fahrenheit451:054

Worth repeating.

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What do liars do when the lies they've told have been found to have largely been ignored and what's worse from the liar's perspective, is that there aren't that many lies left in the locker for them to tell. Well, the answer to that is apparently, keep on repeating with ever decreasing reassurance the original Ur lie. That's what Lord, Lord? Blunkett did on BBC Radio 4's flagship " Today " news programme this morning. Hastily re-arranging the clapped out rhetoric that's been shoved down the Electorate's throat for the last 50-odd years, David, " 2 Sackings from the Cabinet " Blunkett said,and here I interpret, that all of the high falutin' dishwater polemics about migration/immigration comes down to  " it ", being " inevitable ". But the liberal/left, metropolitan domiciled,oxbridge tutored ruling elites and intelligentsia ,of course had to sympathise with,listen and recognise the worries,fears and concerns of those communities who were and still are as suddenly and unaccountably and certainly without any sliver of democratic,transparent consent inundated by the beneficiaries of Capitalist employment policies. First and foremost Inner-EU migration; Poland to England given equal status as say Cornwall to London or Manchester-Leeds. And why did lyin', fornicatin' Dave kind of own up to having had a pivotal role and influence on all this ? he's actually scared to death, frightened that the traditional,core labour vote- what they call the " Donkey Vote " in many Labour held parliamentary constituencies will, contrary to elitist expectations go off and vote  " Leave " on June 23. Now Dave, that might just be inevitable and something you'd have to get used to. Ah,the fresh smell of Schadenfreude on a morning !!

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Our democracy and our very existence as a bona fide sovereign and independent nation state is in clear and present danger.This is not " scaremongering " neither is it empty rhetoric. All those campaigning for a REMAIN vote in the forthcoming Referendum on the UK's continuing ssubjection to the Strassbourg/Brussels yoke,are fully conscious of the fact that the EU's self-professed grandiose imperative and raison d'etre to become a Unitary Continental Superstate will be strengthened and greatly reinforced should the plebiscite go the way of the IN campaign.

And what the EU and its technocratic bureaucractic governing elites won't tolerate and will soon enough get around to dealing with in exemplary fashion is any kind of substantive dissent that might challenge their hegemony and stymie and perhaps even mortally jeopardise the full realisation of their Historic design, a United European entity.

What they did to Austria in 2000 - conveniently jettisoned down the Orwellian " Memory Hole " and in need of rediscovery,is vitally worth studying.

( This article was published in European Affairs: Volume number I, Issue number II in the Spring of 2000.)

Sanctions Against Austria Pose Troubling Questions for the EU    

 

Michael Calingaert

The entry into Austria's governing coalition of Jörg Haider's Freedom Party presented the European Union with an unprecedented situation: participation in the government of one of the member states of a party widely considered "undemocratic." The response of Austria's EU partners was equally unprecedented: lacking the means under the EU treaties to mark their concern, they impulsively imposed diplomatic sanctions as 14 "like-minded states."

The European Community, as it was originally called, did not deem it necessary to spell out the member states' adherence to democratic principles. Nor did it occur to the original members that the domestic politics of a member state would be considered an appropriate subject for comment - let alone action - by the others.

One of the criteria for membership established at the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 was that candidates had to have "achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities."

For that reason, the EU refused to open enlargement negotiations with Slovakia while the clearly undemocratic Vladimir Meciar controlled the government, and it added Slovakia to the negotiating countries only after his defeat at the polls in 1998. It was with the example of Slovakia in mind that the EU added the first explicit mention in the EU's treaties of general principles previously accepted only implicitly: the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, building on language in the preamble to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, declared that the EU was "founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law."

During the Cold War the perceived danger to the democratic system in EU member states came from the left, although the United States was far more inclined than European countries to voice concern about communist parties joining EU governments.

The rise of the Freedom Party in Austria was seen as a different matter - particularly after the previous governing parties opened the door to Mr. Haider by failing to resurrect their former broad-based coalition.

The concerns of some member states - particularly Germany, France and Belgium - related very directly to their own domestic politics. The National Front in France shares many attributes of the Freedom Party, and both the governing Socialists and the Gaullist President Jacques Chirac, feared the "demonstration effect" of the entry of the Freedom Party into government.

Next door in Germany the implosion of the Christian Democratic Union as a result of its party financial scandal has led to serious concern over what will fill the vacuum, in particular the possible resurgence of the far right. In Belgium, many are afraid of the Vlaams Blok, a right-wing party seeking Flemish independence.

But what could the other 14 member states do? Under the treaties, nothing. The Treaty of Amsterdam provides that the heads of state or government, acting by unanimity and with the concurrence of the European Parliament, may determine that a member state has engaged in a "serious and persistent breach" of the EU's democratic principles. In such a case, they may decide, by qualified majority, to suspend voting and/or other rights of the country in question. Clearly, no such "breach" had taken place.

Led by Portugal - acting unofficially, though speaking explicitly as President of the Council - the 14 countries informed Austria that if the Freedom Party were to enter the government, they would take three steps: not accept bilateral contacts at a political level with the Austrian government, provide no support to Austrian candidates for positions in international organizations, and receive Austrian ambassadors in their countries only at a technical level. When the Freedom Party entered the government a few days later, the member states made good their threat.

The 14 member states in effect they acted as member states of the EU. In so doing, they set an important precedent: they added to the range of issues addressed by the EU by adopting a position on the composition of a member state government - a subject hitherto regarded exclusively as the business of the member state in question. In addition, their "joint reaction" (as they termed it) was a way of getting around the national veto that Austria would have applied if the action had been proposed in accordance with the EU Treaties.

The action of the 14 member states raises several questions:

Standards: Against what standards should member states judge political parties in other member states? What constitutes "anti-democratic" behavior? Do the standards apply equally to parties of the far right and far left ?

Circumstances: Under what circumstances is it appropriate for member states to concern themselves with the composition of another member state's government? Is it appropriate to seek to block the entry into government of a party that has gained over one-quarter of the votes in a free, democratic election? Would the member states contemplate analogous action against for example France with respect to the National Front?

How great is the likelihood that, as often happens with economic sanctions, the 14 member states will find themselves locked into actions that they will subsequently want to terminate but cannot because they lack an exit strategy?

Effect on the EU: The Portuguese Presidency has stated that there will not be "business as usual" with the Austrian government. Can there be "EU business as usual"? The 14 member states' actions clearly run counter to the "Community spirit" that is an important ingredient in the operations of the EU institutions. Would their actions have been possible if Austria had held the EU Presidency? Will the ostracized government - in this case Austria - adopt a hostile attitude, which could impede work in the EU?

As these questions indicate, the implications of the actions taken by the 14 member states extend well beyond the particular case of Austria in February 2000. Without the luxury of contemplation or advance planning, the EU has established ground-rules in an entirely new area. Before embarking down that path, it would have done well to consider the wisdom of a more restrained approach - for both the present and the future.

( This article was published in European Affairs: Volume number I, Issue number II in the Spring of 2000.)

And from the Daily Telegraph

By Michael Leidig, in Vienna

12:00AM BST 14 Sep 2000

 

AUSTRIA'S Freedom Party leader, Jörg Haider, has hailed the end toEuropean Union diplomatic sanctions against his country.

His EU critics had been humiliated, he said yesterday. "We are leaving this with our head held high." Yesterday, as Austria's political classes celebrated, Mr Haider revelled in the climbdown by President Chirac. France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, announced the end of sanctions on Wednesday. It also led the original call for the measures.

The end of sanctions followed an EU-mandated report saying they were "counter-productive" and liable to cause further nationalist reaction in Austria. Most Austrians greeted the news with indifference.

June 23, 2016 #VoteLeave. Anything short of that ensure national self-annihilation.

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People who show great reluctance or an inability to discuss and debate embarrassing topics or perceived sensitive subject matter usually refer to such things as " The Elephant in the Room ". And it is a curious fact,often remarked upon by those  of a more gregarious and inquisitive disposition that it's the british " educated " middle classes who are the most introverted and diffident when it comes to even acknowledging that the said Elephant even exists let alone that it should be pointed out to all and sundry. Unfortunately for the rest of us,those of a truly robust,egalitarian and genuinely open democratic cast of mind,it is precisely the bien pensant,who in effect control access to the platforms and the means of production themselves, that are necessary for political discourse to take place. And for those self-referencing,venal elitists who are supposedly " educated " they  pretend to an intellectually untenable degree that basic and immutable economic laws of supply and demand do not operate when it comes to attempting to discuss the real impacts of unregulated mass immigration/transborder inner-EU migration.  Millions of eastern european workers descending in unaccountable droves upon the parlous British jobs market,has according to " The Left " had absolutely no effect whatsoever; wages according to " The Left " have not gone down as a direct result of the vast and rapid escalation in the supply of labour. Which is empirically something of an anomaly since all previous records and data from all leading industrialised nations attests to the Laws of capitalist Supply & Demand working perfectly in that regard. Competiton in the Labour Market depresses wages. Except when the British left says it doesn't. Oh,okay.. Maybe that explains Jeremy " The Great Who Am I "Corbyn's certifably eccentric and baffling remarks about the inundation and de-facto collapse of the UK's public sector infrastructure,jobs market and just about anything else that Lab/Lib/Con had in their ideologically driven sights to destroy.

Asked about those within Labour who worry about immigration undermining social cohesion, Corbyn said: “You have to ensure that communities are brought together, that people do understand the changes that are happening and actually see some plus and some benefit within it.

“You look at various towns where there’s been a big change, quite often the economy has actually begun to grow after that level of migration, there’s been actually very good levels of community understanding and integration.”

He said there needed to be greater investment in housing, schools and hospitals by central government to accommodate immigration."

 

“Migration actually is a plus to our economy as a whole, those people pay a lot in taxes, receive much less on average in benefits than the rest of the community and make an amazing contribution to our community. "

Quick ,someone call for the Nurse !!

Official Data from ONS ( Office of National Statstics ) shows that " A feature of the UK’s recovery since 2013 has been that unemployment has fallen faster than in previous recession – in the 1980s and 1990s unemployment lagged behind the recovery. This fall in unemployment is due to several factors, such as – more flexible labour markets, low wage growth and low labour productivity.". ONS  research and analysis shows that real household incomes per head have been stagnant since 2007.

In 2012 for instance the ONS found that :-.More than four years after the start of the recession, productivity remains 3.7 per cent below its pre-recession peak. At the corresponding stage of the recessions in the early 1980s and 1990s, productivity was more than 10 per cent higher than at the start of the recession. The current level of productivity, measured as output per worker, is around 15% lower than might be expected on the basis of previous experience.

The point of allowing and promoting the idea of Freedom of movement of labour,is to maximise the ensuing economic benefits for the Capitalist Ruling Elites,the owners and controllers of the means of production,distribution and exchange. Why do you think they came up with the idea in the first place and are so keen to promulgate it so fanatically ? To their chagrin,the boost they get from continuing depressed wages is off set,more than they anticipated,by the failure of overall GDP output per head to even get back to the levels of 2007/08.

Other than that,the myriad ,self-deluding fantasists of  Lab/Lib/Con whose centre and left all are of the exact same agenda perpetuate their own vainglorious failure with vacuous appeals about multiculturalism and integration that have precisely nothing whatsoever to do with nor are they connected with in any sense at all to the operations of Laws of Supply & Demand and the necessary demands of the Capitalist Economic System. It is axiomatic that were the present seemingly endless free flow of available labour to be severely restricted or altogether cut off,then quite simply the basic function of Capitalism would be impaired and the bargaining power of organised Labour would be vastly enhanced. A historic scenario that remains anathema to the British Trades Union & Labour Movement.

fahrenheit451:050

" We were able to instantly respond to this act of Russian aggression - demonstration of our commitment to NATO’s collective defence. "

The UK Government,it seems is severely handicapped by the preponderance of Ministries run and staffed by mentally retarded imbeciles. It really must feel terribly frustrating at times to be called out as the merest,kow-towing,subservient lackey of US Imperialism. British Defence Secretary Fallon is a true ideological catamite of Washington's bloodthirsty,bellicose NeoCon establishment; the archetypal step 'n' fetchit for the USA's gang of hired hoodlums that is NATO. If the world is somehow fated to repeat History ,first as a tragedy then as a farce; then it is at this juncture somewhat of a moot point if the world is doubling up on the tragedy aspect,albeit farcically.

Royal Air Force Typhoons intercept Russian aircraft near Baltics

 

From:

Ministry of Defence and The Rt Hon Michael Fallon MP

First published:

12 May 2016

Part of:

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets have carried out their first intercept of Russian aircraft in this round of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission (BAP).

RAF Typhoon and Russian Cub. Crown Copyright.

The jets, which deployed to the region less than three weeks ago, were scrambled from Amari air base in Estonia, to intercept three Russian aircraft approaching the Baltic states. The military transport aircraft identified as AN-26 ‘Curl, AN-12 ‘Cub’ and IL-76 ‘Candid’ were intercepted as they were not transmitting a recognised identification code and were unresponsive.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:

This is another example of just how important the UK’s contribution to the Baltic Air Policing Mission is. We were able to instantly respond to this act of Russian aggression - demonstration of our commitment to NATO’s collective defence.

................................................................................................................

Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,Georgia, The Ukraine, Somalia. Got the picture, yet ? Washington's Potentates have been winding themselves up over Russia for a mighty long time now and with each subsequent failure of theirs to land some kind of telling,knock-out blow whether via unlawful international  " Sanctions " or series of Black Ops.via third country financed campaigns of civil  destabilisation coupled with armed insurgency/terrorism -the US and its compliant NATO-EU Satrapies become inexorably ever more deranged and psychotic in their collective behaviours in the International arena of World Affairs and manifestly endanger otherwise normal relations between Sovereign Nation States. The outcome of which is inevitably War.

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Even by Labour's own usually parlous standards of infelicitous use of language and incomprehensibility,that Arch-Deluded fantasist Alan Johnson ramped up Labour's specious campaigning hyperbole when comparing the upcoming Referendum on Continued EU-Enslavement to the advent of the 1945 British General Election. Then again, Labour and its docile, conformist,Trades Unionist acolytes are only doing what they've been generally doing since the turn of the early 20th.Century. Not fighting with and for the socio-economic interests and advancement of the Working Class and its allies. And so the chickens it would seem at long last are indeed coming home to roost.The decades long, quasi-messianic social engineering project concocted of a fatuous and implausible series of irrational and refutable assertions and demands including unregulated,mass immigration and cultural assimilation are now descending like a Guillotine blade onto the necks of the Labour Party and its ideological confreres. It was precisely that utter grotesque of third rate,social-democratic/liberal messianic drivel which Labour had substituted the central and determining Class Struggle with. And so in the EU referendum Campaign it has fallen to Tories to articulate what the " Left "i.e. organised labour had forsaken and betrayed. Iain Duncan-Smith no less has become a cause celebre.

 

 

The EU has morphed into a force for "social injustice" as Brussels turns it back on "economic common sense" in pursuit of a political project.The former work and pensions secretary issued the warning on 10 May as he argued that breaking away from the 28-nation bloc could help the worse off in the UK.

"No matter what those who want to remain say about the EU as a market place, the reality is that it is first and foremost a political project, the aim of which is the creation of an overarching federal power, above the nation states," the Conservative MP said.

"It is the reason why economic common sense cannot prevail and why many Greeks are now living in third-world conditions, Italian banks are becoming insolvent and terrible levels of youth unemployment have become, for the EU, a terrible price worth paying.

Take the euro, for example. It has greatly favoured already wealthy Germany and its export industries at the expense of southern Europe. The euro has meant serious unemployment for millions of young Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards and Italians and has produced political extremism. The EU is also working well for big banks. The bailouts being financed by extreme levels of austerity in countries like Greece have largely benefited financial institutions that lent irresponsibly before the crash. The EU is also working for big corporates that benefit from mass immigration. Businesses that have under-invested for decades in the productivity and training of their own and local workforces have no reason to mend their ways so long as cheap labour can be imported from abroad.

But if the EU is working for Germany, for banks, for big corporates and for the public affairs companies with large lobbying operations in Brussels, the EU isn’t working for over regulated small businesses and lower-paid and lower-skilled Britons. They now have to compete with millions of people from abroad for jobs and a wage rise. The Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee reported that for every 100 migrants employed twenty three UK born workers would have been displaced.

He warned of an "explosion of have-nots" and an increasing divide between "people who benefit from the immigration of cheap nannies and baristas and labourers - and people who can't find work because of uncontrolled immigration".

The construction of the Olympic Park was a powerful illustration of the way in which immigrants undercut UK workers through their willingness to endure family-unfriendly living conditions. Visiting job centres in East London at the time I met both skilled and unskilled workers who struggled to get work on the site. When I asked why they said that people from Eastern Europe, often living in bedsits, without UK housing and family costs, hugely underbid them for their work. Since then those stories have been borne out by the facts. Despite the all the statements about the Olympic Park helping British workers, we now know that nearly half of all the jobs on the site went to foreign nationals.

 Stuart Rose of the Stronger In campaign has admitted that immigration cuts the pay of the poor in a rare moment of candour – and acknowledged that wages will go up for many Britons if immigration is restricted.

The downward pressure on wages is a trend will only get worse if we continue to have open borders with the EU – and would get most difficult in a recession. A Bank of England study in December 2015 concluded: ‘the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay’

Given this evidence, I find the Labour Party’s current position ironic. As Frank Field has pointed out, in saying they are now in favour of staying in the EU they are acting against the interests of the communities they purport to serve.

fahrenheit451:048

Another 45 days to go to Referendum Day on June 23,and by the looks of things they'll have all run out of hyperbole long before we get anywhere near that singularly significant date. We don't normally, as a supposedly supine and compliant sovereign electorate, get this much Sturm und Drang during General Elections. The recent Scottish Independence Referendum however did and for the most part it was a welcome heating up of the usual permafrost of indolence and indifference that have been the dominant characteristics of political discourse in the UK as a whole for generations now. Quite a lot of of otherwise utterly superfluous parliamentary expenses-swindling party appartchiks are genuinely getting worked up about something,but quite what that something is remains a source itself of intense speculation and forensic scrutiny. For example, for Mary Creagh MP for T'Wakefield , ( yes the Blessed Mary of the Now once again Resurgent Majority ) it's all down to cheaper calls on the mobile.For others it's the bonds of eternal friendship with the crypto-fascist gangster regimes of Croatia,Romania and Bulgaria or the legions of unemployed alcoholics from the bankrupt former Soviet Baltic states that are so necessary to the UK recruitment industry in order to drive down wages. And now,according to Yu-Kay ,Lavatory-Attendant-in-Chief Dave Cameron it's all about preventing worldwide war and catastrophe. War, especially in the vicinity of even this supine,euro-compliant,Strasbourg's Rent Boy nation is according to Dave and his chums in the Intelligence & Security Services potentially not a good thing.

And should it ever come it,when the plucky grandsons of the Hurricane and Spitfire heroes have to go and target yet more strategic hospitals and TV studios across the Oder, then concomitantly there would be a vast amount of potential fifth-columnists that would need accommodating in detention camps.At least that's what used to happen when things went fizz,bang,pop on the other side of the Channel. But perhaps not this time because Dave clearly implied that it is the stabilising influence of the EU that is in fact preventing such a lively scenario from ever being played out again. I think he's pointing the finger at Russia don't you ? And on May 9th. Victory Day. The last time My Nation and My People finally sorted out the mess others had encouraged,started and had aimed it all at Russia. Still, June 23 Liberation Day looms a little closer.

fahrenheit451:047

Democracy.Voting.The democratic process.Ballots.Universal Suffrage. These are terribly important,not only concepts, but practices for the acolytes of that most noble of specious secular quasi-theologies, Democracy. It has always struck me as an indelible flaw in their national character for the British to have persisted for as long as they have,with the eccentricities of  " The first past the post " system. Back in the days of the Reform Acts, of 1832 and 1867, there was plausibly nothing amiss with such a constricted,parochial settled kind of way of ascertaining the will of the people. Time-honoured methods have without vigourous renewal become moribund and taken on the characteristics of arcane rituals. Geographic distances within the historically determined British national polity are no longer a precusor for division and rancour to any significant degree.Distinctions and differences matter far less than once they did. And yet the legitimate expression of this innate plurality is stymied and devalued at every major opportunity. A Vote,the universal currency unit of political expression,is not equal to any other given Vote at any one time. Parliament ought long ago have instituted a fair and credible system of proportional representation.Each contending Party's ideological and practical political aspiration and raison d'etre-to win a majority for its policies and goals would not be compromised. After all winning a majority of the Sovereign electorate's Votes cast is per se more democratic in truth than winning a numerical majority of arbitrarily defined  seats.  All Votes must be of equal numeric value irrespective of where they are cast. The alternative, as has been the sad dystopian reality for decades is the " marginals ". Usually calculated to be around 70 seats out of the 630 where historic voting patterns and voter behaviour subject to minimal shifts in opinion poll discerned party policy differences turn these seats into genuine contests which determine the overall outcome of all 630 seats. That is not democracy. Legitimacy is after all a learned behaviour. Given enough cynicism coupled with disappointment,disillusionment and a powerful,cogent counter-narrative, methods other than the democratic ballot and universal suffrage begin to be contemplated.

Footnote :- I emailed this to the Wakefield express and Yorkshire Evening Post the day after the local election results were announced on May 6.

Sir - i recall being in the Public gallery not so long ago when Wakefield's Labour Councillors unanimously voted through £27,000,000 in Budget cuts. I also recall Council leader Box inveighing against the Conservative government and its Austerity measures. The central point of his lengthy,self-indulgent diatribe was to call into question the legitimacy of the Tories mandate to impose Austerity measures having won an overall majority with only 24% of the votes cast in the General election. Let's put aside for the moment the Historic alliance Labour has with the Tories on the issue of first past the post system.Those two have been brothers-in-arms in colluding to maintain this palpably iniquitous and dysfunctional model of electoral representation. What,I wonder has Cllr.Box to say about last Friday's results in Wakefield ? The turnout was 30%, of the 245,000 registered electors only 74,000 cast their ballot.Of the votes cast Labour got just over half,which means that Labour's mandate to govern and implement without dissent let alone any form of active resistance the government's Austerity measures is 15% of the electorate. Go figure.

Louis Kasatkin ( TUSC Candidate,Wakefield West 2016 )

fahrenheit451:046

The European Union project was long ago confined to the garbage dump of history,because of the toxic and ultimately fatal consequences of trying to impose a single currency across 28 disparate nation states and their economies. Folie de Grandeur reached its zenith with the insanest of insane supranational superstates, the never to be realised Union of Europe. All the actually rational doyens of Global finance and financial markets,economics experts and commentators of renown and impartial sobriety have long since acknowledged all this and have written and continue to expound on these,for them,gravest of all matters. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard amongst them. The useful idiots who pretend to understand such matters ( the elected,expenses-fiddling mediocrities and media studies graduates that constitute the major parliamentary parties ) really have no grasp as to the terrifying beauty that is the logic and order let alone the purpose of the Capitalist system.Go on,wave placards at it demanding some negligible socio-economic reform;ooh scary ! And the hypocrites and dilletantes who postulate ahistorical attributes to the pawns in the transnational migration process and fail to understand that immigration is merely a function of global monopoly capitalism and nothing more. Capitalism ends and the existence of its Ruling Elites - which cannot exist outside of capitalist relations of production- ends when the process that has devoured all previous empires finishes devouring the present calamitous Order. Nothing whatsoever to do with contending variants of specious and speculative notions of morality or fairness or justice or what colour wallpaper we're having after the next non-revolution.

"..it increases the pain for the eurozone and Japan as their currencies rocket. The world is in effect playing a high-stakes game of pass the parcel, with over-indebted countries desperately trying to export their deflationary problems to others.."

Schadenfreude doesn't get much better than this.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
3 MAY 2016 • 7:39PM
The US dollar has plunged to a 16-month low in the latest wild move for the global financial system, tightening the currency noose on the eurozone and Japan as they struggle to break out of a debt-deflation trap.

The closely-watched dollar index fell below 92 for the first time since January 2015, catapulting gold through $1300 an ounce in early trading and setting off steep falls on stock markets in Asia and Europe.

The latest data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission shows that speculative traders have switched to a net "short" position on the dollar.

This is a massive shift in sentiment since the end of last year when investors were betting heavily that the US Federal Reserve was on track for a series of rate rises, which would draw a flood of capital into dollar assets.

Markets have now largely discounted a rate rise in June, and are pricing in just a 68pc likelihood of any increases this year.
The dollar slide has been a lifeline for foreign borrowers with $11 trillion (£7.5 trillion) of debt in US currency, notably companies in China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey that feasted on cheap US liquidity when the Fed spigot was open, and were then caught in a horrible squeeze when the Fed turned to tap off again and the dollar surged in 2014 and 2015.
But it increases the pain for the eurozone and Japan as their currencies rocket. The world is in effect playing a high-stakes game of pass the parcel, with over-indebted countries desperately trying to export their deflationary problems to others by nudging down exchange rates.

The Japanese yen appreciated to 105.60, the strongest since September 2014 ,the wild moves over recent weeks have blown apart the Japan’s reflation strategy. Analysts from Nomura said Abenomics is now “dead in the water”.

The eurozone is also in jeopardy. Nice.