Public credit rating agencies discriminate against the UK and in favour of EU/Eurozone member states

Rating agencies discriminate against the UK

Published on 18th April 2023

Public credit rating agencies have not been even-handed in their treatment of the UK compared to EU member states, given the large shadow debts and contingent liabilities that weigh on the latter.

This is explained in the newly-released book ‘The shadow liabilities of EU Member States, and […]

Scope of EU and Eurozone debts is unrecognised by public credit rating agencies

Public credit rating agencies over-rate EU issuers

Published on 16th April 2023

The public credit ratings of EU/Eurozone member states are inflated, because the credit rating agencies have not factored in the significant shadow debts and other financial liabilities bearing down on the respective member state’s debt service capacity. Total financial liabilities are much higher than these […]

Germany cannot pay totality of EU/Eurozone debts, contrary to assumptions of global debt markets

Germany cannot afford all the EU/Eurozone debts

Published on 15th April 2023

Global debt markets appear comfortable to absorb all of the bonds issued by the European Union for its €750 billion Coronavirus Recovery Fund on the basis that ‘it all tracks back onto Germany’. This is true: the guarantee structure behind the EU’s debts makes each […]

EU and Eurozone break both the spirit and the letter of global debt rules

EU and Eurozone break global debt rules

Published on 14th April 2023

The EU and its member states position themselves as a cornerstone of the rules-based international order, but they break its financial rules in both letter and spirit by failing to fully report their financial liabilities. The key measure tracked by Eurostat – ‘General government gross […]

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 […]