Tag Archives: Brexit

ECB Blows €400bn on “Brexit Black Friday” for Bank Bailouts, by Wolf Richter

Here’s a story that, if true (and Wolf Richter is generally very careful about what he posts), deserves a lot more attention than it’s getting. Brexit may have served as the excuse for a huge back-door bailout of European banks by the European Central Bank. From Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Dealing with a Financial Crisis under cover of Brexit Chaos

Remember TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the US Congress approved to bail out banks and other companies during the Financial Crisis? $700 billion were authorized, later reduced to $475 billion. The Treasury eventually dispersed $432 billion. I bring this up because the ECB bailed out the European banks with more than TARP, in just one day: on Brexit Black Friday.

The ECB saw what was happening to the shares of the largest banks on that propitious day. It saw a blooming financial crisis:

Top UK Banks:

HSBC, the apparent winner in this fiasco, perhaps because of its exposure to Asia, -1.4%
Barclays: -17.7%
Royal Bank of Scotland: -18.0%
Lloyds Banking Group: -21.0%

Top German Banks:

Deutsche Bank: -15.9% to €13.25, down 59% from April last year, possibly on the way to zero.
Commerzbank: -13.6%, to €6.20. The German government still owns nearly 16% of it as a result of the bailout during the Financial Crisis.
The third-largest German bank, KfW, is a state-owned institution, so taxpayers are automatically on the hook.

Top French banks:

BNP Parisbas: -17.4%
Credit Agricole: -14% (down 43% since last July).
Societe Generale: -20.6%. It apparently needs to find another low-level “rogue trader” to blame.

The fiasco that happened to the Spanish and Italian banks was so enormous that it sent stock markets into their largest one-day plunges on record, of over 12% [ Brexit Blowback Hits Italian and Spanish Banks].

The Stoxx 600 banking index, which covers the largest European banks, plunged 14.5% on Friday. It’s down 29.3% year-to-date, 42% from its 52-week high, and 76% from its all-time high in May 2007 before the Financial Crisis and the euro debt crisis knocked the hot air out of the banks.

But to keep panic at bay, Brexit and the resulting political crisis are used to cover up the blooming financial crisis.

And what a political crisis it is, not just for the UK, but for the EU. No one knows how this will end up. Businesses need certainty. They need to know what money they’re going to use next year, and what the trade and legal frameworks will be. They like to take those things for granted. But now, in the EU, no one can take anything for granted anymore.

Companies with cross-border operations – this includes all major banks and brokerages – have gigantic headaches, and the UK’s 2.2 million financial-sector employees are fidgeting on the edge of their chairs. It might take a couple of years for the UK to actually exit the EU, if it even happens at all, so there’s a little breathing room.

But where there’s apparently no longer any breathing room is with banks, and the ECB went into panic mode.

With bank stocks collapsing on Brexit Black Friday, the frazzled folks at the ECB decided it was high time to start bailing out the banks – and not dabble at the margins, but pull out the whatever-it-takes money-printing machine, and do so under the cover of Brexit chaos when no one was supposed to pay attention.

On Friday, the ECB pulled a huge magic trick, larger than TARP. Under one of its alphabet-soup programs – long-term refinancing operations (LTRO) – it handed teetering banks $399.3 billion, or $444 billion.

To continue reading: ECB Blows €400bn on “Brexit Black Friday” for Bank Bailouts

Brexit Is Just The Beginning: A Tidal Wave Of Popular Revolt Against The Ruling Elites, by Darrell Delamaide

Brexit is just the beginning of the European unraveling. From Darrell Delamaide at marketwatch.com:

Now that Britain has done the unthinkable and voted to leave the European Union, the critics are ruthless in their condemnation of Prime Minister David Cameron for his “irresponsible act” in calling the referendum in the first place.

As if it were his fault.

As if he was responsible for the bloated Brussels bureaucracy and undemocratic governance structure in the EU.

As if he were to blame for the domination of an unequal union by a German chancellor responsive and accountable only to her own domestic political concerns.

Yes, Cameron will step down, as political accountability in a parliamentary system demands. He miscalculated and lost big time, staking his political future on a Remain vote.

It was Martin Wolf, the prestigious columnist for the Financial Times, who last month labeled the referendum on a British exit from the EU — widely known as Brexit – as “the most irresponsible act by a British government in my lifetime.”

The nerve of the leader of one of the world’s oldest democracies to actually let the voting public decide the future of the nation.

Cameron surely would have been much smarter to follow the lead of the political elites in other countries and to ignore the rising hostility to a union that seems to be stifling progress rather than increasing prosperity for all.

Instead, he committed the unforgivable sin of allowing democracy to function, a debate to be held, and voters to choose.

In doing so, Cameron has opened a Pandora’s box of insurgency against the political elite in Europe.

The British vote in favor of leaving the EU will embolden euroskeptic forces in other European countries to demand their own referendums or to win sufficient support in their parliaments to break with Brussels if it cannot implement fundamental reforms.

If it had not been Cameron in Britain, it would have been another leader in another country, because the forces hostile to Europe were going to blow the lid off that box sooner or later.

Another hoary establishment mouthpiece, the New York Times, joined the chorus of criticism this week, proclaiming in a headline that with the referendum, Cameron “faces problem of his own making.”

Could it not just as easily read that Brussels faces a problem of its own making? That German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a problem of her own making?

Financial markets are throwing a colossal tantrum because investment banks and other big market players placed their Brexit bets wrong.

But investors had better get used to a lot of volatility because Brexit is just the beginning.

A restless, beaten-down public has drawn the first blood in a rebellion against a neoliberal economic orthodoxy committed to globalization that has sucked the life out of whole communities and blighted the future of a generation.

To continue reading: Brexit Is Just The Beginning: A Tidal Wave Of Popular Revolt Against The Ruling Elites

George Washington: The Original Brexit Gansta, from The Burning Platform

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClwV7LgUkAILgYS.jpg

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/06/25/george-washington-the-original-brexit-gangsta/

Brexit: Individualism > Nationalism > Globalism, by Jeff Deist

In general, the smaller the government and the territory it governs, the smaller the tyranny. From Jeff Deist at mises.org:

Decentralization and devolution of state power is always a good thing, regardless of the motivations behind such movements.

Hunter S. Thompson, looking back on 60s counterculture in San Francisco, lamented the end of that era and its imagined flower-child innocence:

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Does today’s Brexit vote, win or lose, similarly mark the spot where the once-inevitable march of globalism begins to recede? Have ordinary people around the world reached the point where real questions about self-determination have become too acute to ignore any longer?

Globalism, championed almost exclusively by political and economic elites, has been the dominant force in the West for a hundred years. World War I and the League of Nations established the framework for multinational military excursions, while the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank set the stage for the eventual emergence of the US dollar as a worldwide reserve currency. Progressive government programs in Western countries promised a new model for universalism and peace in the aftermath of the destruction of Europe. Human rights, democracy, and enlightened social views were now to serve as hallmarks of a post-monarchical Europe and rising US.

But globalism was never liberalism, nor was it intended to be by its architects. As its core, globalism has always meant rule by illiberal elites under the guise of mass democracy. It has always been distinctly anti-democratic and anti-freedom, even as it purported to represent liberation from repressive governments and poverty.

Globalism is not, as its supporters claim, simply the inevitable outcome of modern technology applied to communication, trade,and travel. It is not “the world getting smaller.” It is, in fact, an ideology and worldview that must be imposed by statist and cronyist means. It is the civic religion of people named Clinton, Bush, Blair, Cameron, and Lagarde.

Yes, libertarians advocate unfettered global trade. Even marginally free trade has unquestionably created enormous wealth and prosperity for millions around the world. Trade, specialization, and an understanding of comparative advantage have done more to relieve poverty than a million United Nations or International Monetary Funds.

But the EU, GATT, WTO, NAFTA, TPP, and the whole alphabet soup of trade schemes are wholly illiberal impediments masquerading as real commercial freedom. In fact, true free trade occurs only in the absence of government agreements. The only legislation required is a unilateral one-sentence bill: Country X hereby eliminates all import duties, taxes, and tariffs on all Y goods imported from country Z.

To continue reading: Brexit: Individualism > Nationalism > Globalism

Was This The Deciding Factor For Brits To Vote “Leave”? by Tyler Durden

Take a look at the graph. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While the blame for today’s historic moment in the collapse of crony capitalism could be laid at many feet – from Brussels totalitarianism to Cameron and Osborne’s scaremongering blowback – one look at the charts and it becomes pretty clear when exactly the inflection point occurred…

April 22nd, Obama wrote his “Stay or screw the special relationship” Op-Ed followed by his apology tour visit.

It appears The Brits don’t like being told what to do by other nations’ leaders…

And then there is this little know fact…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-24/was-deciding-factor-brits-vote-leave

Brexit is Just What the Dr. Ordered, by Peter Schiff

Brexit will save Janet Yellen and the Fed from a decision to raise interest rates for a long time. From Peter Schiff at europac.com:

Janet Yellen should send a note of congratulations to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the British politicians most responsible for pushing the Brexit campaign to a successful conclusion. While she’s at it she should also send them some fruit baskets, flowers, Christmas cards, and a heartfelt “thank you.“ That’s because the successful Brexit vote, and the uncertainty and volatility it has introduced into the global markets, will provide the Federal Reserve with all the cover it could possibly want to hold off on rate increases in the United States without having to make the painful admission that domestic economic weakness remains the primary reason that it will continue to leave rates near zero.

For months the corner that the Fed has painted itself into has gotten smaller and smaller. It continues to say that rate hikes will be appropriate if the data suggests the economy is strong. Then its representatives continually cite (arguably bogus) statistics that suggest a strengthening economy, which cause many to speculate that rate hikes are indeed on the horizon. But then at the last minute the Fed conjures a temporary reason why it can’t raise rates “right now,” but stresses that they remain committed to doing so in the near future. But each time they conduct this pantomime, they lose credibility. Sadly, Fed officials are discovering that their supply of credibility is not infinite, even among those who would like to cut them a great deal of slack.

But the Brexit vote saves them from all this unpleasantness. Now when critics question the Fed’s unwillingness to deliver on the suggested rate hikes, given what they believe to be a strong economy, all the Fed needs to do is point to the “uncertainty” that will be in play now that the world’s fifth largest economy is disengaging from the European Union. And since this process is bound to be long, messy, and fraught with uncertainties (as there is no precedent for a country leaving the EU), this will be a handy excuse that the Fed will be able to rely on for years.

Brexit could also place severe strains and uncertainties on the global currency markets. The fear of financial losses could encourage investors to seek safe haven assets like gold and, at least for now, the U.S. dollar. Given that there is already much concern that the dollar is valued too highly against most currencies, and that this has created imbalances in the global economy, any surge in the dollar that results from Brexit may have to be fought by the Federal Reserve through lower interest rates and quantitative easing. This would rule out the potentially dollar-strengthening interest rate hikes that they supposedly planned on delivering. So as far as Janet Yellen is concerned, the British have given her the gift that keeps on giving.

To continue reading: Brexit is Just What the Dr. Ordered

Brexit = Death of the Technocrats, by Michael Krieger

The technocrats were never as smart as they thought they were, and now everybody knows it. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

– J. R. R. Tolkien

What transpired last night in the United Kingdom represented one of the most extraordinary expressions of democracy in my lifetime. When faced with an event of such monumental significance, it’s difficult to pick any particular direction for a post like this. I have so many thoughts running through my mind and so many angles I could potentially address, it’s simply impossible to do them all justice. As such, I’ve decided to focus on one very meaningful implication of Brexit: death of the technocrats.

To start, I want to dive into one of the more interesting controversies from the weeks leading up to the vote. What I’m referring to is the statement made by Vote Leave’s Michael Grove regarding “experts.”

From the Telegraph:

On Friday night, during an interview on Sky News about the EU, Faisal Islam challenged the Justice Secretary to name a single independent economic authority that thought Brexit was a good idea. Mr Gove’s response was defiant.

“I’m glad these organizations aren’t on my side,” he said. “I think people in this country have had enough of experts.”

Mr Islam spluttered incredulously. People in this country, he repeated, “have had enough of experts?”

Mr Gove stood his ground. Yes, he said, people in this country had had enough of experts “saying that they know what is best”. Mr Gove had “faith in the British people”. The so-called experts, clearly, did not.

For his words, Mr. Gove was attacked relentlessly. His language was described as dangerous, and he was scolded for its supposed anti-intellectualism. The “very smart people” issuing these condemnations did so in their typical self-satisfied, smug manner. Nonetheless, Michael Gove was absolutely correct in his assessment, and in this post I will detail precisely why.

First of all, what is an “expert?” From what I can gather this term is bestowed upon someone with an advanced degree who has successfully maneuvered him or herself into a position of prominence within government, a think tank, central banking or academia.

As someone who worked on Wall Street for a decade, I was constantly surrounded by people with advanced degrees from the most prestigious institutions. I also know that your degree means absolutely nothing the moment you walk in that door for the first day of work. You enter a place filled with people who have battling it out for years if not decades in their profession of choice, and the only thing that matters now is performance. If you don’t perform you’re gone, and nobody’s gonna care about the long sting of letters next to your name.

The world of politics, government and central banking famously and problematically does not work this way. Look around you at all the discredited “thought leaders” who continue to be paraded around on television, and who still advise Presidents and Prime Ministers the world over. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis no changing of the guard was permitted. Sure we were given a fresh face with Barack Obama, but his advisers didn’t change. He immediately hired both Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, and that’s the moment I knew he was a gigantic fraud. To summarize, the exact same people who ruined the world bailed themselves out, avoided all accountability and continue to call the shots. These are the men and women we know as “the experts.”

To continue reading: Brexit = Death of the Technocrats

Bravo Brexit! by David Stockman

You didn’t think SLL would close out tonight’s posting without some Brexit articles, did you? From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

At long last the tyranny of the global financial elite has been slammed good and hard. You can count on them to attempt another central bank based shock and awe campaign to halt and reverse the current sell-off, but it won’t be credible, sustainable or maybe even possible.

The central banks and their compatriots at the EC, IMF, White House/Treasury, OECD, G-7 and the rest of the Bubble Finance apparatus have well and truly over-played their hand. They have created a tissue of financial lies; an affront to the very laws of markets, sound money and capitalist prosperity.

So there will be payback, clawback and traumatic deflation of the bubbles. Plenty of it, as far as the eye can see.

On the immediate matter of Brexit, the British people have rejected the arrogant rule of the EU superstate and the tyranny of its unelected courts, commissions and bureaucratic overlords.

As Donald Trump was quick to point out, they have taken back their country. He urges that Americans do the same, and he might just persuade them.

But whether Trumpism captures the White House or not, it is virtually certain that Brexit is a contagious political disease. In response to today’s history-shaking event, determined campaigns for Frexit, Spexit, NExit, Grexit, Italxit, Hungexit and more centrifugal political emissions will next follow.

Smaller government—–at least in geography—–is being given another chance. And that’s a very good thing because more localized democracy everywhere and always is inimical to the rule of centralized financial elites.

The combustible material for more referendums and defections from the EU is certainly available in surging populist parties of both the left and the right throughout the continent. In fact, the next hammer blow to the Brussels/German dictatorship will surely happen in Spain’s general election do-over on Sunday (the December elections resulted in paralysis and no government).

When the polls close, the repudiation of the corrupt, hypocritical lapdog government of Prime Minister Rajoy will surely be complete. And properly so; he was just another statist in conservative garb who reformed nothing, left the Spanish economy buried in debt and gave false witness to the notion that the Brussels bureaucrats are the saviors of Europe.

So the common people of Europe may be doubly blessed this week with the exit of both David Cameron and Mariano Rajoy. Good riddance to both.

At the same time, the anti-Brussels parties of both the left (Podemos) and the right (Ciudadanos) are certain to make further gains. But even then, the Spanish government will remain splintered and paralyzed, leaving no government strong enough or willing enough to execute Brussels’s inevitable dictates in the event that drastically over-valued Spanish bond market goes into a tailspin and requires another EU intervention.

And that’s the next leg of the Brexit storm. To wit, sovereign bond prices throughout Europe have been lifted artificially skyward by the financial snake-charmers of Brussels and the ECB. The massive rally in Spain’s 10-year bond after Draghi’s “whatever it takes” ukase was not due to Spain becoming more credit worthy or the fact that its unemployment rate has dropped from 26% to a mere 20%.

To continue reading: Bravo Brexit!

Sanity! by Robert Gore

From SLL, “You Say You Want a Devolution?” 4/29/16:

The most important election this year is the British referendum June 23 on EU membership. The EU has followed the US’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and Northern Africa and has been unable to deal with the refugee and terrorist blowback from those policies. It has no strategy for resolving the issues stemming from the debt of its de facto bankrupt members, other than have the ECB buy it. Growth has been smothered by taxes, regulations, cronyism, and monetary idiocy. European youth have the “opportunity” to pay some of the world’s highest tax rates to fund the world’s most generous welfare state benefits. Those looking for other opportunities—private sector jobs, leaving home, starting families, building wealth—must look elsewhere.

Why would Great Britain want to plight its troth with this gang of incompetents? Why would anyone think it can’t do better by going it alone? These are questions the political establishments in Europe, Great Britain, and the US would rather not have asked, much less have to answer. The animating impulse behind the Brexit movement is one no political power can acknowledge—the desire for more freedom from that political power. Does life become more or less free for the British if they subject themselves to cabbage regulations of 26,911 words? Individuals generally have more of a say in a smaller, closer governmental unit than a larger, more remote one. For anyone living in Great Britain, both literally and figuratively it’s a shorter trip to London than it is to Brussels.

At least the British have a chance to decide this question by a peaceful political process. In the US, smaller political subdivisions have no way to opt out, and this type of restriction characterizes political arrangements in much of the rest of world, leaving violence as the only way to sunder them. In that respect, the non-secession stricture needs urgent reconsideration. Centralization is collapsing under its own weight, discouraging its many proponents not at all. A decentralizing reversal will not be sufficient to restore freedom, but it will be necessary. Almost certainly that reversal will be accompanied by chaotic violence, as current arrangements leave no other choice.

Today’s behemoth governments secure few advantages to their productive and honest citizens, and exact myriad and substantial costs. If the collapse of centralization is accompanied by balkanization and devolution, then among the many smaller political subdivisions, enclaves devoted to liberty, limited government, and individual rights become real possibilities, provided they can secure their territories. Such enclaves of freedom would be havens for the productive and honest, at the forefront of innovation, economic progress, quality of life, and political expression. Smaller can be far more beautiful, peaceful, and prosperous than the current blobocracy.

The Brexit vote is more important than the US presidential election because whoever wins in November will be chained to the failing US government, while the British have an opportunity to shed some of their chains. Regardless of who wins in the US, the government will not relinquish its resources, power, or corruption. Centralization has advanced so far and so destructively that every expression or potential expression of a revolutionary desire for devolution—the transfer of power to lower levels and smaller subdivisions—is to be welcomed, be it Brexit or other countries leaving the EU, various separatist movements within countries, or mass disobedience to the dictates of centralized governments. As the Brexit vote and electoral insurgencies in the US and Europe make clear, the underlying pressures continue to build. Something’s got to give, and when it does, decentralization and devolution will give those seeking liberty a rare opportunity to build the kind of society they’ve always envisioned.

The tectonic shift of our times is the subduction of the decentralization plate under the command and control plate. Yesterday’s Brexit vote amounts to the first in what will be a series of earthquakes. SLL had enthusiastically, and erroneously, given that first earthquake designation to Greece’s “Oxi,” or No, vote last July on the EC, ECB, and IMF Troika’s debt proposals (“Oxi! Greece’s 9.0 Earthquake”), but the vote was squelched as its leaders buckled. Greece’s debt problems were papered over with yet another doomed-to-fail solution that guarantees a larger and more insolvable problem in the near future.

The European powers will try, but the Brexit vote will be much harder to subvert. Command and control, as embodied by the EU and every other supranational governing institution—and every national government—is under mortal stress, doomed by its massive failures and its incompatibility with the demands of human survival. The proponents of staying in the EU weren’t even saying to the British: give us one more chance and we’ll get it right. They were saying: stay with us and we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing wrong. Who accepts such a manifestly idiotic bargain? The wonder is that the vote was close, but the fear-mongering status quo mounted a ferocious and extraordinarily mendacious campaign.

The vote will hasten the EU’s eventual demise, but the biggest loser may turn out to be the US government. It pushed hard for a European union at the end of World War II and has promoted it ever since (Obama did his own cause more harm than good by telling the British how to vote). The EU was to be America’s one stop vassal, much tidier than trying to herd all of Europe’s cats. Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal, a house organ for US unipolarity, headlined, “U.S. Worries ‘Brexit’ Will Dent Its Clout.” The government is right to worry. The confederated empire will be much harder to maintain if the EU dissolves, especially with its other European pillar, NATO, under attack from Donald Trump.

The mainstream media may be loath to admit it, we’ll see, but the Trump and Sanders insurgencies, and the gathering strength of various European nationalist movements, stem from the same impetus as the Brexit vote. Trump was quick to capitalize, saying the British were taking back their country and Americans would do the same by electing him. Devolution is a messy process, but as one gang of statists likes to say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Whether or not Trump is elected, devolution is an unstoppable centrifugal force and will have its day. That realization did not animate the British vote, but they just put themselves in a far better position to adapt to that reality than their continental compatriots.

The British people are to be congratulated for rejecting fear, embracing the future, and voting for sanity.

FROM A SANER TIME

TGP_photo 2 FB

AMAZON

KINDLE

NOOK

 

EU Basics – Your Guide to the UK Referendum on EU Membership, by Richard A Werner

This may seem like it’s a little late, what with the British vote on the EU already underway. However, it does a nice job of skewering the EU, always a worthy endeavor, and gives a good history of the EU, from its roots as essentially an American project. From Richard A. Werner at professorwerner.wordpress.com:

The British people should be clear about just what they will be voting on at the EU referendum this Thursday. What does it actually mean to stay in the EU? What does it mean to exit?

Concerning the second question, the dominant issue in the debate has been the question whether there will be a significant negative economic impact on the UK from exiting the EU. Prime Minister David Cameron, together with the heads of the IMF, the OECD and various EU agencies have given dire warnings that economic growth will drop, the fiscal position will deteriorate, the currency will weaken and UK exports will decline precipitously. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer has threatened to cut pensions if pensioners dare to vote for exit. But what are the facts?

I have been trained in international and monetary economics at the London School of Economics and have a doctorate from the University of Oxford in economics. I have studied such issues for several decades. I have also recently tested, using advanced quantitative techniques, the question of the size of impact on GDP from entry to or exit from the EU or the eurozone. The conclusion is that this makes no difference to economic growth, and everyone who claims the opposite is not guided by the facts. The reason is that economic growth and national income are almost entirely determined by a factor that is decided at home, namely the amount of bank credit created for productive purposes. This has sadly been very small in the UK in recent decades, thus much greater economic growth is possible as soon as steps are taken to boost bank credit for productive purposes – irrespective of whether the UK stays in the EU or not (although Brexit will make it much easier to take such policy steps). We should also remember that a much smaller economy like Norway – thought more dependent on international trade – fared extremely well after its people rejected EU membership in a referendum in 1995 (which happened against the dire warnings and threats from its cross-party elites, most of its media and the united chorus of the heads of international organisations). Besides, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China never needed EU membership to move from developing economy status to top industrialised nations within about half a century. The argument of dire economic consequences of Brexit is bogus.

As for the first question, namely what it means to stay inside the EU, we should consult the EU itself. Happily, the EU released a major official report about its key policies and what it plans to achieve in the near future in October 2015. This report was issued in the names of the „Five Presidents“ of the EU. In case you had not been aware that there was even a single, let alone five presidents of the EU, these are: The unelected president of the European Central Bank, Goldman Sachs alumnus Mario Draghi, the unelected president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected Brussels Commissar and „president of the Eurogroup“, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the „president of the Euro Summit“, Donald Tusk, and the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. What is the message of this not negligible number of EU presidents concerning the question of where the EU is going? The title of their joint report is a give-away: „The Five President’s (sic) Report: Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union“. https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/publications/five-presidents-report-completing-europes-economic-and-monetary-union_en

To continue reading: EU Basics – Your Guide to the UK Referendum on EU Membership