Is this the end of Great Britain's EU membership?

At the EU summit on Thursday night, Great Britain did not accept the demands of Germany and France to create something that Chancellor Merkel calls a "fiscal union". Because Merkel did not agree to a compromise during negotiations, Great Britain now faces isolation in the EU. Britain's veto makes it impossible to change EU treaties, so the European nations excluding Great Britain will now push for a separate treaty.

Roland Nelles for Der Spiegel writes:

Do we really see the emergence of a new Europe? And, more importantly, does Great Britain have a place in this new Europe? What happens to Great Britain if it doesn't change its mind?

EFTA mk2.

I can't hear "Chancellor" without thinking "Klingons."

This is why the French think war might be coming. A federal country? From the outside, it appears you already have something close.

Can anyone blame the UK for wanting to wash their hands of that sideshow?

No. Especially not when they have a relatively strong economy on their own.

That doesn't happen at the wave of the "government mandate" wand. You must be willing to pay substantially more for manufactured goods that aren't going to offer a proportionate increase in perceived quality.

I get tired of Americans bitching about that kind of shit, too. The screeching basically boils down to "Whyyyy isn't the government forcing us to buy the more expensive domestic product? You expect us to rely on free will for this sacrifice? "

I agree with the bulk of your post. However, an industrial base is no guarantee against hard financial times - The Great Depression taught us that.

OR, "they" should stay the fuck out of it, and any citizen who gives a shit about this should be willing to put their money where their mouth is without any sort of outside encouragement.


If it deserves to exist, it can survive on free will alone.

How dare the British not charge over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings!

I should have that enscribed on my tombstone.

And yet you're probably having a sandwich right now.

The Great Depression taught us when it's right for government to step it--and I'm not talking about FDR's New Deal, but for bank regulation so that people's finances were insured in case a bank collapses (like Washington Mutual did) and new protections so that a bank can't foreclose upon someone for missibng one payment.

That the Midwest happen to have a rather dry period at the same time didn't help

Actually, the WaMu thing is kind of in court. The FDIC never stepped in. In fact the shareholders argue that WaMu had not plans for an FDIC filing and that the before they could do anything the OTS held a secret auction...

...and then handed it over to Chase for less than 1/10 of the assessed value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaMu#Seizure_by_OTS_and_FDIC

The hell it is. Most of our shit comes out of Asia, because the government makes it too expensive to do business here.

Two points.

The EU deal will make things worse. It doesn't fix the underlying issues and in some ways makes them worse. Even the symptoms of the problem are only tangentically addressed.

While one might be tempted to defend the UK move because of the assertion of sovereignty, it shows how beholden they are to the very financial capitalism that caused the crash. And by sitting on the sidelines they could damage their economy in other ways.

So, there are no good guys here. And things are still fucked.

The Euro was created in 1995 and is already in trouble. Compare that to the pound sterling that is the oldest currency still in use and the most stable currency in the history of mankind. Its the third most traded currency and the UK not wanting to mix up with that crap going on in the continent makes perfect sense.

Lets face it. If other countries control your money, they control your country.
The Frogs and the Hun have taken over Europe in the past and Britain has stood alone.
They may have to do it again. It might stop the flood of Eastern Europeans coming into the UK anyway and be a good thing.

The UK is as isolated as someone refusing to board the Titanic just prior to sailing - Terry Smith, CEO of brokerage firm.

Seriously, buy a clue.

The treaty that they rejected has nothing to do with them joining the Euro. They rejected it because it would have required tighter regulation on traders in Lodon.

I realize that, but the main thing is its about control of money by people outside the country. There is a lot more to the EU than just financial regulations. The UK would do well to get out of all that IMHO. In some ways the EU countries don't have the independence of our US states.
I was discussing hunting with a friend in Suffolk and he tells me that there are EU regulations telling them what animals may or may not be hunted. This is even for animals that are damaging their crops.

No, it isn't. That was not part of the proposed treaty, let alone a "main" part.

Nothing whatever to do with any of this. You are plumbing new depths of idiocy. Stop.

Aside from the current treaty discussions: the EU is the biggest single market in the world. If Britain decides to be isolated in the EU, it effectively gives power over the market to Germany and France. I don't think that's in Britain's strategic interest.

Financial services are essential to the global economy and have been for centuries. The mentality that postmodern economies need to revert back to industry and manufacturing in order to be stable is just backwards.

Nope. But I do think the UK should stop mucking around. Get all the way out of it or get all the way in.

Stop trying to have it both ways.

Never happen.

To do it they would have to reform their tax and regulatory system from top to bottom to attract business to the country and they would have to be willing to cut back significantly on the free shit they hand to everyone who asks for it.

As long as they play pretend socialist and subscribe to all these wacky leftist ideas they are stuck.

The UK should join the dollar along with the other commonwealth countries.

My argument was supposed to say that the UK should embrace the EU treaty change and eventually adopt the Euro (thus not being isolated in the EU), because otherwise Germany and France will be dominating the largest internal market in the world. Judging from your other comments in this thread, I don't see how you can agree to that?

^Britain's is a complex set of concerns and you raised a good point.

I'm sorry we can't fight more about it.

The sort of "financial services" that dominate in the city of London have not been around for hundreds of years, and their economic utility is dubious at best.