EU and Eurozone debts are a risk to global financial stability

EU/Eurozone debts: a risk to global financial stability

Published on 13th April 2023

EU and Eurozone member states understated their debts at the end of 2021 by 44% of EU GDP and their total liabilities by 70%. This represents a major risk to global financial stability, as the understatement causes shortfalls of capital and collateral at the […]

EU and Eurozone are massively over-indebted – but official figures obscure it

EU and Eurozone are over-indebted

Published on 12th April 2023

EU and Eurozone member states fail to fully report their financial liabilities. The key measure tracked by Eurostat – ‘General government gross debt’ – is circumvented to such an extent that, based on year-end 2021 figures, debts of around €6.4 trillion failed to be registered, and contingent […]

European Central Bank’s gaslighting defies EU energy shortage

IREF headline

Published on 18 August 2022 and first published as an IREF online article on 3 August 2022

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. […]

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

Published on 17 August 2022 and as an article published in the Daily Express on 13 July 2022

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 […]

Why the euro threatens to be the EU’s Krakatoa

Published on 14 August 2022 and earlier 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 […]

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

Published on 5 August 2022

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 […]

The ECB confirms the status of the Eurosystem: a parasite serving only the needs of the Eurozone public sector

Balances of banks sitting in the Eurosystem and percentage of respective country’s GDP

Published on 10 May 2022 and as previously published by irefeurope.org but with more detail behind the numbers

The European Central Bank (ECB) held its latest Governing Council meeting on 14 April 2022 and issued its normal press release. It issued its longer ‘Combined […]

The European Stability Mechanism is a dead letter with inadequate firepower

The subscribed and paid capital contributions of the 19 ESM members

Published on 7 April 2022 where the underlying article was published for the first time on www.brexit-watch.org on 6 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 […]

Some forgotten Benefits of Brexit that need to be known

Most of my contribution appeared on Facts4EU.org

Published on 11 February 2022

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 […]

IREF January 2022 Newsletter – Euro financing, a strategy for EU survival

First published on en.irefeurope.org

Published on 8 February 2022

In recent times, the EU authority has been challenged by Romania and Poland, both of whom have asserted the primacy of their domestic laws over EU treaty law in certain areas.   Hungary is also a well-known thorn in its side.  Given these threats, and the reputational sleight of […]