Monday, 22 November 2010

Fun Online Polls: Wills and Kate; EU-bailouts

With a very good turnout (thanks to everybody who took part), the response to last week's Fun Online Poll Wills and Kate have decided to get married: what do you think? was as follows:

So what? 67%
Who are "Wills and Kate"? 21%
It is a great moment for national celebration! 12%


It seems that we're swimming against the tide on this one, as most of the newspapers devote at least a page every day to the topic, which usually include a brief explanation of who "Wills and Kate" actually are, to wit, a celebrity jobless couple from the South of England.
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The EU 'bailed out' Greece in February of this year, which was supposed to sort out 'financial instability in the Euro-zone' once and for all. It didn't of course, because the banks then go hunting for the next easy target, do a bit of rumour-mongering and short-selling, make a nice profit on the way down and then go running to the EU or the IMF for a bail out.

So next on the list was Ireland/Irish banks (the two are now more or less synonymous), who were successfully cajoled into accepting a bail out at the weekend.

These patterns tend to repeat themselves, I just wonder how good are we at recognising them? So that's the topic for this week's Fun Online Poll: "Which country will the EU 'bail out' next?"

FWIW, my money is on Portugal, as it is easier to bully small countries, even though logic says that Spain are in a bigger mess, relatively, having had a far larger land price bubble. If they try this with Italy, the banks might find that they have bitten off more than they can chew, and there must come a stage where we realise that the European Central Bank emperor is not wearing any clothes.

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5 comments:

Ross said...

Even Spain might be a bit too big to bail out let alone Italy.

James Higham said...

We're fifth in line.

Lola said...

I'm with you on Portugal, but.......every one one of them is vulnerable - and Belgium.

Bayard said...

and there must come a stage where we realise that the European Central Bank emperor is not wearing any clothes.

Shouldn't that be "the European Emperor is not wearing any clothes."?

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, agreed, so another reason to assume Portugal.

JH, nah, the EU hates us (happily enough).

L, which bit?

B, true, the ECB is one of the Eumperor's finest garments.