"As the euro brushes $1.50 against the dollar, it is already too late to stop the Eurozone hurtling into a full-fledged economic and political crisis. We now have to start asking whether the EU itself will survive in its current form. It takes eighteen months or so for the full effects of currency changes to feed through, so the damage will snowball late next year and beyond into 2009...

A new political order will soon take hold in much of Europe, bringing in a new wave of prickly national populists... Will Mr. Sarkozy (of France) and his allies resort to 1970s-style exchange controls to stem the rise of the euro?... The effects of such a move on the City of London would be catastrophic - and trigger the certain withdrawal of Britain from the EU."

-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, London Telegraph

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves..."