Moral hazards for Euro neo-libs

The Guardian is getting quite liberal again:

Frustration is justified when people flout rules designed to protect them. But the police should avoid moralising

Quite an insight here:

Most of us are likely to find reason to tut or glare at someone for breaking the rules in the coming weeks. But the police are among an extremely small number with the power to do anything about it. ..

Eventually they might also be able to distinguish the difference between, say, name-calling and actual discrimination and power in identity politics. In the short term:

Any temptation to go beyond what the law says, for example by deciding what constitutes exercise or which goods can be sold (both of which have been tried) must be strenuously resisted

Meanwhile, old habits of obedience to anything European persist: (and old rhetoric):

Extend Brexit transition by years over coronavirus, UK told [sic!]

The centre-right European People’s party (EPP), which unites the parties of 11 EU leaders, including Angela Merkel and Leo Varadkar, issued a statement on Monday calling on the government to extend the Brexit transition beyond the end of the year....Christophe Hansen, a MEP from Luxembourg [said]...“I can only hope that common sense and substance will prevail over ideology. An extension of the transition period is the only responsible thing to do.”...David McAllister, the German MEP who leads the European parliament’s work on the future relationship with the UK, said the pandemic complicated an “already very ambitious” schedule. “The ball is now clearly in the British court,” he added.

However, even the GHRaun has noticed that there might also be a few cracks appearing in 'Europe':

Without solidarity between members, the eurozone won't survive coronavirus

The Dutch-led opposition to a ‘coronabond’ to raise funds for nations hardest-hit by the pandemic is self-defeating

 At the video conference [so they can work with these] the eurobond motion came up against the eurozone’s “frugal four” – Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland – who argued that the issuance of a common debt instrument would punish the countries that had saved for such a rainy day, and encourage further fiscal mismanagement by those who did not. Solidarity, they claimed, just created moral hazard [lovely phrase for less neo-lib policies].

The former Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem gained widespread notoriety for his penny-pinching in the Greek debt negotiations, at one point appearing to suggest that his southern European neighbours had wasted their money on “booze and women”. ..the Dutch government’s position is also exceedingly hypocritical. The Netherlands has long been known as one of the world’s most infamous tax havens, siphoning off hundreds of billions of euros in corporate profits and international financial flows and keeping other governments from taxing them properly...Solidarity is not charity.

Earlier, the sainted L Elliott had noted: 

The European Central Bank has embarked on a gigantic asset purchase scheme in an attempt to flood the eurozone economy with cheap money... the crisis has highlighted the weaknesses of the eurozone: the lack of coordination between monetary policy run by the ECB from Frankfurt and fiscal policy under the control of member states; the lack of a sizeable, single budget; the absence of financial tools that would make a collective approach easier.

If ever there was a time for the EU to act as one, for the richer countries to show solidarity with those less fortunate, then this is it. Yet when Italy pleaded for fellow countries to send it medical equipment such as masks, France and Germany not only failed to respond, they placed export bans (since lifted) on the export of the kit Italian hospitals were crying out for. In the end it was left to China to show EU how to respond to a country in dire need.

Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said at the weekend: “If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, the whole European structure loses its raison d’être to the people. We are at a critical point in European history.”...That just about sums things up. The message being sent out is that Europe is a project for the good times and that when the going gets tough people can only really rely on their own government and the nation state.