Meanwhile, in Malta, we have the more pressing problem of one jerk’s personal crisis
We need Franco Debono and his reaction to not having his great intelligence appreciated like we need a hole in the head.
And we need to have Joseph Muscat and Anglu Farrugia running the country with all this brewing like we need to have our legs and arms cut off.
Selfish, egocentric, blind to reality and dangerously irresponsible – and that doesn’t just describe Franco Debono and Joseph Muscat.
It’s also my view on anyone who, right now, thinks that a 38-year-old shallow and talentless former Super One reporter is a really good person to manage Malta with all this about to rush at us.
The Labour Party delegates are a bunch of old codgers who left school at 14 and that’s why they chose him to lead the party. Anyone else has no excuse when they choose him to lead the country through the worst crisis in living memory.
Today’s report:
IMF ISSUES WARNING OF EUROZONE ‘SPIRAL’ AS BANKS TAKE COVER
Europe’s stock markets mostly rode out Standard & Poor’s downgrade of several eurozone players when they reopened stable yesterday, but the single currency itself remained under pressure.
Meanwhile, in a sign of trouble to come, European banks stowed record sums in the ECB for safe keeping and a top IMF official warned the eurozone faces a “downward spiral” if it fails to get its governance in order.
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy received a boost when Moody’s declined to match rival agency S&P in stripping Paris of its triple-A credit rating headed for crisis talks in Spain with clouds gathering.
And Paris was further buoyed when it successfully sold €8.59 billion in short-term bonds paying a lower rate of interest than at a previous similar auction despite the loss of its top-line rating.
“An investment is rarely risk free, which is why it is often profitable. But a risk free investment does exist; that’s an investment in the sovereign wealth of our country,” said French finance minister Francois Baroin.
Eurozone banks, however, took a more gloomy view of the situation.
They put €493.3 billion on 24-hours deposit with the European Central Bank overnight Sunday, topping a record set on Friday of €489 billion and highlighting fears of a credit crunch.
Meanwhile, IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton warned Asian finance and banking chiefs meeting in Hong Kong of trouble ahead. “Europe could be swept into a downward spiral of collapsing confidence, stagnant growth, and fewer jobs,” he said. “In today’s interconnected global economy, no country and no region would be immune from that catastrophe.”
European leaders are due to meet on January 30 to agree a new fiscal pact to coordinate deficit reduction programmes and attempt to reassure the bond markets that they are on top of the sovereign debt crisis.
But Friday’s S&P downgrade of nine European economies and stalled talks between private lenders and debt-wracked Greece have raised fears that the markets will not be content to wait until governments provide answers.
The agency’s decision “points to inadequate governance within the eurozone as a risk factor,” Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti told journalists after meeting the European Union’s President Herman Van Rompuy.
Greece promised to resolve its disagreements with creditor banks to allow for an orderly “haircut” on its debt, rather than running the risk of a “hard default” that would surely trigger market panic.
“The discussions which are ongoing have I think helped us to reach a point, which is close to an agreement, but some further reflection is necessary on how to put all the elements together,” Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told CNBC.
Mr Sarkozy, who saw France stripped of its top AAA credit rating, was in Spain to receive an ward from King Juan Carlos in Madrid before holding a working meeting with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
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“worst crisis in living memory”
Your living memory? If not I’m sure the years that Malta was at war come close to the ‘maltemp’ that is about to consume us should Dr. Gonzi not remain Prime Minister.
[Daphne – Richard, the people who remember the war as anything other than a childhood memory are now in their 80s and 90s and hardly the bulk of the population. And the crisis to which I refer is European, not Maltese.]
Europe was at war too and there hardly was one moment when there wasn’t any turmoil in Europe throughout the last century…
First World War, Second World War, the uprising in East Germany, Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, The Troubles, The unrest in Italy amongst many others which happened in the last ten years of the 20th century.
[Daphne – There is no comparison, and you know it. Also, World War I is not within living memory. The last person alive who fought in that war died at least two years ago.]
Why worry.
According to Joseph Muscat Malta will soon have the best cabinet of ministers that was ever in place, which will be made up from a nucleaus of very high talented people. Namely, Karmenu Vella, George Vella, Joe Mizzi, Anglu Farrugia, Joe Debono Grech, Leo Brincat, maybe AST and the professor from Brussels. I don’t know if I have mentioned them all.
I reiterate, why worry.
“The Labour Party delegates are a bunch of old codgers who left school at 14 and that’s why they chose him to lead the party. .”
Pardon me for contradicting you about this.
A huge number of Labour Party delegates are ILLITERATE, which explains why on their voting paper they print a picture of the candidate next to his name. That way they will know exactly who to vote for.
It is the choice of these illiterate morons that we now have to contend with as PM, as one of the worse econimic crisis ever to hit the EU in recent years looms on the horizon.
And may God have mercy on us and our children.
[Daphne – No, it won’t be the delegates’ choice at the general election stage. It will be the electors’ choice.]
My point is that the whole country risks being lumbered by a prime minister who was elected leader of the PL ( over people like Goirg Abela and Michael Falzon) by a bunch of illiterate or semi-literate delegates..
It’s clear that the euro is being targeted.
I wonder what will happen when Labour, eurosceptic and anti-euro, are elected.
Joseph has to explain immediately what his ideas to deficit control are, and whether he sees the 3% mark as an obstacle, a burden or stringent policy. Foreign observers will not take his hesitation lightly.
Unless he intends another gaffe, as he did with Enemalta.
Monti’s decisions have been damaged by the Lega’s call to abandon the euro and resistance to any spending cuts. Berlusconi won’t have anything to with them.
It’s all about perception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qwFglXKUI4&feature=player_embedded
00:44 “Dawn naghmlulhom kopja kull wiehed lill-gurnalisti”
00:54 “Nahseb …” Wara minuta ma flahtx nara aktar. Dawn in-nies jippretendu li jmexxu lill-pajjizna?
I`d like to know what Joseph Muscat thinks about this situation, and how he thinks of handling it, if ever he gets to be PM.
I have never seen a word or read a press release relating to this matter.
Perhaps he should send us another “Dear friend” email, acknowledging thatthis is what is worrying us at the moment, not Franco Debono and his tantrum, not even the ‘cheaper’ utility bills he keeps talking about.
Here we are, talking of a possible total economic meltdown and Joseph Muscat is busy sending spam emails.
Hasn’t Martin Schulz rung Joseph?
http://www.corriere.it/notizie-ultima-ora/Esteri/Schulz-ipotesi-fallimento-possibile/17-01-2012/1-A_001104224.shtml
Do you receive mTLATSaR SMSs?
I have received one a few moments ago:
Mosta dog killer strike again on 16th day of month – this time crucifies cat.
I mean to say …
Now that looks more like the real Joey, with his red tie and red backdrop, rather than their current attraction to blue.
Have you billed them for the advice to get rid of the red flags and the torca? They most certainly seem to have heeded it.
Joseph Muscat craves to become the youngest person to walk into the office of Prime Minister in decades.
I do not know if he has thought about the prospect that he could also be the youngest to be forced to leave that office.
Hence the hurry biex iwaqqa l-gvern. Next year he’ll be too old to be the youngest.
I just wonder how you can conclude that Joseph Muscat would be “Selfish, egocentric, blind to reality and dangerously irresponsible” as a Prime Minister. As you correctly point out yourself, he hasn’t yet been tested in that position.
[Daphne – To expect a man to change when he becomes prime minister is like expecting a man to change when he marries. Neither rite of passage has the power to change a person’s character.]
All politicians were once untried and untested, and all of them were elected to office for the first time once. It can’t be that we can only have PMs with PM experience, as we would soon run out of candidates.
[Daphne – They were not untried and untested as people, and nor is Joseph. The style and characteristics of every prime minister’s style have been identical to the style and characteristics exhibited in his life before and since, and even in his private and working life. The prime minister is the man and the man is the prime minister. That’s why I was right about Alfred Sant, when everyone was saying how great a new possibility he was in 1996. I was actually one of the few who knew what I was talking about, because I knew him in a private capacity. Joseph Muscat is more widely know now, and with the new media, more widely observed. His personality traits and character flaws, his weaknesses and his shallowness, are markedly evident. Unless, of course, you are blind or not a woman.]
Well, I’m neither blind nor a woman, and your opinion about the man is yours and that’s fine. But it is an opinion, not fact.
I don’t think you are correct in painting the picture of fear that you are painting of JM as PM. I don’t think there is anything in his behaviour as a politician, in the European Parliament or in the Maltese Parliament, that justifies the characterisation of the man as “Selfish, egocentric, blind to reality and dangerously irresponsible”.
I think he has made some mistakes, the latest one being the moving of the vote of no-confidence motion (which makes him look power hungry and opportunistic rather than statesman like), but I am not scared witless by the thought of JM as PM. I’m also not convinced that he will win the next election, whenever it may be.
I take umbrage at that ‘not a woman’ remark. Sexist and factually incorrect. I thought JPO was a twat and you didn’t – and I’m a man and you’re a woman.
Do you really think Joseph Muscat doesn’t have many tens of thousands of female supporters, simply because they are women and thus know he’s a twat too?
Daphne, you know I admire you immensely but this female-supremacist act lets you down.
You want to tell me you are a woman? I have serious doubts!
[Daphne – Obviously, because in your neck of the woods, women slather themselves in very thick make-up, dye and straighten their hair, wear clothes made for their daughters, are very poorly educated, and say nothing all the better to get money off their men, right up until the point where they metamorphose into something shaped approximately like a cardboard box (4′ x 4′ x 4′) with plum-coloured hair cut by a man’s barber, and don’t need to be nice to men for money any more because their men have long since had their soul sapped and have given up.]
Hilarious. And tragic. Tragic as you are right in your analysis. Your depiction of that particular woman is side-splitting. And accurate.
Thank God my better half is not that type. Could be because against all odds she was one of the few (very few) who managed a doctorate before 1987.
Somebody else is using the name Teo ,I normally sign under myself.
[Daphne – I thought as much. They tried it with Dee, too. Don’t worry, I changed his/her nick to Toe. They’ll like that.]
Interested bystander, Joseph has indeed been tried, tested and failed.
We know Joseph in his capacity as a Super One reporter.
We know Joseph’s rabid campaign against joining the EU.
We know Joseph’s democratic way of preventing ‘pairing’.
We know Joseph’s welcoming back relics of the 70s & 80s.
We know Joseph’s anti BWSC and pro-Bateman and Sargas.
We know Joseph’s U-turns and brilliant ‘hindsight’.
We know about Joseph’s skip and how full it is of renegades.
We know of Joseph’s vast talent pool of semi-literates.
We know Joseph’s ‘earthquake’ of logo and name changes.
We know of Joseph’s evil media empire and lies factory.
Yet we know not of one single policy matter.
We will hold him to his 51 fantasies which he should tie to votes of (no)confidence should he fail to deliver.
We shall keep track of his ‘successes’ in the international fora.
We shall see that he holds no State dinners, since he will not attend them but rather prefers a humble ‘hemberger’ with Dik and the twins.
We shall see how he handles the wannabe ministers of old and new MPs and how large his Cabinet will be just to accommodate any number of pretenders. To heck with cost.
Yes, we know Joseph well, we know his capabilities and lack thereof, we know who pulls his strings and we can anticipate with a degree of accuracy, his paucity of diplomatic skills, and where his failings would be.
Unfortunately for those who vote for and against him, meaning the whole country, it will be too late to moan and complain after next election coming soon.
http://markanthonysammut.blogspot.com/
Meanwhile Fredu was on TV this morning with that evil smile of his enjoying the collapse of the Euro..