Thursday, December 15, 2011

You mean he didn't veto this?

Troubling news for all those who are rejoicing about the Boy-King vetoing treaties, getting us out of the euro (when were we in?), putting us on the same footing as Switzerland and generally restoring Britain's pride in herself: it seems that there is a fair chance that Britain will have to cough up another £30 billion in the form of loans to the IMF (loans?) that will be used to shore up the eurozone, which is not, incidentally what the IMF is supposed to be doing.
The fund revealed in its official Survey Magazine that non-euro countries would put up a quarter of all new money under the EU summit deal.

“European leaders agreed to make bilateral loans to the IMF of as much as €200bn —with €150bn contributed by eurozone members and €50bn from other members of the EU,” it said.

The report relied on a briefing by IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who was in the room with EU leaders during last Friday’s summit talks. Britain is the EU’s only large economy outside the euro.

The EU statement contained no reference to the €50bn figure for non-eurozone states. “If Britain has really agreed to this, it is a huge deal,” said Julian Callow at Barclays Capital.

David Cameron gave no hint of such an obligation in his statement to the Commons on Monday. “Alongside non-European G20 countries, we are ready to look positively at strengthening the IMF’s capacity to help countries in difficulty across the world,” the Prime Minister said. “But IMF resources are for countries not currencies, and can’t be used specifically to support the euro.”
What else might have happened at that meeting about which we have not been told?

2 comments:

  1. I have linked to your post Helen - and also Barroso's speech to the EU Parliament in which he specifically mentions this bail-out money. As I posted, it must be debatable that by omitting that little snippet he could be held to have misled Parliament?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh please, like anybody really cares about PM misleading Parliament. That has become a story on the dog bites man lines. Thank you for linking.

    ReplyDelete