ECB President Mario Draghi (left) and Wolfgang Schauble German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble this afternoon.
Via Bloomberg:
They speak different languages, they come from different backgrounds, yet all have the same message of frustration that’s threatening to redraw the European political map over the next year.
Starting with elections this Sunday in Greece and heading west to Ireland via Britain and Spain, polls show Europeans will vent their anger over issues from widening income disparities and record unemployment to unprecedented immigration.
For Athens pensioner Irini Smyrni, the moment she’d had enough was when her younger daughter lost her job with the government last year. For Dublin florist Nicola Johns, it was when her business fell behind on rent.
“We pay, we pay, we pay,” said Smyrni, 73. “Our homeland unfortunately is taking us backwards — paltry wages, miserable pensions — and we’re looking for something better.”
….Disaffection with what is seen as a ruling elite and a sense of being left behind in an increasingly globalised world are complaints heard across Europe on varying points of the political spectrum as the continent struggles to recover from successive waves of financial and economic crises.
“Political elites have lost track of their citizens, who feel insecure amid all the economic and social pressures,” said Daniela Schwarzer, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Europe program in Berlin. “There’s a growing questioning of the political establishment across Europe.”
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi announced today the latest efforts by his monetary policy makers to foster economic growth in the euro region. The bank plans to inject about 1.1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into the financial system. It’s unlikely to make enough of a difference to deter people from protesting at the ballot box.
Revenge of Disaffected Europe Risks Crisis Sparked in Greece (Bloomberg)
(Reuters)
The photograph with caption: “ECB President Mario Draghi (left) and Wolfgang Schauble German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble this afternoon.” is false and misleading and gives the impression that the ECB and the German government are in lockstep on this.
The photograph is in fact from October 2014 as a reverse Google image search would testify. A little further digging shows the picture was taken at the annual IMF conference in Washington.
The average European citizen’s feeling of being disaffected is contributed to in part by an uninformed media and his or her exposure to commentary from a wide range of outlets which do not necessarily check facts or want to.
Because in reality the people of Ireland have been at all times treated fairly and equitably by our banks, governments, European bureaucrats, Central bankers and European-‘partners’ throughout the crisis right?
Speaking of exposure to information from a “wide range of outlets” – would you be one of those social media Trolls, that the EU shamelessly hired, last year? At the taxpayers expense.
To make sure we were all, on message, with the good news, that comes as a consequence,the incredibly wise governance of our unelected leaders – by any chance?
He is one of those smart, ballsy guys.
I’ll reply to both of the replies to my post by replying to my reply, rather than making the same points twice.
Did either of you read the article? It’s plainly on European citizens feeling disaffected with with the institutional powers and the perceived detachment of their actions to what is going on in their lives.
My post was to highlight that this detachment comes in part form a media which does not fact check and which frequently gets basic facts on the European Union wrong.
Both of the replies were super defensive of Broadsheet and tried to bring in straw man arguments which had little to do with my point. All I ask for is a more responsible media, I’m well up for political debate, but let’s bring facts to the table.
Who I work for has nothing to do with it the fact that Broadsheet have reproduced an image from an event that took place in October of last year and claimed it was taken yesterday. It completely changes the context of the image and of the announcement. But as it is, yes, I’m sitting here in my office in Frankfurt trolling you all.
Schauble was nowhere near the event, he as a representative of a national Government (minister for finance for Germany), has no say in what happens at the ECB’s governing council meeting. The ECB is answerable to the European Parliament, not to individual governments and its policy cannot be affected by government wishes. This is a cornerstone of the ECB’s governance people fail to realise this over and over again. It’s the same reason the the ECB president won’t answer to the Banking Inquiry
For those interested, the man who was sitting beside Draghi yesterday as he made the announcement was the former Portuguese central bank governor and current ECB vice-president Vítor Constâncio (here’s a picture: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/22/european-union-stimulus-gains-us-stock-markets-gold-price-dollar)
You’re one of those guys with a mock TV studio in a room at home, to where you retreat to interview yourself every evening, on the days political events, aren’t you? I bet the Q&A inner monologue is going all day long.
Not yet. I’m still working on my bi-weekly podcast.
Watching what happens after Greek elections closely – as are many others!
Makes “sound financial sense” – after a fashion They need to know how much it going to cost to kick the can down the road again – its called fiscal responsibility or something like that.
Why did they not print Euros 7 years ago like what the British and the Yanks
have done, in effect they missed the boat and Greeks will give them their
answer…..one wonders what old Grump Noonan will do now.
Germans said ‘No’, obviously.
Because we all must take our punishment. *fap* *fap*
Printing more money will never work.
Here in europe we are grumbling and getting on with life as we did after the world wars.
The main problem for those who believe in “Finance” is that the working people hand their money over to “Pension Funds” etc. and thus abdicate from any decisions and let young fund managers do whatever they want with it; and what those young “Whizz Kids” want is a big fat bonus.
They go to corporate shareholder meetings and vot for whatever makes the most bucks for their fund no matter how much damage it causes to us the “Investors” or the world at large.
It is our money that makes them rich and us poor.
Exits sobbing quietly and dreaming of a meaningful discourse from the coffee drinking Broadsheet legal expert.
The Yanks have been printing money with years without
tears….isin’t ironic that the much vaunted Euro is now
falling in value against the main currency that has employed
quantatitave easing for ages ….the Dollar.
I think your comment should read “Without rich american tears” there’s plenty people crying in the “Democratic Republic of America” and some of them have been crying for centuries.
All the recent “No Go Areas in Paris” and “Birmingham is Muslim” stuff is just to prop up the slowly shrinking dollar.
“In the strictest sense of the word, the system of government established by the Constitution was never intended to be a “democracy.” This is evident not only in the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance but in the Constitution itself which declares that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (Article IV, Section 4). Moreover, the scheme of representation and the various mechanisms for selecting representatives established by the Constitution were clearly intended to produce a republic, not a democracy.” (source:http://www.thisnation.com/question/011.html).
We’re running low on life-boats.
Will somebody PLEASE rearrange the deckchairs?
FFS!
Will someone please think of the Illuminati !
Too little, too late.
So should I crack open peoples heads and feast on the gooeyness inside?