Mexico needs carbon and petrol tax, which revenues are all redistributed by a Universal Basic Income mechanism.

Mexico needs to align incentives on pollution

Sir, Jude Webber writes about the horrible pollution caused by the excessive number of cars in Mexico City (“Corruption and car fumes clog up the capital”, Notebook, May 26) and proposes that eliminating corruption in emission testing could be an important part of solving this. Fat chance! As a Venezuelan, I know that this is not a viable route.

Ms Webber writes: “Mexicans are snapping up cars as fast as the world’s seventh largest producer can churn them out . . . Domestic consumption is the engine of economic growth so there is no official incentive to dissuade people from buying Mexican-built cars and associated products such as petrol.”

That’s really not the case. You must build up the right political and economic incentives to correct for it. If Mexico imposed carbon tax, petrol tax and a strong traffic toll system, and made sure all the revenues from it were immediately returned to the economy by means of a universal basic income, you would face a different reality. Then you would have aligned the incentives for pollution control and the fight against climate change with the fight against inequality, and that makes for a very powerful alliance.

Standing in the way, besides initial protests from car owners, would be the redistribution profiteers who would miss a chance to make political and economic capital. Just as in Venezuela.

Published in FT

Will drones and robot soldiers send the drill sergeants home?

Here is the short version of a letter to FT as it was published in FT Magazine on August 1, 2015

Like drones, robots also present challenges to the national psyche of their users (“Robot soldiers”, July 18/19) – the possibility of a diminishing human fighting spirit hiding behind drones and robots.

I think it is hard to visualize 
the same type of national “good feeling”, with homecoming parades and memorials, when scientists and mechanical engineers have done the real fighting. And what will be more important for the advancement of a military career in the future: knowledge about robots or knowledge about your men?

Will the traditional drill sergeant just become a figure featured in History channel documentaries?

What keeps me coming back
 to these issues is that 70 years 
ago my father was freed from a concentration camp in Germany by courageous American boots on the ground... not by drones or robots.

Per Kurowski
 Rockville, Maryland, US

Here is the original longer version of that letter:

Sir, I refer to Geoff Dyer’s interesting “Robot Soldiers”, FT Magazine July 18.

It is a comprehensive article, except for, like with drones, robots also present challenges to the national psychic of its users. I refer concretely to the possibility of a diminishing fighting spirit of the humans hiding behind drones and robots. And what about in comparison to the fighting spirit of others who cannot do so? What if these others, by for instance a cyber attack, manage to neutralize the drones and robots and it then comes down to a real man to man struggle? 

And I am not joking when I say that it is hard to visualize the same type of national good feelings with homecoming parades and memorials, when scientists and mechanical engineers have done the real fighting.

Also, when Dyer quotes Mary Cummings with “I don’t think we have enough competent people within the government to be able to set up acquisition programmes for autonomous weapons or anything robotic,” it makes one think about what will be more important for the advancement of a military career in the future, knowledge about drones and robots, or knowledge about your men… and the implications of that. Will the traditional drill sergeant just become a figure featured in History Channel documentaries?

I must confess though that what keeps me coming back to these issues is that this year 70 years ago, my father was freed from a concentration camp in Germany by courageous American boots on the ground… not by drones or robots. And the question that keeps popping up it my mind is; will American or other soldiers still have what it takes to free other future imprisoned fathers, if need be?

@PerKurowski

Grandparents need to be very careful with grand-parenting classes arranged by their children.

Sir, I refer to Gillian Tett’s “When looking after baby is too serious to be left to experience” December 6.

According to an old saying, the reason why grandchildren and grandparents get along so well... is that they share a common enemy. And, in this respect, it should be clear that any grandparent who is offered a “grandparenting class” arranged by their children, should be very careful indeed.

Whenever I hear my child complaining about mine and my 3 year old grandchild’s behavior, I know everything is as it should be… or, at the very least, as I like it to be.

Financial Times

Venezuela: stop press?

Today I was censored in Venezuela

Financial Times

I’ll sue Facebook if it makes me sad

From Mr Per Kurowski.

Sir, I refer to John Gapper’s article “We are the product that Facebook has been testing” (July 2), about the research Facebook has been carrying out on whether our feelings can be influenced. I find that research to be absolutely great news!

Now Facebook, without us having to spend one penny on it, has with its own money conducted the research that proves conclusively that it needs to be controlled. And, to top it all off, it already confessed the motives and intentions of what it was up to. And what’s more, it did so, as Mr Gapper says, without really seeking anyone’s consent. Had it done so, its confessions would not have been half as useful.

But since that research might also open a window in how Facebook could branch out in the future by offering one Happy-Facebook, one Sad-Facebook and one Slightly-dull-neutral-Facebook, let me hereby formally notify Facebook that I want to be happy, and if it makes me sad I will sue it into oblivion!

By the way, at what point could Facebook be labelled a stalker?

Published in FT

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2012/06/we-might-need-global-web-constitution.html

It's what's safe that's risky!

When "setting bank equity requirements, it is essential to recognise that so-called “risk-weighted” assets can and will be gamed by both banks and regulators. As Per Kurowski, a former executive director of the World Bank, reminds me regularly, crises occur when what was thought to be low risk turns out to be very high risk." Martin Wolf

https://www.ft.com/content/7a95df3e-cb50-11e1-b896-00144feabdc0

Wolf ends with:“We cannot hope for miracles. But we can make bankers more useful and less dangerous. Focus on that.”

Indeed, let's all focus on that.

Please free us from imprudent risk aversion and give us some prudent risk-taking

My 2019 letter to the Financial Stability Board: Acknowledged and Ignored.

PS. Read what #AI ChatGPT OpenAI opines on this.

Here a 2010 homemade YouTube in which I tried to explain the Global Financial Crisis with a 2x2 matrix.

PS. 2023 tweets

A tweet: "Incentives matter: The escape valves of risk weighted bank capital (equity) requirements, cause banks’ risk models to be more about equity-minimizing/leverage-maximizing, than about analyzing bank assets’ true risks. That’s life!"

Another tweet: "The world has been duped/lulled into a false sense of security by the use of risk weighted assets (RWA) as a real and valid measure of banks' risk exposure. E.g., the duration risk of #SVB long-term government bonds is not included in the weighted risks."

Another tweet: “SVB regulators were ‘asleep at the wheel’” What’s a supervisor to do? Inform his boss Treasury bonds' 0% risk weight must be increased?  It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it” Upton Sinclair

Another tweet: "The most dangerous risk banks take, #unwittingly, is the buildup of huge exposures with assets perceived as safe, those which caused all major bank crisis. Regulators’ risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements, unwittingly, puts that risk on steroids."

Another tweet: "A mixture of thousand solutions, many of them inadequate, may lead to a flexible world that can bend with the storms. A world obsessed with Best Practices [risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements] may calcify its structure and break with any small wind."

Another tweet: "Bank capital/equity requirements mostly based on perceived credit risks, not misperceived risks or unexpected events, e.g., covid, inflation, war, interest rate rise, doom banks to stand naked, when needed the most, when hardest to raise equity"

Another tweet: “A regulation that regulates less, but is more trigger-happy & treats a bank failure as something normal, as it should be, could be a much more effective regulation. The avoidance of a crisis, by any means, might lead us to… the mother of all bank crises”

Another tweet: "Risk weighted bank capital/equity with decreed weights: 0% government – 100% citizens, as if bureaucrats know better what to do with credit than e.g., small businesses and entrepreneurs, is that communism, fascism or just plain vanilla Banana Republic?"

Another tweet: "#SVB have all besserwissers Monday morning quarterbacks explaining us duration risk; why holding long-term government bonds was dangerous. Not a word about why regulators require so little capital/equity/skin-in-the game against these assets.

Another tweet: "The stress test that shall not be dared. What if that what’s perceived as safe is more dangerous to bank systems than what’s perceive risky, and therefore the risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements do not reflect real bank risks?"

Another tweet: "When concocting the risk weighted bank equity requirements, evidently no regulator asked: What would Mark Twain opine about with what assets banks might create dangerously large exposures, with some perceived as risky or with some perceived as safe?

On bank regulations, I’m not a newcomer nor a Monday morning quarterback.

What's really dangerous to our bank systems is what's perceived as safe, not what's perceived as risky

Martin Wolf in "Seven ways to clean up our banking ‘cesspit’" July 12, 2012 wrote:

"Fifth, in setting these equity requirements, it is essential to recognise that so-called “risk-weighted” assets can and will be gamed by both banks and regulators. As Per Kurowski, a former executive director of the World Bank, reminds me regularly, crises occur when what was thought to be low risk turns out to be very high risk. For this reason, unweighted leverage matters. It needs to be far lower."

P.S. And still they (he) don't get it... or do not want to get it

Nothing ‘creative’ about destruction of lending to start-ups

Published in FT, December 14, 2011

Sir, Ed Crooks writes that start-up businesses are crucial for creating US jobs but their dwindling birth rate is stalling hopes of recovery "Cycle of 'creative destruction' loses momentum to start-ups", Is America working? December 13).

Lending to start-ups, as something perceived as “risky” for the banks, even though its absence would of course be much riskier for the world at large, requires a lot of that bank capital that is so scarce now; especially after the regulators allowed the banks to lend to what was perceived as not-risky, with little or no capital at all.

In Schumpeterian terms, one can say that bank regulators are engaged in simple and plain vanilla destruction.

The monsters that thrive on hardship haunt my dreams

Published in FT

As a son of a Polish soldier who had to endure more than five years in a German concentration camp, I also connect to Martin Wolf's feeling that the civilisation we pray survives for our descendants is indeed at stake ("The challenges of managing our post-crisis world", December 30).

In this respect my worst nightmare is that unmanageable Versailles-type public debts will become fertile ground for those monsters that thrive on hardships, and that is why I often wake up wishing that the US, instead of taxing and inflating itself out of an almost impossible problem, would simply do an Argentine form of restructuring such as offering 10 cents of the new dollar for each 100 cents of old dollar debt, hand out some Dollar II to its citizens and then take it from there. I believe not only that the world would still accept Dollar II as it has little other choice but also that China would then wake up and adjust . . . you see, governments can't stop dancing either while the music plays.

Once the air is cleared then we might have a better chance of tackling other challenges to civilisation like the climate change threat. As to the banking system, there is nothing that could not be solved by asking ourselves the simple question about what our banks are supposed to do for us, because, unfortunately, that is the question our current very poor set of regulators have never asked themselves.

Happy new decade!

Please free us from imprudent risk-aversion and give us some prudent risk-taking.

Published in FT's / Martin Wolf's Economist Forum October 1, 2009  (The link is gone, I wonder why?)

There is not one single reason to believe the world would be a better place because our financial regulators provide additional incentives to those who, perceived as having a lower risk of default, are already favored by lower interest rates, or punish further those who, perceived as more risky, are already punished by higher interest rates. In fact the opposite is most likely truer.

According to the bank regulations of the Basel Committee, the global standards setters for much of the world, if a bank lends to an unrated corporation then it must hold 8 percent in equity but, if lending to an AAA rated client, then only 1.6 percent will suffice. The difference between 1.6 and 8 percent, 400 percent, given the high costs of bank equity, carries a substantial cost that increases the premiums on risk; something which also confuses the markets risk allocation mechanism. And, by the way, you better sit down; the capital requirement for lending to governments is quite often zero!

The debate of the current financial crisis ignores what really hit us. We still hear the most influential experts, Nobel Prize winners included, repeating over and over again the mantra of “excessive risk-taking”. How can they be so blind? This crisis did not detonate from financing “risky projects”, but from financing the safest of assets, houses and mortgages, in the supposedly safest of countries, the US, and using instruments rated AAA, which are supposed to carry no risk. 

This crisis resulted from some misguided and imprudent risk-aversion policies put in place by regulators by means of capital requirements for banks based on risk and the empowerment of the credit rating agencies, and who with their rating signs caused herds of capital to stampede over a subprime precipice. If we do not want to understand and accept this, how are we supposed to move out of this crisis and into a better future, something which, as human history has proved again and again, always requires prudent and sometimes even a dose of imprudent risk-taking?

I have been writing about this issue for a long time, to little or no avail, since the current financial regulatory system is founded upon an almost unbreakable paradigm created by regulators who are not at all interested in the big-scheme of things but who furiously concentrate on trying to live out their own small bedroom fantasies, that of a world without any bank failure... and as if a world without bank failures has to do with a better world. Actually, the more frequent bank failures are, the smaller the risk of a systemic crisis like the current. 

If you need evidence for the above, read the 347 pages of the bank regulations known as Basel II, where you will not find a single phrase that has anything to do with establishing the purpose for our banks. Regulators, when regulating, should you not start by doing just that?

In January 2003 the Financial Times published a letter were I wrote “Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic error to be propagated at modern speeds.” But, even though it were the mistakes of the credit rating agencies which detonated the crisis, and which were doomed to happen, the most important part to understand, and the hardest one to accept, is that the systemic errors for the world at large would occur even if the credit rating agencies had got their ratings absolutely right. 

Between 2002 and 2004, as an Executive Director at the World Bank, I did what I could to remind this development bank that risk is the oxygen of all development, but I was never really heard. The World Bank, forced to harmonize with Mr. Stability, the IMF, had been effectively silenced. Today, when there are renewed puritan screams against “risks” I hope that the World Bank finally comes to grip with its role and turns into a Champion of prudent risk-taking. The world needs it. Just as an intellectual exercise think of how much better off our children and grandchildren could be, had the trillions that were wasted on a useless housing boom in the US, been lost instead financing projects which adapt and mitigate for climate change?

As a note, in terms familiar to the development community, current financial regulations, by favouring the “lower-risk” that resides more easily in the rich and developed countries, and castigating the “higher-risk” more prone to be part of the poor and the developing world, helps to increase the inequalities and therefore the world’s Gini coefficient.

Dear baby-boomers, there is a world out there that needs a whole lot of risk-taking in order to stand a chance of a better future; a world which does not want to lay down and die in tranquility, just yet.

Joni Mitchell sings about it:

Regulators took the banking risks and put 'em in a museum, in Basel.

And they charged banks more capital/equity, if they dared take these.

No, no, no. Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

If willingness to take risks was our flame, Leonard Cohen could have written:

If Basel Committee is the dealer, I'm out of the game

If its members are the healers, it means our banks will be broken and lame

If their risk aversion is the glory, then our must be the shame.

You want it darker. We kill the flame.

PS 2023: AI OpenAI ChatGPT: Do the nutrients the humans are provided not depend somewhat on the nutrients provided to the economy?

PS: And in 2012 Martin Wolf seemingly agreed with that what’s perceived as safe, is more dangerous to our bank systems than what’s perceived as risky.

PS 2016: What already exists is usually perceived as safer than what is to come; and so regulators have de facto imposed higher capital requirements for banks when financing the "riskier" future than when refinancing the "safer" past.

PS 2003: I'm not new to this: "There has too be an adequate equilibrium between risk-avoidance and the risk-taking needed to sustain growth"

PS 1997: From my very first Op-ed: “Banks opened and closed doors and bankruptcies were frequent, but as a consequence of agile and flexible credit policies, even the banks that failed left a wake of development in their passing.” Money: Whence it came, where it went” (1975), John Kenneth Galbraith

PS God make us daring!

PS Here my recent letter to the Financial Stability Board

PS Here my most recent letter to the IMF

PS Here is a still growing list of the mistakes with the risk weighted capital requirements for banks

PS ChatGPT: The Basel Committee, is it geocentric or heliocentric?

PS ChatGPT Grok: How many Nobel Prize winners in Economic Sciences have warned us of this?

PS Grok ChatGPT: On risk weighted bank capital requirements, where have all economists gone?

"In the US we trust" becomes global term of economic faith

Sir, Martin Wolf’s “America could slow us down” (September 27) somehow ignores the possibility that just as the Americans did when they accepted the “In God we trust” printed on their bills as an act of faith when the dollar abandoned its convertibility into gold, the world is now willing to live with an “In America we trust”, at least while there is such a world shortage of better alternatives. 

If this is so, one could argue that we have still far to travel on the roads of the American current account deficit currently used by the world to dollarize since the fact is that, if you want to lay your hand on a dollar, you have to sell or give something for it.

Frightening? Yes, but is not the world itself a frightening place that needs many acts of faith in order to make life bearable?

Published in FT, October 4 2006 (Censored?)

PS. That is of course as long as USA does not lose its military supremacy

Bank ghostbusters?

Published in FT September 12, 2006

Sir, David Skeel ("The ghost of a crisis in equity funds hides real benefit", September 5), tells us the reason equity funds and hedge funds are "the ghosts of the market's future" is that they "may increasingly assume many of the functions traditionally handled by banks" and "use a wide array of financial instruments now available to hedge the kind of risks traditionally borne by the banks". If he is right then that would make them more like the ghosts of banks past and also turn the banking regulators in Basle into some slightly foolish-looking ghostbusters.

IMF cannot be the independent central bankers' clubhouse

Sir, In your editorial "What is the IMF for?" (September 1), you qualify the original formulas used to assign the quotas determining responsibilities of nations to deposit cash and the rights to borrow it as "arcane". Yet you seem to favour a recalculation that will just produce a reshuffling of the local interests. In a world where we see multinationals getting rid of their "home country", it might instead be time to introduce some representation in the International Monetary Fund that is not bound by pure arcane geographical considerations.

You mention a lack of credibility and legitimacy but seem to believe this could be solved by giving the professional staff a free rein. It is much more difficult than that. One of the reasons the IMF has lost credibility is in fact the mistakes of its staff and these go much further than the handling of the Argentine debt crisis. If you take a closer look, you will find them backtracking on so many of their "cast-in-iron" policies. The world needs not less accountability in the IMF, but much more.

In my view the Fund's problem is that it has now turned into the clubhouse of the "independent" central bankers. What instead we need the IMF to do is to open up its executive board and diversify the recruitment of its staff so there is a better chance for the board to have a healthier perspective of what the IMF's role should be.

Though I agree completely with you that the top job should not be reserved for a European, since "he must now defend interests wider than those that put him in place", may I also advance the idea that it should not be reserved for a central banker either?

Published in FT, September 5, 2006

Long-term benefits of a hard landing

Published in FT, August 23, 2006

Sir, While you correctly argue (“Hard edge of a soft landing for housing”, August 19,) that “even if gradual, a global housing slowdown would be painful” you do not really dare to put forward the hard truth that the gradualism of it all could create the most accumulated pain.

Why not try to go for a big immediate adjustment and get it over with? Yes, a collapse would ensue and we have to help the sufferer, but the morning after perhaps we could all breathe more easily and perhaps all those who, in the current housing boom could not afford to jump on the bandwagon, would then be able to do so, and take us on a new ride, towards a new housing boom in a couple of decades.

This is what the circle of life is all about and all the recent dabbling in topics such as debt sustainability just ignores the value of pruning or even, when urgently needed, of a timely amputation.

PS. At World Bank 2003: “Burning a little each year, thereby getting rid of some of the combustible materials, was much wiser than today’s no burning at all, that only allows for the buildup of more incendiary materials, thereby guaranteeing disaster and scorched earth, when fire finally breaks out, as it does, sooner or later.”

PS. When the moment came, 2007-08, they preferred to kick the can down the road. This would have had a better chance of success if they had eliminated the distortions in the allocation of credit to the real economy that the risk weighted capital requirements for banks cause. Unfortunately they did not, and the crisis can is still out there and it will roll back on us... ever so much

PS. December 2018: “What goes up too much must come down too much. The best countercyclical policy there is, is the elimination of the procyclical ones.” 

The information Mr Market receives could also be neurotic

Published in FT, Friday May 26, 2006

Sir, Martin Wolf’s very interesting although not quite sure where-it-finally-leads-you article “Neurotic Mr Market has plenty to be anxious about” (May 24), bases itself on an argument made by William White, in a working paper of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), that there is something intrinsically destabilising derived from stabilising inflation.

I would argue instead that it is solely the way how inflation is measured that creates the confusion.

Let us not forget that inflation as they, our monetary authorities, know it, is just obtained by looking at a basket of limited consumer goods chosen by bureaucrats and that although they might be highly relevant to the many have-nots, are highly irrelevant to measure the real loss of value of money.

For instance, who on earth has decided for that the increase in the price of houses is not inflation? And so what should perhaps be argued is that really our monetary authorities have not been so successful fighting inflation as they claim they have been.

PS. August 2020: Inflation has already returned

Go for an oil consumers' co-operative group

Published in FT, April 26, 2006

Sir, James Pinkerton suggests that “The world should get ready for a Nato-style oil alliance” (April 20), and although he makes it implicit that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is the “enemy, he does not really explain what the alliance should be up to. Let me make three suggestions. First, forget about the NATO simile - too militaristic - and go for a simple Oil Consumer Co-operative. Second, the OCC should then start some serious introspection so as to realize that its biggest enemy, unchecked oil demand, is thriving behind their own lines. Finally it should look seriously into the alternative of offering the oil producing nations long-term supply and purchases agreements based on prices that are reasonable for both sides.

LEFT OUT:

For instance if the price offered on a 50 years arrangement was 40 dollars per barrel, with adjustment for inflation, plus or minus 50% of the difference with the spot market, this would provide the producers with a floor of 30 when the spot hits 10 dollars, and conversely “only” charge consumers 70 when the spot rises to 100 dollars. Such an arrangement would not only stimulate new oil investments but also keep the hawks (those who love the NATO part) from trying their solutions, as wars mostly tend to erupt while fighting over bargains, like oil priced at its marginal extraction cost.

'American Union' passports could work

Published in FT, April 10, 2006

Sir, It is sad in today’s globalized world to still find so many local Americans who believe that when they ship a criminal band member over the border, to someone much less resourceful, they have gotten rid of their problem.

In this respect, Jacob Weisberg, ("Immigration ideas bordering on perverse”, April 6), aghast with the current ideas on immigration law reform in the US, proposes not passing any reforms but to keep going as if nothing’s happening.

Another more transparent route would be to bite the bullet and accept that an “American Union” between North and Central America already exists, de-facto, and issue a common passport for all the citizens of the enlarged American Union.

Such a strategy would make it possible for many of the over 11 million illegal immigrants that dare not leave the US because they do not know whether they can later return, to be freed from their (also de-facto) mother of all jails, and go home, even on a temporary basis.

It would also help to realize that had the US spent an Iraq-war sized budget assisting Central America, as the European Union did with Spain and others, the whole immigration debate could have been a moot issue, with exception perhaps of all the aging baby boomers moving south to find care and services.

Finally, the fact is that when you see how all the Central Americans toil away in the US and help their families back home, you have to ask yourself whether this is not just part of the process whereby the US manages to renew its working and family ethics, in order to remain strong.

PS. A letter in the Washington Post: How many of those governments not wanting to have their emigrants move back to their homeland, feel so because they do not want to renounce the family remittances that helps to keep them in power?

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2009/09/mcprison.html

https://voiceandnoise.blogspot.com/2003/02/snowing-in-washington-my-first.html

Europe's welfare state should not be scorned

Published in FT March 03, 2006

Sir, Whatever failings Martin Wolf points out with respect to the European welfare state let us not forget that its main pillar is the sharing of social responsibilities among citizens and, in this respect its opposite, the non-welfare state, the everyone-on-his-own state, is fundamentally more rotten and unsustainable in today's global world. Most of his criticism is not about the welfare state itself but about its workings and these do indeed present some problems that need urgent corrections. Nonetheless, while reforming please do not throw out this very beautiful baby with the bathwater.

Fuel advertisement rubs salt into Venezuelans' wounds

Published in FT, December 7, 2005

Sir, Andy Webb-Vidal got it absolutely right when he pointed out the incongruence of Venezuela, with its abounding extreme poverty, distributing subsidies through cheap heating oil to the less well-off in a Massachusetts, US, that has more than 10 times its per capita income.

But as Mr. Webb-Vidal most probably did not see the advertisement that ran last week in some US newspapers, he left out some details about what really rubs salt in the Venezuelans' wounds.

First, the picture in the ad, which is the one to be compared with the shanty towns in Venezuela, depicts a large, two storey, typical Massachusetts self-standing house, with a small garden and a big tree in front, beautifully decorated with what looks to be Christmas ornaments, and completely lit up, porch included.

Second, the ad ends with the statement: "The fuel assistance program isn't about politics. It's about offering humanitarian aid to those who need it. What could be more American than that?"

Come on Europe, wave away gloom

Published in FT, June 8, 2005

Sir, For those who believe that the world needs Europe more than ever, the latest events are very disconcerting, not so much because of the No votes themselves but more so because of the ensuing reactions.

 

What a gloom! After the incredible advancements of a Europe over past decades it is unbelievable how this little setback could create so much fuss. 

The votes on a messy, too voluminous, uninspiring and basically unreadable document, was an as- good-as-it-gets opportunity to grunt a bit about bureaucracy, but now they allow the same bureaucrats to deflect this perfect valid criticism by equating the votes with a rejection of Europe. 

Europe, pick yourself up! Just wrest whatever Delacroix’s flags are waived from the current bearers, and keep moving on. We will be cheering.