Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
GGT: Not seen any of the latter. Overall opinion seems mainly to be that there was no alternative. Overall as well people have already moved on and its no longer big news.
Moved on, really? Here are a couple of articles I read just today that suggest otherwise:

Cameron cited defending London’s financial-services industry as the main reason he refused to join 26 other nations in a European Union treaty to rescue the euro last week. He was left out of further negotiations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leading to criticism from the Liberal Democrats, his coalition partners, that Britain would be frozen out of decision-making in Europe.
London is the world’s biggest market for interest-rate derivatives, with $1.4 trillion of daily revenue, or 46 percent of the world’s total, according to the Bank for International Settlements. The U.K. is also home to the world’s biggest foreign-exchange market and 251 foreign banks, more than in any other country.
“The City is relieved” at Cameron’s refusal to sign the treaty, according to Steven Bell, chief economist at hedge fund GLC Ltd. in London and a former U.K. Treasury economist. “For the U.K. economy it’s the equivalent of North Sea oil and it’s not running out.”


The U.K.’s financial-services industry makes up about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and 11 percent of its total tax receipts, according to The City U.K., a lobby group backed by the City of London Corporation, which governs the financial district. Financial-services employ more than 1 million people in the U.K., the group said.


About 288,000 of these work in the City of London, according to the CEBR. That’s 9.3 percent fewer than in 2010 and the lowest headcount since at least 1998 as firms cut jobs amid the European debt crisis and tougher regulation.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...ntipathy-.html

That looks like what people in the US have been complaining (and Occupying) about since the global financial melt-down of '07-'08---public policy to prop up the same "experts" who caused the trouble in the first place, with politicians' help. Well, that's my take on it.

Combined with what we know about synthetic derivatives, it looks like a precarious position for the UK to choose to "go it alone". More on those financial WMD, including interest-rate swaps, to which London's financial-services industry is heavily exposed:

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/arti...fit_99422.html