Are Germany and France Stupid Or Do They Think We Are?

The general view seems to be that Tuesday's Merkel and Sarkozy show has solved nothing, that neither is a sufficient statesman to produce a solution for the euro mess they find themselves in and that it will take another couple of crises in euroland before there is any chance that a workable result will be hammered out, if then. One of the re-hashed solutions M&S came to was the Tobin tax, not just for the eurozone though but for the whole EU. (Calling them M&S is not my idea but I forget who first coined this most inappropriate acronym for the two less than statesmen as it represents the very reverse of the idea behind the original M&S which was quality and price or value for money.) It is difficult to understand why M&S want the Tobin tax to extend to the whole EU other than that they think the non-euro countries should share the eurozone pain although if I were a conspiracy theorist I would be claiming it is because they want to do us down. We have the largest foreign exchange market in the world and would therefore pay more Tobin tax than any other country. Not only that we would see our financial services sector decimated as exchange business was moved away from London to other financial centres outside the EU. It is hardly surprising therefore that MPs and MEPs are lobbying the government to issue a resounding 'no' to M&S. Germany and France are not that stupid that they cannot see that we could not possibly agree to the Tobin tax so I guess that they must be setting us up as a whipping boy. Well screw them.