Urgency

Well! There's talk in Brussels of a plan! Yes! Exactly what we need now is a PLAN! And it would solve the problems of the banks by getting them bailed out without it costing the taxpayer! And the plan could be in operation by 2018! Yes! And there will be meetings and conferences and agreements and Heads of Agreement and Yes! LUNCHES! (general cheering).

In the increasingly less likely event of Europe having a monetary system by 2018, our prescient rulers have decided that all banks should be equal: that, for example, Romanian banks bail out German ones (six German banks have been downgraded today). And it wouldn't be the taxpayers that coughed up. No. It would be the people who had lent money or deposited it in, say, Commerzbank.

So between now and 2018 any bank which wants to expand, as a part of an economy growing to create more jobs, would find that no one wanted to buy its paper because the ruling class in Brussels has said that the people shouldn't have to bail it out if it all goes wrong. So they won't expand and the jobs won't be created.

If you were unemployed and your family struggling to make ends meet, you could be forgiven for wishing that some of these people (their jobs and pensions are OK by the way) just shut up.