Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

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>The past 15 years especially have seen a more or less constant stream of scandals where people at the top of societies power structures very clearly acted badly or even broke laws, yet nobody was ever held to account ... except those who tried to reveal the wrongdoing.

I find this argument baffling when applied to the EU.

Most of the scandals were in the banking and finance industries, not - say - the EU parliament.

The Greek debacle, which was probably the biggest failure of the EU since its creation, was created by the EU's banking and finance industries.

Perhaps it's the industry that's the problem, and not Europe itself?

Not that the EU isn't remote, but it's not so remote that it has no interest in promoting standards of human rights legislation.

By a remarkable coincidence, a key foundation of Brexit is the dismissal of the EU's requirement to treat workers in a civilised manner as "Brussels red tape".

As for Trump - the idea that you can dethrone an Establishment run by and for narcissistic billionaires by electing another narcissistic billionaire seems entirely fantastic.

If Trump is elected, the US establishment will be happy to do business with him, as usual.

Sanders may be a tougher nut to crack, which is why he can't be allowed to win - and why the idea that these candidates "challenge the Establishment" is nonsense, when no Establishment policy is under any serious threat in this election. (Or any other.)

> The Greek debacle was created by the EU's banking and finance industries.

No, it was created by the EU who bailed out the banks, paying them money and forcing the loss on the taxpayers.

> Most of the scandals were in the banking and finance industries, not - say - the EU parliament.

The EU parliament is a scandal in and of itself - "let's waste some money and have two parliament buildings in two cities!"

>No, it was created by the EU who bailed out the banks

No, it was caused by the Greeks living beyond their means.

You can't live beyond your means without help from a complicit financial body enabling you to do it

Of course you can. This is what sovereign bonds are for.

In which case the financial body is whoever is buying the bonds.

Well... Greeks created a Greek problem. EU extended this problem to all EU citizens.

> forcing the loss on the taxpayers.

So, the people who originally took the loans from the banks. How horrible! People, being forced to pay their debts.

Well, the alternative interpretation is, bankers who originally gave loans to people who couldn't pay, were "compensated" for their (too) risky behavior.

It's still those people's ethnical obligation to pay what they owe.

When irresponsible or predatory lending has taken place, there is blame to be allocated on both sides. That means we are not justified in simply throwing the entire burden of solving the problem onto the borrowers.

Not usually the same individuals!

e.g. In the case of Kaupthing, quite a lot of UK local governments were directly using them as a deposit bank and lost money when the bank collapsed. These deposits were made whole by the UK central government.

The Greek debacle was created by the Euro, establishing a common monetary area without a corresponding common fiscal area to rebalance it (not that a common fiscal area would have been feasible: the EU is really not ready to file federal EU tax returns).

Alternately, it was caused by the Greek govt issuing bonds like candy based on fraudulent growth projections, who belatedly realised they couldn't inflate their way out of a corner as they (and everyone else in control of an unpegged currency do) used to - hence the drachma having about as much value as the paper it was printed on.

Which was arguably a predictable occupational hazard of establishing a common currency.

I wasn't actually thinking of the EU when I wrote that paragraph specifically. My post was perhaps an unclear mishmash of comments on both the USA and - as a side note - the EU.

I agree that the EU does not seem to have a serious problem with top officials ignoring the rules and being unpunished for it (or if it does, I don't know about it). However the USA clearly does. James Clapper being just one example. Hillary Clinton being another who is in the news right now.

W.R.T. Greece, that is very clearly a couple of systemic problems coming together:

1) Banks being too big to fail. Same problem all over the world. Not EU specific.

2) EU being willing to continue giving Greece large sums of money far after it became clear that the country was completely broken and shouldn't be in the EU at all, because they're ideologically incapable of contemplating the EU getting smaller.

> By a remarkable coincidence, a key foundation of Brexit is the dismissal of the EU's requirement to treat workers in a civilised manner as "Brussels red tape"

I guess you're thinking of the working time directive?! Not sure what you mean here. At any rate, it's a bit off topic for this thread which is really about US politics, perhaps I shouldn't have brought up the EU at all.

Trump's argument is very simple - "To get to Washington you need a lot of money, most of these guys get it from shadowy lobbyists, but I am already super rich and that makes me unbuyable - and thus a man of integrity who says what he thinks. With me you know exactly what you're gonna get".

It is a very simple, straightforward argument and unfortunately it has a core of truth to it.

> The Greek debacle, which was probably the biggest failure of the EU since its creation, was created by the EU's banking and finance industries.

Exactly. Greece was merely the scapegoat for the bailout of the massively over-leveraged banks that bet against their sovereigns when they saw the Euro would equalize risk.

For a much better explanation of how the EU got into this mess, see the this[1] talk by Mark Blyth (Econ prof at Brown).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs#t=777

The problem with the EU isn't the scandals. It's the total lack of responsiveness to the people.

We're going to create this constitution, and you (the people) don't get to vote on it, but you have to live under it. Oh, one country insists on letting the people vote, and the people vote against it? They'll have to vote again, because the people can't be allowed to stop what we're doing.

That is where you find the EU "establishment" completely out of touch with the people.

Question: when did the auditors last sign off on the EU's accounts?

I know the answer, I just wonder if you do.

Here we go again. You do know why those accounts aren't signed off in full? Nothing to do with internal EU shenanigans, it is is because when Brussels pays out money to national governments for projects, they don't always get all the receipts back. Without the receipts, no sign-off http://www.britishinfluence.org/it_s_the_british_media_that_...

It is still a 7.9 billion Euro 'error rate'

It's taxpayers money being sloshed around with no oversight, no matter how you try to spin it.

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