View Single Post
  #8   Report Post  
Old 26-04-2003, 01:20 PM
Jim Webster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Farming in South Dakota


Michelle Fulton wrote in message
. ..

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

remember the British Government is composed of a lot of baby boomers

for
who the concept of deprivation merely means not being able to buy
fashionable training shoes.
I think they assume they will be fed, as of right, should they ever

be
hungry.


That's what it sounds like. I guess I consider self-sufficiency a

part of
home-land security, which is all very important to on this side of the

pond.
What is your government really focused on as far as security is

concerned.
I don't know much, but y'all got me thinking about it and it seems

they
aren't interested in self-sufficiency and aren't really interested in

being
part of the EU (which might provide some sense of security), so what

is
their plan as far as y'all can tell?

I'm not one for debating politics; just curious.


as far as I can tell the only security they are interested in is their
own job security. The general working assumption is that the current
government wants to join the euro and get further into the EU. At the
moment it is beginning to look that the Germans effectively have
deflation. Deflation and no central bank is a bad combination. In the UK
the only thing that seems to be keeping us from deflation is the rise in
house prices which is not really sustainable. (At one time it was
considered ridiculous and unsustainable that a couple borrowed three and
a half times joint income to get a mortgage. Recently I have heard of
single people borrowing seven times their income, in mortgages to be
paid back over forty or fifty years. I am not sure I believe these
stories but they could be true.)
When the euro was introduced the Germans insisted on the a stability
pact, governments were not allowed to borrow more than 3% of spending.
This was an attempt to keep the currency strong. Now the French have
announced they are ignoring this, the Germans will not keep to it either
and senior Commissioners have announced the rule is silly and should be
scrapped. The Euro is going to be a weak currency and if the Irish vote
Yes to the Nice treaty it is going to be a larger, less well developed
area with a weak currency.
It may be that having a weak currency is actually a policy decision. It
would mean that Europeans could not afford to buy much in the way of
imports from outside the EU and would give them a more secure home
market. The obvious problem is that we buy a lot of raw materials from
outside the EU and we buy them in Dollars because that is what world
trading is done in. So we will have a situation where manufacturers are
1) buying in Dollars which will be a strong currency relative to the
euro
2) selling in Euros which is a weak currency
3) having to bear steadily increasing social costs.

We have had this in agriculture in the UK for the last three or four
years and it hurts.


--
Jim Webster

"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"

'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'


M