Brexit

[Oracle]

Noel.

With respect, from your comment.I don't think you understand crazy ECB and Euro bank collateral rules, or how EU treasury debt is financed. This is a Eurozone structural issue. The bankrupt Italian state and bankrupt Italian banks are intimately entwined and trapped in a doom loop.

The zombie banks are propped up on worthless Italian bonds because the rules of Eurozone decree it. When the market bond rates reflect the true risk,because all of these debts need refinancing periodically, it really is game over. Current bond rates already hint at 20 percent likelihood of default, the truth is even worse.

Also EU changed rules on bailouts, will make our own type of bailout illegal and so market reaction a great deal worse. Panic in the bond markets. And you need to appreciate scale. The Italian problem is at least an order of magnitude bigger. A 2 trillion problem. Italy is too big to save.

We are in the crazy situation that if we leave EU, we are then obliged to take a. objective view of junk Italian bonds, instead of the EU decreed insanity that they are no risk, and reflecting reality will make our own banks dangerously undercapitalised. When that happens bailins from customer accounts are likely. We really are on a knife edge.

Oracle, you seem to be conflating a policy of propping up troubled banks with the general tenets of the EU.

Many other countries did this too if you remember. Our government was very instrumental in leading the charge, partly due to our economy being heavily dependent on the financial sector.

Whether or not this was a good idea, it's not the goal of the EU - it was a tool used in response to a financial crisis.

PS. For one who seems to dislike the hard left so much, your injudicious use of language to describe the institutions you don't like is straight out of the Militant handbook. You weaken your arguments when you do this.