Thai Baht drops below 50 Baht to the Pound

The UK doesn't qualify, its debt levels are far too high to be accepted into the Euro Zone, and the Euro Zone has problems enough, the PIGS might see its demise.

Certainly the specter of a hung parliament has spooked the markets.

A hung parliament is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself...

No way UK will ever accept the Euro, nor should they. I'd personally pull out of the EU - UK did far better in reality without them.

Little Blighty-on-Sea.

That was a different age Brit, the UK is just a largely insignificant island off the coast of Europe. The days of Empire are long gone, it no longer makes anything and it no longer owns anything. Whilst many of its people are still ingenius, they increasingly either leave or sell their ideas to others overseas who can make them a reality.

EU is a great principle, it's just the execution is all wrong. Look at the way the Romans governed the last great continental empire - with a relatively light and decentralized bureaucracy (so long as the taxes went back to Rome, you could pretty much do what you wanted). The EU seems to have mutated into some hideous top heavy administration feeding a huge gravy train in Brussels but without doing anything very much that the old EFTA set up could not have done!

That said, don't see any sensible way for the UK to not be in it - better to work to change it from the inside.

EMU and the euro we should not touch with a bargepole. That was a clusterf### just waiting to happen bringing multiple economies with very very divergent paths under the same currency. Without the room to manoeuvre on interest rates and de- or re-valuation of currencies, governments' hands are severely tied in trying to get out of their various economic messes (PIIGS etc).

Only way to make the euro REALLY work is for a full economic union with a single central bank that can override sovereign treasuries (ie. like the Fed in the US, even though they too dropped the ball recently) - but no way are the Europeans ready to end centuries of bickering and accept a pan-European bank!

Just my two eurocents worth...

CC

I thought the Euro was ready to collapse if Greece didn't do the right thing.

Captain Chaos, on 03 March 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

The problem is that EU failed to separate business and politics.
There is also much money wasted for political administration.

To find out a clear borderline against Russia, EU accepted countries as members, which - not only my opinion - never should be there.

This costs a lot of money. - Countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus in East/South, and countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia in North/East should never been allowed to enter the European Union. Luckily Turkey did not make it, as this is still EU and not an Eurasian Union.

UK is a different matter, as UK never found itself to be interested to be truly a full EU member, it is politically seen something between USA and EU, same as Iceland - however in difficult times, EURO countries are not much willing to put money into UK, why should they?

I think the UK is set to be the poor man of Europe again.
Things will get more expensive here for sure.
We'll be digging up the coal mines again soon, at least we got a bit of oil from the Falklands coming, maybe wind power is the answer.
Good job we still have the Queen because I think we will be needing the tourist cash.
All these people seeing the value of their property falling, it's devastating.
Is a hung parliament really that bad?

This post has been edited by Il Postino: 04 March 2010 - 06:07 AM

Stocky, on 02 March 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

Mandi - you know better than that mate? Things go down and they go back up!!