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John Law and the Italian new money scheme. The collapse of the euro takes a new turn. Is it time to start laughing?

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Is the EU Committing Suicide?

When I was very small I used to listen with my mother to the Goon Show. The following day at school we'd act out the surreal scenes amid hoots of laughter. These days the surreal jokesters seem to be the officers of the EU.
Apparently they've just elected a new leader. This has been done using the EU's intriguing version of democracy. Someone who wasn't even a candidate has been shoe-horned in.
How can you vote for a non-candidate? Easy, join the EU.
But the really interesting development is the lapsed agreement with the Swiss over equivalence deals concerning trading shares.
The one thing everyone seems to forget about the EU is that it is a fiercely protectionist union. I guess it all started with the French agricultural deal, but it has grown substantially since then, which is one of the main reasons the Brexit party want out. Britain has traditionally been a free trade country. The EU protectionism is expensive and actually stifles trade. For heaven sake, does one need protectionism in trading shares? Apparently so.
And that is one more reason why maybe a no-deal exit will be good for Britain; increased wealth coming to the City because so many EU companies are listed on the London stock exchange, and if they have to chose between London and the local EU exchanges, there is going to be no contest. 70% of Britain's wealth comes from the financial markets, wealth which Germany covets.
Apparently the EU wanted to do a Brexit type of deal with the Swiss. In short they wanted the Swiss to do one all-encompassing deal. "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed." I think you've heard the term before. But what's happened?
It is now a criminal offence for an EU based trader to trade shares on the Swiss stockmarket. If you ignore the rule you apparently go to jail.
Now you have something a trifle odd. Three of the largest companies in the EU are actually based in Switzerland. Apparently now an EU based exchange will have to stop trading in as many as 230 Swiss companies, including UBS, and Novartis.
The Swiss, like the Brits, decided to ask their voters whether they wanted an all or nothing deal with the EU. The result was obvious: The Swiss, being politically more mature than the Brits, asked some pertinent questions. So the Swiss politicians went back to Brussels with those questions.
Asking question? Cant have that. The Swiss were accused of delaying tactics.
That didn't do much so they let the stockmarket equivalence deal lapse, hoping it would cause some damage which might make the Swiss change their minds.
What happened? The Swiss stockmarket duly rose, and the Swiss even banned trading in Swiss shares in the EU.
At the moment it looks as though the EU has shot itself in the foot. Let's hope the new British negotiators draw the obvious conclusion. Never mind a no deal situation, how about a No to bully tactics from the EU?
We now have the interesting situation where Brussels is fighting a political battle on at least four fronts. Fighting on more than one front is difficult enough, but four? That usually leads to annihilation. I wonder how long incompetent politicians can play catch with four balls in the air.
Things have reached the stage where I am beginning to get worried that I do still have assets priced in euros. I still don't know how this is all going to turn out, but it increasingly looks as though Brussels is hell bent on self destruction. That can only be bad news for the euro. Now might be a good idea to try and get out of euros and into sterling.
Now is certainly not the time to buy in Italy, and I suspect that any purchases of real estate anywhere in the eurozone with sterling would be a major mistake. Sterling is way undervalued, and the euro is seriously over-valued.
My only worry is that sterling is in the hands of equally incompetent politicians in the UK, which is why I have been divesting myself of my wealth in both zones.
I've heard so much awful news about the state of Japan that I intend going there sometime in the next year. I'm intrigued to know what I will find behind all the claptrap.


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