Following on from yesterday’s post about Slovakia looking likely to vote no to the expanded ESFS and in turn derailing the EU “rescue”, the following snippet from ZeroHedge of an interview conducted between German Spiegel and Slovakia party head Richard Sulik has some surprising statements from a Euro politician. Shame the rest of them don’t tell it like it is rather than keep pretending that it will all go away if only they can spend enough of our tax money :

Only two countries, Malta and Slovakia, have yet to ratify the expansion of the euro bailout fund. Its fate may be in the hands of a minor Slovak party headed by Richard Sulik. In an interview, the politician explains why he hopes the fund will fail and what he sees as the only way to save the euro.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Sulik, do you want to go down in European Union history as the man who destroyed the euro?

Richard Sulik: No. Where did you get that idea?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Slovakia has yet to approve the expansion of the euro backstop fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), because your Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party is blocking the reform. If a majority of Slovak parliamentarians don’t support the EFSF expansion, it could ultimately mean the end of the common currency.

Sulik: The opposite is actually the case. The greatest threat to the euro is the bailout fund itself.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Sulik:It’s an attempt to use fresh debt to solve the debt crisis. That will never work. But, for me, the main issue is protecting the money of Slovak taxpayers. We’re supposed to contribute the largest share of the bailout fund measured in terms of economic strength. That’s unacceptable.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: That sounds almost nationalist. But, at the same time, you’ve had what might be considered an ideal European career. When you were 12, you came to Germany and attended school and university here. After the Cold War ended, you returned home to help build up your homeland. Do you care nothing about European solidarity?

Sulik: If we now choose to follow our own path, the solidarity of the others will also crumble. And that would be for the best. Once that happens, we would finally stop with all this debt nonsense. Continuously taking on more debts hurts the euro. Every country has to help itself. That’s very easy; one just has to make it happen.

Stopping with “all this debt nonsense” would be the best thing for all of us.

As an aside on “all this debt nonsense”, Liam Haligan has a rather nice demolition of the “government cuts” in today’s Telegraph which is well worth a read :

Government spending in August was 7.2pc higher than in the same month in 2010. During the 12 months to August, public expenditure outstripped that of the year before, even after inflation.

The UK borrowed around £150bn in both 2009/10 and 2010/11 and will borrow £125bn in this fiscal year. These figures are six-to-eight times average annual borrowing totals during the previous decade.

The entire fiscal debate is couched in terms of “paying down the deficit”. But, again, this doesn’t convey reality. The deficit is merely the nation’s annual credit card bill. The real issue is the UK’s mortgage – the national debt. Net public debt, £581bn as recently as 2008/09, is set to reach £940bn by the end of 2011/12, a 62pc nominal rise in 36 months.

Every year, of course, while the annual deficit falls, the national debt still spirals up. By 2015/16, even with the “austerity plan”, net debt will be £1,500bn says the Treasury – all of which will need servicing by continued interest payments – like any mortgage.

Back in 2009, the UK spent £31bn – around 6pc of total tax receipts – on debt interest. That’s money down the drain. By 2015, debt services costs, according to the 2011 budget document, will be £67bn a year – 10pc of the tax take. These shocking numbers are also underestimates, given assumptions of future “government savings” and, most crucially, benign gilt rates.

Include the cost of “financial interventions”, in other words, bank bail-outs, and public sector net debt is already £2,266bn, according to the Treasury fine print.

The figures are very clear when it comes to the debt pile that the UK is continuing to build up contrary to the BBC and every other left wing organisation talking of cuts, cuts, cuts.