds us to the opportunity cost of economic participation - real cost of borrowing, real expected returns. Worse still is that the money they use is created by devaluing taxpayers after tax savings - is effectively like a second tax. What happens when the market starts to fall, will these feckless un-elected central bankers be buying falling stocks? How will taxpayers react to their money being printed to buy assets that are falling? How would taxpayers like if they received a statement indicating how much money has been printed and the amount they have personally provided. This is not a victim-less crime.
There you have it. Not only are most of us victims of Globalism that has left median incomes in the UK still worth less than in 2008, a Globalism that benefits only the 1%, but the whole of QE, carried out in our name and at our cost, has acted mainly to the benefit of that same 1% by inflating asset values. A reckoning will come - and they have been the authors of their own destruction.

36 comments:

DeeDee99 said...

VdL was voted in by 9 votes by a sham Parliament in a confirmatory "election" that had no other alternative candidate. It's getting more like the USSR with every year that passes.

Anonymous said...

And I have heard, confirmation or refutation welcome, that the MEPs' vote was by secret ballot.
So we don't know how they voted,even though the voting records and intentions of parliamentarians is one of the ways the ordinary voter will decide who to vote for in elections.

And still people claim that the EU is democratic.


James Strong

Rossa said...

Bear in mind if we do leave the EU, our MEPs who voted against her will no longer be in the EP. Therefore her ‘majority’ will increase in proportion to the overall number of MEPs left behind.

Cheerful Edward said...

So "European Union Follows European Union's Rules And Procedures" then.

Re QE, the worst and most anti-people asset inflation in the UK is that of residential property. This country's record in policing its mass acquisition as a haven by global kleptocrats is woeful.

There's no will, in a party of government, to a good extent financed by them to change, however.

In some countries, e.g. Denmark, only Danes are permitted to own its soil.

Mark said...

@Cheerful

You think there's been no QE in the EU?!

Housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain?

"EU follows EU rules and procedures"

See DeeDee99 above.

Cheerful Edward said...

Mark. The Speaker of the House of Commons is also elected by secret ballot, for similar and equally obvious reasons, to those for secrecy in the one to which Dee Dee refers.

I was agreeing with Raedwald in general about QE. It is very dangerous medicine, arguably worse than the ailment. I conjecture as to the extent to which dirty foreign money has pumped up property prices in the UK, as against general credit policy and then QE, however. Yes, the European Union is embroiled in this too, along with the US.

The UK's housing bubble began with Lawson's "economic miracle", where lax credit, secured against property, was used to replace confidence based on job security. That laxity involved ever higher ratios of loans-to-salary, with the results now all too familiar to us. The position in Ireland was similar, I read.

Raedwald said...

Roland Freisler also followed all the legal 'Rules and Procedures' when he sent scores of children to the Fallbeil. I keep telling you, laws can be evil and corrupt as well as benign and beneficial - it's not 'law' that counts, but justice, fairness and equity.

Something of which all those connected with the EU and most of the EU's purblind supporters are in utter ignorance.

Cheerful Edward said...

Yes, Raedwald, I'm not arguing the contrary, but your example is plain silly, given the narrow limits of the Lisbon Treaty.

Tory employment law is pretty immoral and evil, for instance. It legalises, by statute, the breach of common law employment contracts by employers. All that they need do is to follow "procedure", that is "consultation" box-ticking, simply saying how you intend to tear up the Ts&Cs before you actually do. It also severely restricts the access to justice for employees. There's no end to it.

My main point is that secret ballots among MPs are UK policy too for similar appointments.

Mark said...

@Cheerful

In the case of the EU we are talking about the rulers, however many there are and however they are titled.

This politburo decides things and the "parliament" is just a rubber stamp. The people have no say whatsoever which is the whole raison d'etre of the EU.

The speaker of the house is in no way comparable to the numerous EU "presidents". To cite the speaker in this way as some sort of justification for secrecy on the EU is a straw man of the most blatant kind.

Ditto QE. Lawson's "economic miracle" BTW came about when he tried to shadow the Mark which resulted in artificially low interest rates. The subsequent higher rates were a painful necessary correction

Ireland (and Greece and Spain and Portugal.....) had an artificially low rate forced on it. Control of interest rates had been ceded to Germany as had economic policy. They're fucked and the fatherland doesn't care.

The Euro-Titanic is sinking. Neptune himself on the bridge wouldn't be able to do anything. How Neptune is made captain is irrelevant.

Sobers said...

"but the whole of QE, carried out in our name and at our cost, has acted mainly to the benefit of that same 1% by inflating asset values."

While this is indeed correct, I suspect you'd have liked the alternative even less - the wholesale bankruptcy of the banking system, its entire collapse, as its entirely based on debt secured on asset values. If the banking system went into meltdown (as was quite possible in 2007/8) then the poor would suffer massively, more so than the rich as they have less resilience built into their lives.

What was done with QE looks , with hindsight, as favouring the 1% by maintaining the status quo. What it was actually doing was favouring everyone by maintaining the status quo, because the alternative would have been far worse for everyone, rich and poor.

Cheerful Edward said...

The rulers of the European Union are the twenty-seven heads of national governments in the Council. The civil servants, such as U vd L answer to them.

If the Parliament were really just a rubber-stamping agency, then why did it rightly throw out TTIP, against the wishes of the negotiators? Incidentally, the little UK alone will have to bend over and take far worse terms than that for any kind of deal with the US, naturally.

And why did it very nearly reject this candidate? Why did Raedwald write an article suggesting that it likely would?

Dave_G said...


I don't know why the poor should suffer in an economic collapse. If the debt cannot be repaid then the creditors should stand the loss in the same way as people lose when any company go bust. Nice and conveniently the people are made to pay no matter who's fault it is - the banks are never the ones to lose out. Banks seem ok about lending to anyone and everyone on the basis of ursury rates for the more risky customers so the should reap what they sow.

I've harped on about the banks for decades and constantly bemoan the fact that they aren't taken to task often enough nor are their motives and actions discussed openly enough in forums (like this) - it's as if they enjoy some form of auto-immunity.

But maybe it's because if you dig deep enough - in fact you don't have to go that far to find it - you come across a problem (with banks) that no-one even dares to discuss (or is allowed to).

Mark said...

@Cheerful

So what is the EU?

Is it a nation, an empire, a trading block?

What are YOU describing specifically?

"The rulers of the EU are the 27 heads of national governments in the council"

What are they "ruling" exactly?

Why does the EU need an army, a flag and an anthem. Why does it need citizenship? Why does it need a single currency?

I know damn well what I voted to leave. What did you vote to stay in?

Cheerful Edward said...

Dave, anyone who has a mortgage-backed loan should read up on the relevant law.

If your lender goes bust, then as it stands, then their creditors can claim the asset against which your loan is secured. Your house, that is. Yes, I know, it's no fault of the borrower, but that's the deal.

I don't think that there has been such a case recently in the UK, and we can hope that the Right To Peaceful Enjoyment Of Possessions under ECHR and HRA1998 would now prevent its success, but it is as well to be aware.

Mark, the EU is a unique entity, unprecedented in history. It's pretty good, really.

Elby the Beserk said...

Rossa said...
Bear in mind if we do leave the EU, our MEPs who voted against her will no longer be in the EP. Therefore her ‘majority’ will increase in proportion to the overall number of MEPs left behind.
========================================================

Bear in mind, Rossa, that when we do, we won't give a flying duck.

Mark said...

@Cheerful

OK then in what way is it unique? You are making an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary evidence would be needed but any evidence would be a start.

PS if you haven't paid for it, it ain't yours.

Cheerful Edward said...

Elby, you are wrong.

Farage said tha event after the UK had left the European Union, he would devote the rest of his life to trying to destroy it.

The Americans, or US-supremacist UK thralls, posting on threads such as these will continue to care too.

More importantly, so will tens of millions of pro-European Union people in the UK too.

Oh, Mark, cite another example of a voluntary association of twenty-eight nations, of half-a-billion people, agreeing to pool sovereignty in limited areas, and where the members are perfectly free to leave?

There isn't one, is there?

Cheerful Edward said...

PS, that would apply even if you only still owed £1, Mark. You could in principle lose the house completely on the 364th day of the 20th year of a twenty-year mortgage.

Mark said...

@Cheerful

Er, the UN?

That's the propaganda that poor misguided fools like you have swallowed hook, line, sinker, rod, reel and copy of angling times.

Could we have some actual evidence that the EU is what you say?

JS said...

@Cheerful
"Farage said tha event after the UK had left the European Union, he would devote the rest of his life to trying to destroy it."

What Mr Farage decides to do with his time is up to him. I am grateful to him for providing the circumstances in which the Referendum could take place but, given the opportunity, I would have voted Leave even if he (or Johnson or any other figure Leavers are supposed to slavishly follow), had never existed.

Dave_G said...


Mark, cite another example of a voluntary association of twenty-eight nations, of half-a-billion people, agreeing to pool...

Cite One example where the population of any country were offered the opportunity to vote on joining what the EU has morphed into.

The EU has been built on lies and subterfuge and the people now recognise the fact and want change or, as some voted, to simply leave.

The EU REFUSES to acknowledge people's concerns let alone act on them. And you call that 'democracy'?

Stephen J said...

There is nothing unique about the EU.

Nasty anti-democratic dictatorships have been with us since time immemorial.

Cheerful Edward said...

What, ones that prorogue their Parliament, so that a PM chosen by just 0.2% of the population can do whatever he likes you mean, righty?

The European Union is nothing like that.

Stephen J said...

@Ted:

It will depend on who becomes PM, but one had 50.8% of the vote, 47,000 voted and the other one had 55.7% where just over 60,000 voted.

I don't know where you get your figures from?

John Vasc said...

If you want to see what mass vituperation of UvdL really looks like, just glance at the German readers' comments pages on die Welt's newspaper website. I have never seen such a massive collective wave of scornful contempt as on those pages. Even the despised Juncker never achieved such a standard of rank hatred in Germany.

Die Welt's editors have even posted warnings that nobody is allowed to 'insult or offend' UvdL, and that they will actively bar posters and remove posts that do that.
Reading the comments that have got through, one can only wonder what the level of insults of the barred and removed posts must be.

But then the German press is 'selber schuld' for having naively suggested that vdL's removal from Berlin is a blessing, as she was utterly incompetent - but that (with a curious leap of journalistic faith whose logic has palpably escaped the readers) she will be absolutely fine as the leader of the EU.

Dave_G said...


CE - you constantly refuse to acknowledge the principle of voting.

Just as a majority of those that were allowed/permitted/could be bothered to vote actually voted leave means we should (in any democratic world) actually leave.

If people were bothered enough to join the Conservative Party then THEY would be entitled to vote and only THEIR votes make a difference.

If only the EU could be bothered to allow people to vote on THEIR existence we could resolve this issue of who wanted in and who wanted out - wouldn't we?

If the Labour Party can use 'members-only' votes to get the Magic Grandad into his position of leadership what's wrong with others doing the same? More specifically, why don't the EU offer this to us?

Cheerful Edward said...

Yes, the UK should leave the European Union. There is no place in the most enlightened, civilised project that the world has ever seen for what this country has now become.

But as for democracy, let's remember what the Greeks, who invented it, did recently. Grexit, Greece’s exit from the eurozone, never happened, in the end. It nearly did. Greece even voted in a referendum, to do it. But the Prime Minister realised it was mad, so he ignored the result. And what did the Greek people do, about this attack on democracy, that precious thing, that they invented? They realised he was right, it was mad. So he held an election and they voted him back in with an increased majority. A little Greek myth there, for Boris Johnson to enjoy, even if this one does have the disadvantage of being true.

Mark said...

Yes, the Greeks were "enlightened", good and hard.

Anonymous said...

There are so many things wrong about low deposit interest rates, however by far the worst is our youngsters have no incentive to save.

I still remember when I looked at my post office savings book and saw they'd given me money. Not a lot because it I was 13 and it had a low balance, but it was enough for me to want more of the same.

There's a whole generation in Japan who don't know what deposit interest is - and they've developed the attitude of spend it while you've got it.

Long term there's no incentive to save and so no real reason for them to want to maintain the status quo.

Yes they had to do something to stop a financial meltdown, yet that was caused in part by banks having to keep a portion of their reserves in triple A rated bonds. To seek a better return they invested in repackaged mortgages that were rated, by a rating agency as triple A.

In short the rules were too restrictive and have become even more constraining, mainly by politicians who haven't a clue about banking.

Now younger people have to go through an odious vetting process to get a business loan - even worse if they want a mortgage.

Result is it's easier to crowd fund, whether direct or through an intermediary, so making banks less worthwhile. And despite talk about regulating these funding circles, new methods are coming up to bypass banks.

At some point they will have to cave to market forces - and when they do they'll discover all they've achieved since 2007 is to delay the inevitable

Cheerful Edward said...

Greece is just as free as the UK to leave the European Union if its people or government so choose, Mark.

Ah, but all those people fleeing the US/UK-generated havoc would not have been able to take advantage of the Schengen agreement to leave Greece, and to make their way to Germany and to Sweden then, would they?

How would you personally allocate the blame shares, between PASOK-style Greek socialism, and the European Union, for Greece's problems, incidentally?

Fearful Ned said...

Why waste your time arguing with the straw man?
His half truths aren’t worth the bother.

We will be gone from the EU project by 2020.

You can get along just fine without us. And without our money too.

Meanwhile, as you eagerly await the resurrection of the LiB Dems and the election of a fully rejoin the Eu party to government of the uk, we shall be spending our billions on ourselves for a change.

P.s. we aren’t interested in the imminent collapse of Deutsche Bank. So please don’t send any begging letters. It’s a Hun problem. And a French one too.

Mark said...

@Cheerful

Regarding Greece I seem to recall answering this question in a previous post. Pointless then, pointless repeating.

Greece is free to leave, of course it is. Leave or stay, I don't care, not our problem.

Middle para. You seem to think this is some sort of knockout argument. Not sure what it is but little you say makes sense.

Interesting that Turkey has told the EU to go fuck itself re drilling for gas off Cyprus.

John Brown said...

CE : “Incidentally, the little UK alone will have to bend over and take far worse terms than that for any kind of deal with the US, naturally.”

The EU likes to say that it is better to be “large” when negotiating a trade deal.

The problem is that this does not work for the EU because it is composed of 28 different nations each with their own economic interests and there is no mechanism to compensate those areas or countries which lose out in any deal which may negotiated for the benefit of its more influential members.

Ireland may experience such an issue with the EU’s Mercursor trade deal.

The UK will be in a far better position outside of the EU to negotiate trade deals which benefit our type of economy and in addition not find its market and institutions traded away by the EU in return for reduced tariffs on German cars or French cheese.

Cheerful Edward said...

FN, Just a point on the eight billion or so, that the UK contributes to the European Union each year. That is the net, of the nominal one percent gross of GDP that members forward.

Crime in the UK, which is at twice the pro-rata EU average rate costs the UK about ten times that amount, so reducing it to that level would save us five times those contributions.

Tony Blair's slogan "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" showed a sane sense of priority, and his governments enjoyed notable success on the point, with marked reductions in rates.

The Tory-TBP-Establishment media seem virtually silent on it these days, don't they?

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Using reasoned argument with bonkers Ted is like giving medicine to a corpse. There are none so blind as those that will not see.

Mark said...

"Like giving medicine to a corpse"

My thoughts on giving money to the EU