European Central Bank’s gaslighting defies EU energy shortage

IREF headline

The press releases following the meeting of the ECB Governing Council (GC) on Thursday 22 July 2022 are masterpieces of uninformation in which the ECB attempts to gaslight its stakeholders, making them question their own perception of reality. It is ironic that the ECB […]

Eurozone in meltdown and collapse could cost the UK £200 million – despite Brexit

Red alerts are flashing all over the Whitehall radar screen. The Prime Minister has been deposed and the country is leaderless for the summer. Living standards are plummeting under the impact of soaring inflation. Russia’s savagery tortures Ukraine and threatens our security.

It is easy to take […]

Why the euro threatens to be the EU’s Krakatoa

[as published on www.brexit-watch.org on 13 July 2022 under the above headline and photograph, a Photo of Anak Krakatau by arief adhari/EyeEm from Adobe Stock]

BREXIT HAS BEEN largely botched so far, as has so much else by the present government. Remainers, several now emanating from their mausolea, claim that prices would be lower and […]

How Germany can get railroaded within the European Central Bank’s Governing Council

Germany has been resistant to many measures of the European Central Bank, not least the size of its bond-buying programmes and its latest ‘Transmission Protection Mechanism’ approved at the main meeting of July 2022. The aim of the ‘TPM’ is to avoid ‘fragmentation’, meaning the yields on the bonds issued by some Eurozone member states […]

The European Stability Mechanism is a dead letter with inadequate firepower

The subscribed and paid capital contributions of the 19 ESM members

This article was published for the first time on www.brexit-watch.org on 6th April 2022.

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is the main Eurozone bailout fund should further members be unable to access capital markets directly: the ESM would finance the member state, as they have done […]

Payment technocrats have crippled EU’s ability to impose biting sanctions on Russia

Original IREF article of 16 March 2022 accessed on 21 March 2022

The EU recently announced partial financial sanctions on Russia, designed to keep payments for energy moving. The EU accepted the contention – disproved below – that a bank either gets cut off from SWIFT, the global financial telecommunications network, completely or not at all. […]

UK adopts European approach to SWIFT sanctions over Russia

Brexit-Watch article where this piece was originally published

The UK’s financial sanctions over the Ukraine invasion fall well short of cutting Russia off SWIFT, maxing out on the usual self-congratulatory hyperbole whilst opening up significant risk. When we should be distinguishing our PR approach from that of the Kremlin, we instead get big-sounding phrases masking deficiencies […]

Scholz needs a SWIFT decision – cut Russia off or lose American bank support for the Eurosystem

What is SWIFT? Screenshot of its homepage

As already published on Facts4EU and Brexit-Watch

It has been reported that Chancellor Scholz has rejected the proposal that Russia be cut off from the SWIFT system as a punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. The Guardian has disseminated misinformation that it would anyway do little damage. Scholz may imagine […]

Some forgotten Benefits of Brexit that need to be known

Most of my contribution appeared on Facts4EU.org

On the second anniversary of the UK’s leaving the EU, it was worth relecting on what had been gained, even if Theresa May and now Boris Johnson could claim very little credit for it.

Here were my First Eleven of benefits, which made up the bulk of the Facts4EU piece…

Had […]