Douglas Carswell's Blog

Bailout. What bailout?

Since the Western debt crisis first started to unfold four years ago, we've seen a succession of bailouts and rescue packages.  Far from saving the world, each successive bailout seems to have led to demands for even greater bailouts.

We are fast approaching the stage when the whole "bailout and borrow" approach is starting to look discredited - if not rather disastrous.  Those churnalists who typed up the spin they were fed by government spokesmen, and then presented it to the rest of us as their expert analysis, are looking foolish.  

Take the (latest) Eurozone bailout the other week as an example.  It was presented to us as the way to fix the threat of impending Eurozone default. 

But a week or so later, check out what the folk lending their own money - as opposed to the taxpayers' - make of it.  Those lending to the Italian (left-hand graph) and Spanish (right-hand graph) governments are demanding almost as much interest payment as they were before the Euro elite held press conferences to tell us that they had solved the problem.

Many Western economic policy makers have about as much credibility as a Greek government bond.  We are in for some bumpy times.

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