“Oh for crying out loud: Wikipedia again”

WikiEffingPedia is nothing but people’s (often wrong) opinions. If you like you can have a page saying Frans Sammut is the most brilliant author this planet of ours has ever seen.

The Maltese are still spending on their credit cards on imported flat screen TVs at the same time that the Euro controls the price, and makes uncompetitive, the main exports like tourism provision. The Euro enables Malta to borrow at a lower rate than it otherwise could and this is good, so long as politicians have the stomach to dampen deficit spending and property booms that result.

The good aspects are European disciplines and standards. Hopefully things like the National Bank saga will fall before the EU right to a fair trial in a reasonable time.

Correlation does not imply causality Mr Ripard. Even a teenager knows that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Iceland

[Daphne – Oh for crying out loud: Wikipedia again, qisna tfal tal-iskola. Iceland has lots of arable land, yes, but do you know why the place is called Iceland? That’s right. It’s under ice for most of the year. And for six months of the year, daylight is merely fleeting, so two of the essential requirements for growing things – however much arable land there is – are just not present. Before fruit and vegetables began to be imported relatively cheaply from other parts of Europe – and I’m talking recent years here – Iceland’s population suffered the consequences of vitamin deficiency caused by lack of sunlight and lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in their diet. I have a friend who grew up in Iceland in the 1970s. She tells me that she and most of the other children at her school had bruising caused by vitamin deficiency and they all saw it as normal – the way I and my friends saw other forms of deprivation here in Malta as normal, I would imagine.]

If Malta’s economy failed like Iceland’s we’d be eating each other or be annexed by a neighbor. This makes Muscat’s original statement way more ludicrous.

Their current plight is relative: they had a $10k better GDP and will come out of this still with a better GDP than us, unless the ‘gubbermint’ comes out with a magic plan.

My biggest problem with magic plans is very subtle:

If Labour wins with a plan that sets fixed targets, then they will have to spend a lot of money we don’t have to achieve their goals. That will end up grinding the economy down come next downturn and we’ll end up with fantastic quality of life indexes but a crashed economy. Needless to say we are not self-sufficient enough to get out of the pickle.

The only restrainer I can hope for is the ECB raining down on the government to curb overt spending. From my limited understanding, the first Fenech Adami government was going this way and Sant reversed this (in my eyes he did something good you see?), then the next PN government went back to more responsible spending. I don’t know where we’d be if there wasn’t a change in policy in the first years of this century.

Joseph has to do the opposite of Gonzi and emphasize the team. He’s too fresh to do otherwise. I hope he shows us a good, honest and capable team come next election otherwise I’ll have no choice … yet again …

Yes.

… one can also mention USA capitalism failed miserably and threw the whole world into recession. The usual arguments trying to associate 2 different arguments. So Hitler was a catholic therefore all catholic are Hitlers? Idiot!

Mintoff wanted integration with Britain.
KMB ……erm………nothing.
Alfred Sant…..Switzerland of the Mediterranean.
Joseph Muscat….Iceland….with hindsight EU is fine by me.

JM must be another in a list of superior thinkers born out of Labour. Is it possible there is nobody suitable for the job among that lot?

IF Iceland were and IF it had, yes. But you could be in the Eurozone and NOT abide by its regulations, and you better not think that belonging to the Eurozone will be your safety net if you don’t, say by running high deficits and letting the national debt spiral out of control.

Let’s stick to the subject. If Iceland were in the Eurozone and abided to the Eurozone regulations would it have avoided the crisis?

[Daphne – It would not necessarily have avoided its banking crisis, but it would certainly have avoided the mega-inflation and scarcity of consumables that have made life a misery for people in Iceland. When your currency is worth almost nothing and you have to import everything, the result is near-empty shop shelves and the sort of prices that are unaffordable, even for ordinary food items.]