Ever wonder why European banks were so angry with us: Something about not making good on some toxic garbage we sold them - until 'The Bailout'?
01 December 2010 22:09:29
Fed Opens Books, Revealing European Megabanks Were Biggest Beneficiaries
by Shahien Nasiripour - Common Dreams
NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief.
[Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood.]Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood (to cover fraudulent derivative sales? - ed.)
The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities (also known as "toxic derivatives" - ed.)
The Fed's dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald's and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans.
The measure, initiated in Jan. 2009 to stimulate the flow of credit and keep household borrowing costs low, led the nation's central bank to purchase more than $1.1 trillion in mortgages packaged into the form of securities. The mortgage bonds are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin mortgage giants now owned by taxpayers.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.
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WALL STREET'S MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITY FRAUD DESTROYED BOTH THE US AND EU ECONOMIES!
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Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
The data had previously been secret. It was released Wednesday per the recently-enacted law overhauling the federal financial regulation. The Fed, ferociously backed by the Obama administration, fought lawmakers' desire for full disclosure throughout the financial reform debate.
As detailed in "Bankers Gone Wild", mortgages were cranked out by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, then bundled together into mortgage securities, which were in turn re-sold to investors as triple-A investments, even though the bundles included sub-prime mortgages already defaulting as US jobs were shipped overseas.
These mortgage-backed securities are a Wall Street invention! And at first they appeared to be immensely profitable, so not only were US financial corporations, investment houses, and pension funds buying them, but so too were non financial corporations and major foreign banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
But those early profits were a fiction, and we now know that many of the sellers of mortgage backed securities were engaging in Ponzi scheme activity, using proceeds from sales of mortgage backed securities to pay "earnings" to earlier investors, while the same SEC that had turned a blind eye to Bernie Madoff's $65 billion swindle looked the other way!
Worse, we now know that individual mortgages were pledged as collateral to multiple security bundles, which is illegal! This is briefly mentioned at 3:48 in the next video.
The criminal fraud even went further than that! In the case of Countrywide (now part of Bank of America) the actual titles were never really transferred, leaving the investment bundles entirely unsecured!
What appears to have happened is that the European banks realized that the American investment firms selling those mortgage-backed securities were engaging in fraud! Greenspan has admitted to such.
As the banks of Europe began to feel the major losses from the fraud, they turned to their local governments for financial assistance. In turn, those governments were forced to apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund, plunging their people deeper into debt, and the governments under the control of the private bankers! Indeed one must wonder if this multinational financial fraud had as its ultimate objective the forcing of the entire western world under the control of a giant private bank!.
Obviously, the people of Europe are refusing to be chained to a global bank and seem far more worried about their freedoms than their American counterparts. Yet a quick Google search shows the media encouraging the nations hit with this massive financial fraud to apply to the IMF for more loans, never mentioning that in their indebtedness lies the end of their national sovereignty!
Ultimately the European banks are never going to sit still for fraud, even from Wall Street, and even from the USA! In order to reduce their losses and avoid more IMF entanglements, the European banks demanded a refund on those fraudulent investment packages. No doubt the Wall Street mortgage fraudsters refused, suggesting that the bankers of Europe dump their losses on their populations just as the American banks were being forced to do. That some European banks did so explains why so many European nations are in financial trouble. However, the larger European banks may have decided to "get tough" with the Americans, and this may explain the mysterious electronic run on the US financial system on September 18th, 2008, which almost crashed the US economy. Strangely, the American people were never informed who had initiated the financial transfers, even though obviously this information is recorded in the transactions on the computer systems.
This "attack" may have been a warning from the European main banks to the US to make good on the bad investments, or risk full public exposure for the mortgage backed securities fraud!
Soon after, we learned that the Federal Reserve was handing out trillions and trillions of dollars, loans which the American people are expected to repay, only the Federal Reserve refused to say who was getting the money, and even implied that exposure of the recipients of these trillions of dollars might pose a threat to the US economy. Now, nearly two years later, we find out that the Federal Reserve was buying back the mortgage-backed securities from European banks including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suiss. The reason this was kept secret was that the American people were being told that all these "bailouts" would be repaid, yet common sense tells us that profit cannot be made from an exposed fraud! The Fed could not admit to owning all those mortage-backed securities without being forced to answer the question of just exactly why they were not producing any earnings, with the usual "it was all the borrowers' fault" excuses wearing thin even then! As cash left the nations financial system to cover the repurchase of the fraudulent mortgage backed securities, banks found their balance sheets slipping into the red. The banks were being driven into insolvency making good on the bad paper and this is what triggered the epidemic of fraudulent foreclosures. Banks needed real assets on their balance sheets as quickly as they could to get their balance in the black and their banks out of insolvency. So shortcuts were taken which became known as "foreclosuregate". For some banks, it was too late. Hundreds of banks either dragged down by the fraudulent mortgage securities or made insolvent buying back the bad paper, have been shut down. For other major banks and financial institutions, the tactic worked and they stayed afloat, for which making millions of Americans homeless seemed a small price to pay! Indeed one might explain the hitherto unexplained reluctance by the Federal Government to stem the offshoring of American jobs as a deliberate policy of setting up Americans to lose their homes in order to preserve the capital structure of the banks!
In other words, the American people were looted to make good on the fraud perpetrated by Wall Street not only against American financial institutions, but bankers in the Eurozone as well.
The Wall Street Fraudsters should have gone to jail. But they walk free and clear, saved from the FDIC and prison, heading into a wonderful holiday with record-setting bonuses to spend while ordinary Americans have been made jobless, homeless, and hungry to keep the criminals out of prison.
The Mortgage Backed Securities fraud is the biggest fraud in the history of the United States, and as today's revelations make clear, we still do not know the full scale of the financial rape this nation has suffered.
Uploaded by Pajopeace on 28 Feb 2012
Irish journalist Vincent Browne confronts the ECB's (European Central Bank) Klaus Masuch demanding to know where the money is going.
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 6:14 pm Post subject:
Amazing that the newly inaugurated Hollande's plane was today hit by lightning! And he had to turn back from his trip to Germany. Made it eventually though.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:55 pm Post subject:
Hey, look at the date the German court will rule on whether the German parliament Euro plan is constitutional
Wednesday September 12th
Spooky +1!
Eurozone crisis live: Greek PM pleads for more time, but told to wait - as it happened http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/22/eurozone-crisis-greece- pm-samaras-cuts?newsfeed=true
• Samaras/Juncker press conference highlights from 17.32pm
• Angela Merkel: Let's see the Troika report first
• Antonis Samaras tells Bild, more time will help us recover
• Analysts fear little progress ahead
• Euro crisis hits Japanese exports hard
This afternoon's comments from Angela Merkel (see 14.3 and Jean-Claude Juncker (see 14.25), underline the importance of mid-September in the future of the eurozone.
14 September could be the crucial date. That's the day when eurozone finance ministers and central bankers are due in Cyprus to discuss the crisis – so the Troika will want to have its assessment on Greece ready for then.
Athens has already said it will have finalised its programme of €11.5bn of cuts by that date too.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:26 pm Post subject:
When David Cameron reshuffled his cabinet earlier this week, the arrival of a trio City of London bankers and consultants at Her Majesty’s Treasury went almost unnoticed. This in my view was a lacuna.
When David Cameron reshuffled his cabinet earlier this week, the arrival of a trio City of London bankers and consultants at Her Majesty’s Treasury went almost unnoticed. This in my view was a lacuna.
The three men are Paul Deighton, a former Goldman Sachs partner and chief operating officer for Europe (pictured above), Sajid Javid, a former global head of credit trading at Deutsche Bank, and Greg Clark, a former consultant at Boston Consulting Group.
Cameron promoted Javid, who was first elected as conservative MP in May 2010, to economic secretary to the Treasury, and Clark, who has been a Tory MP since 2005, to the role of financial secretary to the Treasury. Most significantly, however Cameron appointed Deighton, who isn’t even an elected politician, as commercial secretary to the Treasury. While Javid and Clark start at the Treasury with immediate effect, Deighton who will ennobled as Lord Deighton, giving him to sit in the House of Lords doesn’t start until January.
The media coverage of Deighton’s appointment, what little there was, highlighted his successful tenure as chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), the body oversaw the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics Games between 2006 and today (see for example The Guardian). That was perhaps understandable given both the games are widely deemed to have been a huge success, the sums raised from sponsors and the rest.
But the lack of attention given to Deighton’s 22 years (1983 to 2005) at Goldman Sachs in London and New York where he reportedly made a £110m fortune when the firm was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in May 1999 was surprising. The only paper that grasped its significance was the Evening Standard. Its City diarist wrote:-
Phew! Just when Goldman Sachs looked to have lost its influence in the corridors of power after that embarrassing “we treat our clients as muppets” episode earlier this year, an alumnus of the Vampire Squid investment bank has landed a plum job in government.
Remember last November, when the former Goldman Sachs International adviser Mario Monti became Italy’s prime minister, hard on the heels of the appointment of former Goldman Sachs vice-chairman and managing director Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank? There were fears that allowing a single investment bank, with its well-known trading agenda, to have so many implants (and yes there are plenty of others) in top roles in the corridors of European power might not be a particularly idea. As Stephen Foley put it in the Independent:-
“The ‘Goldman Project’ is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest… Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman…. Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it?
In earlier blog posts I too have warned about the risks of having a “revolving door” between the Wall Street/the City and government/civil service. Former bankers (and in the UK we also have Stephen Green, former chairman of HSBC, whose name was besmirched following his bank’s involvement in money laundering for drugs barons, terrorists and pariah regimes, as trade minister, Sir Jeremy Heywood, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker, as cabinet secretary, and Oliver Letwin, a former Rotchchilds investment banker as minister in the cabinet office, among others) generally adhere to a particular world view, including the belief that masses of debt is good, and can have have a tendency prioritize the interests of the financial sector over and above those of the real economy or the wider public.
When combined with financial sector funding of political parties, widespread secondments to the civil service, regulators and quangos, etc, a rapidly spinning “revolving door” along these lines can lead to a form of ‘corporatocracy’, in which the policy-making apparatus gets hijacked by a special interest group. Possible consequences if bankers are in power, or too close to power, include giving high-level ‘white collar’ criminals immunity from prosecution and ensuring that plans for financial reform are watered down, delayed or killed off. This is allegedly the sort of thing that happened to the EU’s internal market directorate under commissioner Charlie McCreevy.
Conservative MP David Davies recently gave an insider’s eye view of the problems of “crony capitalism” in an article published in Prospect on February 22nd:-
It doesn’t matter which department you choose. Their approach is too often dominated by the concerns of big business. The Ministry of Defence’s disastrous record in public procurement is partly a product of an overly cosy relationship with a few suppliers. The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s clumsy environmental policies stem from close contacts with half a dozen enormous companies … Wherever you look in Whitehall the government is too close to big business and has been for decades. If it is not addressed, Britain’s crony capitalism will inflict huge damage to our interests, economy, industry and society.
The degree of capture still seems less pronounced in Britain than in the United States, where there has been a long and ignoble history of ex Goldmanites including Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson becoming US Treasury Secretary, from where they can liberally dispense policies favourable to their chums on Wall Street, including ensuring light touch regulation and bailouts when they screw up, before waltzing back into the world of finance or academe. That’s why the firm is nicknamed “Government Sachs” (as well as a few other things).
Now don’t get me wrong. Not all ex-Goldman Sachs executives are market fundamentalists who are addicted to neoclassical economics, an ideology that ought to have been consigned to the dustbin of history as a result of its own manifest failings, and who would do everything in their power to further the interests of their ex-colleagues and former employers in the event they reach high office. The existence of ex Goldmanites who are committed to alternative economic approaches, like The Left Banker, is testimony to that. Somehow I doubt whether Deighton is in that camp, however.
Overall, I find Cameron’s recent reshuffle perplexing, disturbing and not a little retrograde. If the prime minister really believes that entrusting economic policy to former investment bankers whose culture is invariably one of short-term profit maximisation, the churning of assets and trading at clients’ (aka “muppets”) expense will put Britain back on the path to long-term economic sustainability, he’s more deluded than I thought. As my colleague Dick Winchester points out, it proves that notions of rebalancing the economy are a lost cause.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2012 1:01 pm Post subject:
Severe crossover here between two topics - the EU money plot and EU fascism
From: Justin Walker
Sent: 04 October 2012 10:53
To: REDWOOD, John
Subject: Concerns about your conference speech on Monday to the Bruges Group.
Dear Mr Redwood,
Thank you very much for your response to my query as to why a sovereign government cannot issue its own debt-free and interest-free money based upon the wealth of the nation. If I'm honest with you, I found your answer not easy to understand - if I'm not mistaken, I think you were referring to the current quantative easing programme being led by the Bank of England which is completely different to the concept of the 'Greenback' and what Abraham Lincoln did....and that is the issuing of debt-free money through a nation's treasury to meet the needs and well-being of its people. Nothing complex, just simple common sense set within a framework of common decency and common law.
Considering what the private bankers and their political lackeys are doing to our country and other poor countries like Greece, I will attempt to be as restrained and polite as is possible, especially given the appalling injustices which are occurring on a daily basis to ordinary decent people as they fall foul of the predatory and corrupt international banking system. I notice that you were once a very prominent member of N M Rothschild and Sons. Just a cursory look at the history of this elite banking family and it is clear that we are dealing with a ruthless and scheming mindset that is determined to enslave nations through the use of subterfuge and debt-creating banking. Their deliberate setting up of an international network of central banks, in order to get countries to lose their sovereignty by getting into enormous debt through the practicing of fractional reserve lending (that is, of course, the creation of money completely out of thin air and then charging interest on that 'nothingness'), is as much ingenious as it is immoral and criminal. And this network of central banks (led by the Rothschild controlled Bank for International Settlements) does include what you describe as the 'wholly owned' Bank of England, along with its cunningly contrived Bank of England Nominees Ltd which was set up to override the effects of the Bank's supposed nationalisation in 1946.
The ultimate goal for the House of Rothschild, along with the other elite banking families, is global governance on their terms. Before you tell me that this is the territory of wacky conspiracy theorists, I think you should know that my late uncle was The Lord Pilkington. Not only did he attend (as Sir Harry Pilkington) the first ever Bilderberg Conference back in 1954, one year before I was born, but he also became a Director of the Bank of England, providing me with very interesting 'behind the scenes' information. When the World Conservation Strategy was launched in 1980, my uncle sought to have me recruited to work for the global elite by asking his friend Aurelio Peccei to offer me a job at the prestigious Club of Rome as a political researcher and lobbyist. By a stroke of good fortune I politely declined this generous offer. However, after being a Green Party activist for fifteen years and knowing people like Professor David Bellamy, I now realise that the Club of Rome was simply set up with the aim to promote bogus environmental science, such as CO2 causing man-made global warming, as part of this step by step approach towards global governance. The more fear that can be created at a global level, the more possible world government can become - just look at how the United Nations Agenda 21 is being rolled out onto an unsuspecting world with all of its Orwellian ramifications of corporate servitude for all of us.
As people wake up to the dreadful truth about what is really going on, whistleblowers are approaching us on an ever increasing basis to give us more pieces to the jigsaw. A very reliable party source contacted me at the end of last week with two links and a simple message that the proposed 'In Out' EU Referendum now being talked about, is nothing but a deception and a scam being engineered by those who do not have our best interests at heart. Why? Because the British people can simply withdraw from the EU by using our supreme Common Law - there is absolutely no need for a referendum. It is now provable beyond all reasonable doubt that massive deception and treason were committed by the Government of Edward Heath when they openly and provably lied to the British people to persuade them to vote 'Yes' in 1975 to the EEC. As you know only too well, treason and deception have continued to be practiced by all subsequent governments as they seamlessly converted, without any further public consultation or approval, a simple trading agreement into a fully blown political union with all the necessary loss of sovereignty that that entails. Under Common Law, the results or outcome of any action taken by using criminal means (in this case the simple use of treason and deception) are declared, without hesitation, null and void. With one simple court case, in front of an ordinary jury that successfully confirms this criminality, we could lawfully withdraw from the European Union without hesitation or any penalties being incurred. So, I have to respectfully ask you, why are you going down this risky path of calling for an 'In Out' Referendum when we have seen over the years how the EU Commission is capable of fixing and ignoring the democratic procedures in Ireland, France and Denmark?
I now come back to the two links sent to me - here they are:
I read the above article by John Christian and its basic themes only confirm what I already know courtesy of my late uncle and my own and others research. Your name comes up as does your fellow speaker Gisela Stuart MP - a known Fabian activist. This is where my puzzlement grows. The Fabians were created by those who wish to see the collapse of the nation state and the loss of our sovereignty by gradual erosion - they broadly welcome the EU superstate project and will support it using stealth and, in my opinion, provable treason. The present banking crisis, overseen by the elite banking families, is all about a loss of national sovereignty in favour of global governance. They welcome the EU superstate as well and want to see the regionalisation and break up of our country in the shortest possible time. As a long term servant of the Rothschild family, how does this square with your supposed desire to see a restoration of Britain's sovereignty from the EU Commission? The question that is going through my mind with increasing volume (especially as I know that the use of Common Law is THE solution to regaining our independence from the EU) is, are you working to another agenda? The one thing we know about those who want to destroy our country is that they have 'their people' in positions 'on both sides' where they can steer and influence public opinion.
Please put my mind at rest and come back to me with reasons why what I've written above is factually incorrect. I only go where the irrefutable evidence takes me.
The Swiss Federal Institute (SFI) in Zurich released a study entitled “The Network of Global Corporate Control” that proves a small consortiums of corporations – mainly banks – run the world.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
A mere 147 corporations which form a “super entity” have control 40% of the world’s wealth; which is the real economy. These mega-corporations are at the center of the global economy. The banks found to be most influential include:
• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• JPMorgan Chase & Co
• Vanguard Group
• UBS
• Deutsche Bank
• Bank of New York Melon Corp
• Morgan Stanley
• Bank of America Corp
• Société Générale
However as the connections to the controlling groups are networked throughout the world, they become the catalyst for global financial collapse.
James Glattfelder, complex systems theorist at the SFI explains: “In effect, less than one per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network.”
Using mathematic models normally applied to natural systems, the researchers analyzed the world’s economy. Their data was taken from Orbis 2007, a database which lists 37 million corporations and investors. The evidence showed that the world’s largest corporations are interconnected to all other companies and their professional decisions affect all markets across the globe.
George Sudihara, complex systems expert for SFI claims that this phenomenon is a common structure that could be found in nature. Comparing the manufactured reality of the financial markets to the ecosystems of the planet, Sudihara says that although the 147 corporations that rule the world through influence and interconnectedness are no more harmful than the natural cycles of our weather or animal kingdoms.
Yet because of the facts presented in the study, the financial crash of 2008 can be traced back to these tightly-knit networks. Future disasters can also be projected based on this analysis because of the “connectedness” of these influential entities which are only 147 corporations.
It is suggested the global capitalism could be a useful tool to make the markets more stable by simply acquiescing to control by the technocrats. The world’s transitional corporations (TNCs) guide the flow of all economies through influence and manipulation which created a structure of economic power. Most corporations are guided by the shareholders who use the companies to wield incredible power over the shift of economic consciousness. And the behavior of the system reflects the direction taken by those who fund the super entities.
Assumed by many that there was a complex architecture to the global economic power that caused financial systems to ebb and flow or crash and burn is not a scientific fact as evidenced in this study.
As the banking cartels force countries in the EuroZone into sovereign debt, there is a weakening of the many multi-national corporations around the world. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have financially gained while stocks are being unloaded in other markets.
This sovereign land-grab by the central banking cartels across Europe is mirrored in a recent Goldman Sachs report: “The more the Spanish administration indulges domestic political interests … the more explicit conditionality is likely to be demanded.” In other words the technocrats working for the Zionists are acquiring each country in the EuroZone.
The European Central Bankers agreed to give any nation in the Euro-Zone a bailout if they agreed to hand over the country to them under the guise of “new rules and conditions when applying for assistance.”
As America drifts downstream toward economic implosion, the Federal Reserve headed by Ben Bernanke has chosen a different approach. They unveiled QE3 last week as a pump and dump scheme to prop up the US dollar by printing cash that is backed by nothing, while purchasing the mortgage-backed securities from the same banks that created the scandal and acquiring land in a massive land-grab; the likes of which have never been seen in the US.
Simultaneously, the BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are buying gold to back their fiat currencies to avoid being caught up in the destruction of the technocrats as they march toward one world currency. BRICs have become the anti-thesis to the banking cartels of the Zionist regime.
As these nations pair with Middle Eastern countries like Iran to trade gold for petrol instead of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, the Obama administration has begun a propaganda campaign against China involving a manufactured cyber-threat.
In Iran, the terrorist factions that do the bidding of the Zionists to topple governments by inciting fake revolutions have been deployed to Iran to stir-up trouble and blame the failing Ra-il which is being strategically destroyed by sanctions placed on the nation by the US. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) coerced the US Congress to pass HR 1905 which further tighten the economic noose around Iran for the benefit of the Zionist-controlled Israeli government.
In April of this year, the BRICs nations met to agree upon a strategy that would liberate the countries of the world from the grip of the technocrats. The BRICs countries are pushing for peace, but not through force and occupation of other countries to obtain this goal.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia had this to say about the United Nations and their obvious attempts at global governance through usurpation of powers over countries. “One of the priorities of BRICs for the years to come should be the strengthening and key role of the UN’s Security Council in maintaining international peace and security. And also ensuring that the UN is not used as a cover for regime change and unilateral actions to resolve conflict situations.”
A joint BRICs bank was discussed with vigor. It would serve as an alternative to central banks that abuse their power at the expense of nations worldwide. They hope to replace the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF and World Bank are alarmed by this move and highly disapprove of it.
This is not shocking, considering that the central banks play a game of printing fiat that has no precious metals backing the paper.
Tuesday 4 December 2012
George Osborne's cruel Autumn Statement will create a winter of discontent for the disabled
The Chancellor has no intention of tackling multinational tax avoiders and the people after whom Mr Osborne is actually going have no cunning tax lawyers to defend them
I doubt this is text book advice on how to handle one of those psychotic jags that affect us every now and again. But in a bid to suppress, or at least postpone, a fantasy involving a baseball bat, various government horrors and indemnity granted by the Queen to mark the happy news, let us begin with the most trivial of the rage-generators on offer today.
Why the hell is the torrent of self-righteous disingenuousness due from the Chancellor’s sneery mouth this afternoon known as “the Autumn Statement”? Does it look like autumn to you? Does it feel like the season of mellow fruitfulness? The trees are leafless, snow covers swathes of the North, and even here in the soft South it is barely above freezing.
This is unforgiving winter just as it is for the economy, and whatever that professional failure of a misrouted Regency fop intones at the Dispatch Box, bleak midwinter it will remain for longer than he can possibly foresee. If this were Groundhog Day, Punsatawney Phil would take one sniff of the breeze and shoot himself through the head with a Magnum .44.
No doubt Mr Osborne will reiterate his Dirty Harry tough talk about “coming after” the multinational tax avoiders, but he might as well tell it to an empty Speaker’s chair. He has no intention of tackling massive concerns with arsenals of cunning tax lawyers to run rings around the Revenue and Customs, and he knows we know it.
The people after whom Mr Osborne and his chums are actually going, being in many cases literally sitting targets, have no defence against having marginally smaller sums reclaimed from them. To save a blisteringly irrelevant fraction of what multinationals avoid in corporation tax by licensing an “intellectual property right” to a subsidiary in Lichtenstein via a shelter company registered in Saturn’s third ring, this Government targets the disabled with a rigour it will never deploy against Starbucks, Google and Amazon.
It does so by paying hundreds of millions to Atos, the French firm contracted to appraise whether the disabled are rapacious scroungers. The imminently defunct Disability Living Allowance starts at £20.55 per week, after all, and for that sort of largesse which of us able-bodied wouldn’t spend years needlessly taking ultra-high dose antidepressants or voluntarily confining ourselves to a wheelchair?
Government by Grinch
Sometimes, a yuletide vignette encapsulates the spirit of a governing class with indecent perfection. A few years ago, the essence of New Labour’s cowardice in the face of tabloid scaremongering about illegal immigrants was bottled by a snapshot of a priest, dressed as Santa and bearing gifts for the traumatised children within, being turned away by a guard from a camp for the soon-to-be dearly deported.
The 2012 Christmas instalment of Government By Grinch is so repugnant that I hope Catherine Cambridge didn’t read it in yesterday’s Independent, what with her morning sickness being bad enough as it is. Geoff Meeghan, a 32-year-old Parkinson’s sufferer, had been summoned for an Atos assessment when the fire alarm went off. “The doctor held the door open for us to come out,” the immobile Mr Meeghan recalled of himself and a support worker, “but then ran down the stairs and left us there. I was worried that flames might come up the stairs or something.”
How exquisitely life imitates art. Back in January, writing about the Government’s intent to save the price of a few fighter jets by scrapping a benefit with a fraud rate of virtually zero, I likened David Cameron to David Brent in The Office episode where he ostentatiously fusses over a disabled colleague. Then the fire drill begins, and faced with having to carry her and her chair down several flights, he scarpers and leaves her marooned on the stairs.
For all the PM’s noble words about defending the most vulnerable, despite his experience (however practically cushioned by wealth) of caring heroically for a desperately disabled son, at the first sound of the economic sirens, I wrote, David Brenteron’s instinct was to save himself and leave them in the stairwell to burn.
In a memorable South Bank Show long ago, Melvyn Bragg asked Ian Dury if being pitied and patronised was the worst thing about being disabled. No, Dury gently rebuked, the worst thing about being disabled is being disabled. But having Esther McVey as minister for the disabled may be a close second. Interviewed in this newspaper yesterday, Ms McVey unleashed a platitude of hyper-Brentian idiocy to offer a reason to be cheerful to those who have had their benefit removed or cut, or live in mortal terror of it happening. “Do not be fearful,” consoled the former children’s TV presenter. “This could be positive for you.”
Call this 'positive'?
Couldn’t it just? Does it get more positive than being told, by some Atos brute on commission to cut the number of claimants, that Parkinson’s, crippling agrophobia, mestastasized cancer, lifelong polio or any number of disabling conditions no longer qualify you as disabled enough. What could be more positive, after years of employ, than having a chance to expand the horizons in this bounteous jobs market because the Government reckons the £68m saved by shutting Remploy factories worth saving?
In all fairness, you would hardly call that peanuts. In an almost £2 trillion economy, it isn’t even the discarded shell of one peanut. Of the 1,021 redundant Remployees, Ms McVey reported, 63 have found work, while the glad tidings for the remaining 958 is that she tracks their progress “daily”. That must mean the world to them.
Over many years of closely observing British politics, I can remember little as nauseating as a minister blithely informing the heartbroken and impoverished, without a prayer of finding work in our perpetual economic midwinter, to regard the removal of income, purpose and dignity as “positive”. Even Brent, who introduced his promotion at the cost of his staff’s jobs as “good news and bad news”, never reached such a zenith of cretinous insensitivity.
A Spanish journalist interviewed me on the Spanish language edition of The Global Minotaur. Her questions, however, gave me an opportunity to look retrospectively at the Global Crisis, its Eurozone offshoot and, of course, the worst aspect of the latter, the Greek calamity. In the process, I refer to what I call the ‘death of social democracy’, and its causes, the role of ethics and morality in all this, why Spain is becoming an Iberian Greece even though its public debt and deficit were less than those of Germany in 2008 etc. Read on:
What are the origins of your Global Minotaur theory?
It evolved over many years, beginning with an attempt to explain the manner in which America managed to do something remarkable: to be the first ‘Empire’ that extends its authority and increases its hegemony on the basis of ballooning deficits. The analysis began when, together with friend and colleague Joseph Halevi, we tried to elucidate the global surplus recycling mechanism that had taken over, without warning or international agreement, from the Bretton Woods system. And since the new mechanism, upon which global capitalism was now resting, was based on an incessant flow of tribute (in the form of huge capital inflows) from the Rest of the World to the hegemonic US, the idea came to me that we were living in the age of a new Global Minotaur, with the US deficits in the role of the beast and the rest of the world in the role of the Athenians who were feeding the beast in return for trade, growth and stability.
You claim that it all began in 1971, when USA decided increased its deficits and became a kind of Europe’s vacuum cleaner. Why didn’t anyone stop this action? Why did nobody realise that this system could break down?
There was no one with the power to stop it who also had an interest in stopping it. German and Japanese industrial capital were only too happy to see the demand for their manufactured goods burgeon. Governments in the surplus countries of Europe and Asia benefitted from the growth of their local multinationals. Banks and states in the deficit areas of Europe (from Greece to Spain and, indeed, to Ireland) saw a major influx of capital from Wall Street and the City of London, money that was seeking higher returns in hitherto under-financialised regions. As the Global Minotaur went from strength to strength, the potential instability that it was creating seemed, especially to those who were benefitting immensely from financialisation, like a Great Moderation; an era of permanently zero risk. This is what was so interesting and destructive about the Global Minotaur’s reign: the greater the instability that it was cultivating behind the scenes the more convinced the elites were becoming that a crisis had become impossible.
Your theory resembles Griftopia (Matt Taibbi). It sounds like we woke to discover that we were robbed. Was it a system failure or an organised robbery?
There is no doubt that financiers went well over the borderline into the realm of corruption and graft. And that politicians aided and abetted them. But, all in all, I think that our experiences have the hallmarks of a major tragedy in which, just like in Sophocles and Shakespeare, the protagonists are not necessarily bad men and women. Each did what he or she thought was right, or necessary, at the moment when they are doing it. (We must never underestimate our human capacity to find excuses for what we do.) It is only when the catastrophe hit that they realised they were embroiled in a dynamic that could only lead to disaster. And even when they did recognise it, every attempt to escape the tragedy only immersed them further in it. Perhaps the worst crimes were committed afterwards, while trying to save themselves by pilling up the costs of these ‘bailouts’ on the shoulders of the people they had been defrauding for decades.
In his book, we can notice the economists’ incompetence (Why didn’t they notice the Crisis?, asked the Queen of England? The perversity. The naked greed. Does money fuel Evil?
It was not mere incompetence. It was much, much worse than that. At the time the Global Minotaur was taking over world capitalism, some time in the early to mid 1970s, the economics profession mirrored this development by lobotomising itself; by ceasing to ask pertinent questions and by turning instead to pristine mathematical models which, by design, left no analytical room for real life phenomena like involuntary unemployment, financial sector implosions, recessions caused by ineffective demand. Economists’ careers became wholly dependent on whether they could ‘close’ (that is ‘solve’) their mathematical models. But to do this, they had to impose upon their models assumptions which ensured that these models, or theories, had nothing whatsoever to do with really existing capitalism. In this sense, the less the economists’ models had to say about capitalism the greater their academic and professional career. Furthermore, since their mathematical models contained no systematic probability of a crisis, they were perfectly suited to the needs of financiers who profited handsomely from economic models which ‘valued’ their cherished financial derivatives (thus enhancing their appeal to investors) as if no crisis, no credit crunch, was ever possible. In short, to answer you question directly, economists were coopted by the Global Minotaur, mostly unwittingly. They became, as a profession, and without realising it, the beast’s loyal handmaidens.
You present an interesting theory about power gone: first, self-control is prevalent, second, success comes, third, naked greed appears, and then self-control is lost. How can we escape from this circle?
The only way that almost infinite power can be forced to exercise restraint is if it is forced to submit to democratic scrutiny. During the era of Bretton Woods, which I refer to as the Global Plan, the powers that be in Washington felt that they would rule the world without being accountable to it. Then, during the Global Minotaur era, it was the turn of the financial sector to feel a similar sense of unlimited power. We now live with the results. Democratic control of power is sine qua non for civilised societies.
You write a lot of Keynes. You say that Keynes was an imaginative and creative economist. It seems like we lost all this imagination in recent decades. Maybe we should recover it.
And Marx. And Robinson, Kalecki, Sweezy, Galbraith, even Hayek. As I explained above, the economics profession jettisoned its best thinkers. Economics students and politicians alike were trained by textbooks that purveyed a form of mathematised idiocy, rendering a whole generation economically illiterate and socially disastrous.
You write that this Crisis isn’t an economical crisis, but a political and social crisis. Is it not a ‘moral crisis’ too?
What I say is that it is not a debt crisis. That debt is merely a symptom of a deeper, systemic crisis which, like all serious crises, has many different facets. It manifests itself in the realm of politics (e.g. the Nazis in Greek parliament), of finance (e.g. the banking debacle), in moral conduct (e.g. the sight of social democratic governments attacking the weaker members of society on behalf of bankers) etc.
The Global Minotaur thought that the market can survive alone, without rules. Now we realise that isn’t so. But, is it necessary to begin with a planned economy? Is it the ‘planned economy’ the solution?
One of the great fallacies of our era is that an economy can exist without a state; without a degree of planning. Take the US. It is, supposedly, the least statist, the free-est market economy on the planet. And yet it is very much a planned economy. Without the military-industrial complex on the one hand and the whole gamut of federal planning authorities and institutions on the other hand, America’s economy would collapse tomorrow. More broadly, capitalism had its golden age after the war because Washington planned meticulously the world capitalist economy. So, the question is not whether there should be planning. The question is what kind of plan is implemented, who by, for whose benefit and with what effect. Currently, the banking sector is fully planned and relies entirely on social transfers and central bank operations. Planning is, therefore, used to prop up banks and to keep bankers in profit. What we need is some proper planning of labour markets so that workers’ labour is re-valued and power shifts from what I call today’s Bankruptocracy to society at large.
You worked with the president Papandreou before the ‘crash’. Did nobody see that the crisis coming? Did nobody make a comment about it?
No, they did not see and, moreover, they did not want to hear of it. Social democrats all over Europe, indeed the world, had come to the catastrophic conclusion that capitalism had been tamed, that crises were a thing of the past, and that society’s interests were best served if the financial sector’s wizardry was never questioned. This is, if you want, the main reason why this Crisis has killed of European social democracy.
What do you think about the rise of the extreme right (Amanecer Dorado in Spain too)? Where do you think is the limit? Are we going to have a repeat of Germany in the thirties?
It is the inevitable repercussion of a chain reaction that begins with a Wall Street collapse, a massive real economy recession, a political system that tries to shift the crisis’ costs from the shoulders of those who caused it to the shoulders of the workers, the weak and the disenfranchised, a society that loses its faith in the democratic system and, finally, a serpent’s egg that begins to hatch, spawning little Nazi snakes everywhere.
What is it the solution for Greece? I heard that people are finding it hard to heat themselves in winter
Depression, poverty and deprivation abound. The only solution for Greece is to have a government that says NO to the inane agreements that Europe is forcing it to sign. Simply to say ‘no’ and sit it out while the rest of our European leaders fall over each other trying to find an alternative, a real, solution in place of the current strategy of waterboarding a whole nation.
In Athens it has been a lot of demos and protests, but it seems nothing changes. Why doesn’t civil actions work? Demos and strikes don’t change anything. Is it necessary it should be more violent?
No, certainly not. Violence breeds violence and the only beneficiaries are the extreme right, the segments of the police that want to terrorise society, etc. What we need is European-wide protests, a realisation in Spain, in Italy but also in Germany and the Netherlands that “we are all Greek now”. That even if it does not look and feel like it yet, it is only a matter of time before Europeans north and south, west and east come to see that they have all become Greek.
There are people who say that the citizens have a responsibility in order to get into debt or not. Is it a perversion?
It is a half truth that becomes a perversion when repeated ad nauseum. Every loan requires, like tango, two parties. It is the responsibility of the debtor but equally of the lender to ensure that the loan is viable. And when it ceases to be viable, it is absurd, cruel and stupid to imagine that the responsibility is just that of the debtor’s. Especially when most loans originated during an era of predatory lending, of banks shoving loans down the throats of households and firms.
What are your solution for the crisis, and why does nobody adopt it?
Together with Stuart Holland, we have been proposing for three years now what we call a Modest Proposal for the Resolution of the Euro Crisis. Its great merit is that it would attack the crisis’ three facets simultaneously (debt, banking losses and the recession) without the need for Treaty changes, for Germany to be guaranteeing the loans of the Periphery, or for authoritarian transfers of sovereignty from national governments to the centre of Europe. Why have rational solutions like this not been adopted? I think it is a combination of two reasons that explains it: First, surplus countries need to undergo a gestalt shift; a change of midset that allows them to see that the Crisis is not due to the Greeks and the Spaniards having borrowed too much (that these debts are a symptom, not a cause of the problem). Secondly, surplus countries refuse to adopt policy changes that would make it impossible for them to get out of the Eurozone. While they do not want to get out of it, at the same time they do not want to give up the option of doing so because giving it up would diminish their bargaining power within Europe. And so the Crisis goes from strength to strength.
By the way, a recent measure has been the banking union. What do you think about that?
It would be great! Unfortunately, Europe is adopting the ‘language’ of a banking union in order to deny its substance. The point of the banking union ought to be to recapitalise directly the banks that have a chance of being salvaged (i.e. to give them funds from the ESM directly without them being counted as part of the national debt). Germany has insisted that this will not happen. So, the banking union has become an academic exercise that allows Europe to speak the words ‘banking’ and ‘union’ without effecting a genuine banking union. Another smokescreen, in other words, for covering up Europe’s organised idiocy.
You criticise Germany. In Spain Germany is criticised too. Could it cause a xenophobia’s feeling against German people?
It already has. And it is a tragedy because the majority of German people are suffering too as a result of our governments’ ill-conceived policies.
Do you think that Germany will change its economic policy?
No, I am afraid not.
In the case of Spain, we didn’t have a very high deficit in 2008, but then everything crashed. What happened?
All Eurozone countries of the Periphery shared exactly the same experience: huge capital flows rushed into our countries creating gigantic bubbles. In Greece, they inflated public debt as the government was borrowing on behalf of developers, who then went on to build expensive motorways, bridges, metro system extensions etc. In Spain and Ireland, the capital flowed directly into the banks which lent it to the same type of developers to build, primarily, expensive houses. When the financial sector collapsed in 2008, the capital that had flooded our countries either burnt down or escaped back to Frankfurt, London and New York. Thus, the bubbles burst. In Greece, the state (which had taken the debt onto its books directly) went bankrupt. In Ireland and Spain it was the developers that went bust first, then the banks that had lent them and, lastly, the governments which had to salvage the banks. So, in the end, there is no difference between countries like Greece and Spain, even though Spain had a very low level of public debt just before the crisis began (in comparison to Greece that had a very high public debt to begin with). What matters is total debt. The sum of private and public debt. When total debt is large and funded by inflows from the financial centres, then a crises in the financial centres will give rise to a crash and a rapid rise in public debt in the Periphery. And when Europe tries to pretend that these debts can be repaid by means of large loans, given on condition of austerity that shrinks the national income from which old and new loans must be repaid, then a catastrophe befalls us all.
Do you think that Spain could be a new ‘Greece’?
It already is. Unfortunately.
We have a right-wing party in the Spanish government, Partido Popular. It proposes austerity measures. The problem is that social democracy doesn’t offer a serious alternative. The citizens don’t see social democracy as a solution.
As I indicated above and elsewhere, social democracy is dead. The Crisis killed it off because, before the Crisis, social democrats (like PSOE, PASOK, Britain’s Labour Party) had abandoned their traditional agenda of taxing industrial capital in order to fund the welfare state and, instead, they had adopted the new strategy of siding with financial capital, allowing financial capital to do as it pleases, in the hope that financial capital would continue to earn trillions, of which the social demorats would get a small portion from which to fund the welfare state. In this sense, social democratic parties had become, perhaps without even noticing, the lap dogs of the bankers. When, in 2008, the bankers went bust, the social democrats were cornered into consenting to the funding of the bankers using taxpayer-money and then passing the cost of these bank bailouts to labour and to the weaker members of society. It was inevitable that, soon after, society would turn against social democracy. This backlash has signalled social democracy’s death.
What’s Syriza doing in Greece? Is the party getting somehwere?
Syriza is struggling to mature. To turn itself from a party of protest, commanding 4% of the vote, to a party of government. I have to say I am quite impressed by its leadership’s steep learning curve. At the same time, Syriza is particularly worried that, by the time government falls in its lap, the Greek state will have lost all of its degrees of freedom, leaving Syriza in government but not in power.
In which classic tragedy are we right now?
My worst fear is that this may not even be a classic tragedy. Classic tragedies end, at some point, with catharsis. Calamities, on the other hand, do not end in catharsis. Europe is currently engineering a calamity with catharsis nowhere to be seen.
Well, to the end. Despite the tragedy, do we have reasons to be optimistic about the future?
In a deal that highlights the dwindling stature of what was once a centerpiece of capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange is being sold to a little-known rival for $8 billion – $3 billion less than it would have fetched in a proposed takeover just last year.
The buyer is IntercontinentalExchange, a 12-year-old exchange headquartered in Atlanta that deals in investing contracts known as futures.
Intercontinental Exchange, known as ICE, said Thursday that little would change for the trading floor at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, in Manhattan's financial district.
But the clout of the two-centuries-old NYSE has gradually been eroded over decades by the relentless advance of technology and regulatory changes. Its importance today is mostly symbolic.
The NYSE dates to 1792, when 24 brokers and merchants traded stocks under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. But today most trading doesn't require face-to-face meeting at all. It's done on computers that match thousands of orders a second.
Three decades ago, the floor of the New York exchange was full of bustling traders. Today, one of its largest booths belongs to the cable news channel CNBC, which broadcasts there for most of the business day.
The introduction of negotiated, rather than fixed, commissions for securities transactions, in May 1975, marked the start of a gradual decline in brokerage fees for traditional stock trading.
It also gave rise to so-called discount brokerages, like Charles Schwab, that offered to trade for customers at lower rates.
"The cash equities business in America has effectively been obliterated," said Thomas Caldwell, chairman of Caldwell Securities in Toronto and a shareholder in the New York exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext.
He said that the jewel of the deal is not the New York exchange but Liffe, a futures exchange founded in London, further underlining the growing importance of the futures markets.
While brokerage fees have declined, futures exchanges have retained profit margins, said James Angel, an associate professor in finance and an expert on stock exchanges at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.
Futures contracts are written by exchanges and must be bought and sold in the same place – as opposed to stocks, which can be bought and sold on any exchange, Angel said. That gives futures exchanges more pricing power.
Stock trading is a "dog-eat-dog business where the profit margin per share is measured not in pennies, not in tenths of pennies, but in hundredths of pennies," said Angel, who also sits on the board of Direct Edge, a smaller stock exchange.
NYSE Euronext was formed in a 2007 merger when NYSE Group, parent company of the exchange, got together with Euronext, which owned stock exchanges in Europe.
It has been looking for a partner. Last year, ICE and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., which competes with the NYSE for stock listings, made an $11 billion bid to buy NYSE Euronext. But that deal fell apart after regulators raised antitrust concerns.
Deutsche Boerse AG, a German company, made a bid for NYSE Euronext, but that was scuttled by European regulators.
ICE was established in May 2000. Its founding shareholders represented some of the world's largest energy companies and financial institutions, according to the company's most recent annual report.
Its stated mission was to transform the energy futures market by providing more transparency. The company has expanded through acquisitions during the last decade and went public – on the NYSE – in November 2005.
Analysts forecast that ICE's revenue will reach $1.4 billion this year, more than double the $574 million it reported in 2007.
"We believe the combined company will be better positioned to compete and serve customers across a broad range of asset classes by uniting our global brands, expertise and infrastructure," said ICE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher.
Sprecher will keep his positions. Four members of the NYSE board will be added to ICE's board, expanding it to 15 members.
For each share of NYSE Euronext stock that they own, shareholders can choose either $33.12 in cash, roughly a quarter-share of ICE, or a combination of $11.27 in cash and roughly one-sixth of a share of ICE.
NYSE's stock jumped $8.20, or 34 percent, to $32.25 in heavy trading shortly after the market opened. ICE's stock closed up $1.79, or 1.4 percent, at $130.1 after falling at the open of trading.
ICE plans to pay for the cash part of the acquisition with a combination of cash and existing debt. It added that the deal will help it cut costs and should increase its earnings more than 15 percent in the first year after the deal closes.
The deal has been approved by the boards of both companies, but still needs the approvals by regulators and shareholders of both companies. It's expected to close in the second half of next year.
Caldwell, of Caldwell Securities, said that this combination of companies and the pressure of ever-declining fees will likely lead to further mergers in the exchange business.
"The whole theme in the exchange space is consolidation into bigger entities," he said. "They have to get their costs down because they are getting squeezed to nothing."
Peter Costa, President of Empire Executions Inc., a boutique trading firm on the floor of the NYSE, and a governor with the New York Stock Exchange, said that both companies knew the value of the NYSE brand and would try to preserve it.
"The trading floor, while iconic, may seem to be an anachronism in this high-speed world of electronic this and electronic that, but it still survives because the customers that use the trading floor still see the added value of having some human intervention," Costa said in an email.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:47 am Post subject:
fascinating article about the takeover - centralisation into the syndicate - of the co-op bank
begun, of course, 2 years or so ago by KPMG and George Osborne tying them up with a fake deal to transfer Lloyds branches
Outlook A further salutary lesson, if one were needed, of the modus operandi of the US vulture funds which now own around 10 per cent each of the Co-op Bank.
Silver Point was set up by Goldman Sachs debt-trading tycoons Edward Mule and Robert O'Shea to make money out of troubled companies.
One of their first monster profits came from the way they made money out of the US taxpayer-funded Troubled Assets Relief Program (Tarp) during the financial crisis for the stricken car industry.
As they did later on the banks, vulture funds like Silver Point bet the US government would not allow the nation's beloved car makers to go under.
So when, in 2005, the former General Motors (GM) parts subsidiary Delphi went bankrupt, Messrs Mule and O'Shea tucked into the debt, buying it up for a song. Over the years, and as the financial crisis came to a head, other hedgies tucked in too, watching with delight as Barack Obama formed a taskforce to save the car industry.
Their delight was for good reason: Delphi's parts were so critical to GM that Delphi was too big to fail. With this bargaining position, you can guess what happened next: the vulture funds ordered GM to give them a slice of its Tarp funds.
As taskforce head Steven Rattner recalled of one meeting, the creditors ordered the Treasury and GM to hand over $350m to Delphi immediately, saying: "Because if you don't we'll shut you down."
They got their money. It's not clear what Silver Point's share was but, in total, according to investigative journalist Greg Palast, Delphi got $12.9bn (£7.9bn) of US taxpayer funds, including a takeover of its $5.6bn retiree pensions liabilities.
But it gets better: after snapping up a controlling position in the debt, the hedgies negotiated to take over the business for the equivalent of $3.5bn, or 67 cents a share, according to Mr Palast's calculations. A few years later, they floated Delphi for $22 a share. Last night they were trading at $57.61, or a market capitalisation of $17.9bn. The hedge funds each made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2014 7:45 pm Post subject:
Great 'Bilderberger' exposer, Charlotte Iserbyt, will be interviewed by Neil Foster (Sovereign Independent, now working for Community Press Group) this week on Thursday 6th March at 8pm on www.awakeradio.co.uk _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
The term revolution has multiple meanings dependent upon the perspective of the rebels seeking it, and the establishment trying to keep it from occurring. But throughout the annals of history, revolution has never come easily, and almost inevitably is achieved through violent action, or in many cases, all-out war.
For Russia, which understands the concept and history of revolution within their own peoples, the direction they see the world moving towards, especially in the economic plane, is a form of revolution against the old way. And as President Putin’s adviser Sergei Glazyev ascertained on Thursday of last week, the revolution to change the global financial system will come by war, as it has in almost every single instance in history.
“The world today is going through a year of overlapping cyclical crises. This is a period when the global economy is changing as the structure that has driven economic growth for 30 years has exhausted itself. The world needs to transition to a new system and transition has always come about through war…
The last elections to the European Parliament showed that all European citizens are not fooled by the false pro-American, anti-Russian propaganda… and by the constant stream of lies
In order to avoid the constant threat of foreign asset confiscation, we need to build our own sovereign monetary macro-economic policy.” – Sergei Glazyov
Sergei Glazyov is not someone whose words are to be taken likely, as he speaks for the President as his close economic and geo-political adviser. In fact, Glazyov was the first to suggest the use of dumping dollars and treasuries as a means to counter economic sanctions coming from Washington, and eventually sees the growing conflict between East and West escalating towards a violent confrontation.... _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:28 am Post subject:
Euro Crashes Against Swiss Franc
Clem Chambers , Contributor
The Swiss central bank has pulled the plug on the euro and the euro has dived across the board and crashed against the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc has exploded against all currencies up 13% against the dollar as I write. At one stage it was down around an earth shaking 25%. Meanwhile gold, an analogue to the Swiss franc, has spiked $20.
So this is the background: During the euro crisis huge waves of hot money swamped the Swiss franc as fear of a euro collapse made international funds dash for safety. The Swiss franc is a renowned and historic haven for hot money in times of uncertainty. The Swiss franc span upwards out of control and threatened to crush Swiss commerce. This was terrible news for Switzerland. How can you export your goods to the world when your currency is so high it is better than gold?
The answer is to peg yourself to the offending currency–the euro–and buy it and other currencies to pull the price of your currency down. In effect you say, “you want my currency, then have it, I’ll print it.” You are then flooded with foreign currency reserves, which is a nice result and your currency doesn’t rise to the moon. You can always buy back your currency with that money later and probably turn a fat profit.
So that is what Switzerland did. It pegged the Swiss franc to the euro.
Now it has said, “let’s forget that, time to let the market take its course.” Boom, this is what happened next – the euro collapses against the Swiss franc:
Every day, the road to Brexit seems to get bumpier. The mixed messages coming from Downing Street certainly don’t help.
The latest confusion was caused when, on the one hand, the Government’s Chief Whip, Julian Smith, said he plans to bring the EU (Withdrawal) Bill back to the Commons for a vote earlier than expected, in a move that pleased Brexiteers who want to face down Remain MPs as soon as possible.
However, on the other hand, Downing Street was briefing that the Government may give hope to Remainers by asking the EU for a second Brexit transition period to run until 2023.
No wonder so many of the 17.4 million who voted Leave are getting deeply frustrated.
The new prime minister, Guiseppe Conte, heads a rag-bag coalition of the anti-Establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League
But while Brussels negotiators continue to stymie Brexit, European politicians are facing a much bigger threat to the European Union.
I refer to events of the past few days in Italy, which will be Europe’s third largest economy after Britain leaves the European Union.
This week, a new government was formed — Italy’s 66th since the end of World War II.
The new prime minister, Guiseppe Conte, heads a rag-bag coalition of the anti-Establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League.
They agree on very little but there is one policy on which they are in harmony: a hatred of Brussels.
It is no exaggeration to say that Mr Conte, a former law professor at Florence University, has the power to bring about the collapse of the EU.
He came to power on a wave of burning national resentment over Italy’s membership of the EU, which millions of Italians believe has been an unmitigated disaster for their country.
Above all, there is the problem of immigration, which was a key issue in March’s elections.
Brussels’s freedom of movement rules are blamed for record numbers of migrants in the country.
At least one million, for example, have settled in Italy from Romania, a fellow EU member. But huge numbers have made their homes in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
From Libya alone in the past four years, an estimated 600,000 migrants and refugees have reached Italy.
Five Star Movement leader names law professor as PM candidate
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Five-Star Movement leader, Luigi Di Maio, leaves from a restaurant in the centre of Rome +6
Five-Star Movement leader, Luigi Di Maio, leaves from a restaurant in the centre of Rome
These people know that once on Italian soil, they have a very good chance of being able to begin a new life there or exploit freedom of movement to live in any other of the 28 countries in the EU.
Italy’s new government has pledged to deport up to half a million migrants, to clear illegal gipsy settlements in towns and cities, and to recruit more police and build new prisons to deal with the problems.
This hardline reaction to Brussels’s soft approach to illegal immigration amounts to a huge challenge to its authority and imperils the cohesion of the EU.
But immigration is not the only issue over which Italy’s new government is at war with Brussels.
The country, once an economic success story almost as remarkable as Germany’s, has been brought to its knees by Brussels.
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This tragedy dates back to Italy’s decision to join the euro at its launch in 1999. It proved to be a calamitous error.
With its own currency, the lira, the Italian government was able to manage its own affairs and devalue its currency if necessary to make itself competitive.
However, the euro has imposed a financial strait-jacket which has led to the closure of thousands of businesses, with millions of people put out of work.
Shockingly, Italy has not seen any cumulative economic growth since it signed up to the European single currency.
The Italian people know that their membership of the EU is to blame for mass unemployment, social collapse and uncontrolled migration. The new Italian PM, Mr Conte, is the first political leader to genuinely represent the national mood of outrage — and sorrow — at their post-lira impoverishment.
Italy’s national debt is a staggering 132 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product — the second highest in the EU, after Greece.
The new prime minister, Guiseppe Conte, heads a rag-bag coalition of the anti-Establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League +6
The new prime minister, Guiseppe Conte, heads a rag-bag coalition of the anti-Establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League
To try to prevent a crisis of ever bigger proportions, the European Central Bank lent Italy €600 billion (about half a trillion pounds sterling) in order to stop it going bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Mr Conte is promising tax cuts and public spending increases to try to undo the damage to his country’s economy.
As night follows day, though, the Brussels bully-boys — the same ones who have been trying to block Brexit — will threaten him with dire consequences unless he backs down.
We witnessed a similar stand-off when Greece’s economy hit the rocks and had to be bailed out with billions of euros in loans from Brussels.
The Greek people reacted to this national humiliation by voting for a vehemently anti-EU government three years ago.
But they were then shabbily let down when their new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, abjectly caved in to the strong-arm tactics of European leaders.
Mr Conte is unlikely to yield in the same way.
Italy is ten times bigger than Greece. Unlike Greece, Italy is too big to fail.
It is quite possible that Mr Conte will threaten that Italy will pull out of the euro — a move that would instil terror in Brussels and Frankfurt.
Returning to the lira would be a desperate measure, but it would be the economically sane thing to do.
It would give the Italian economy a chance to be competitive again and end the stagnation and mass unemployment which have wrecked countless hundreds of thousands of lives over two decades.
Theresa May takes a break from Brexit as she enjoy the action at Lord's cricket ground +6
Theresa May takes a break from Brexit as she enjoy the action at Lord's cricket ground
Leaving the euro would mean that Italy would renege on its €600 billion in loans from the European Central Bank.
Without doubt, the bank would collapse. The EU would go into financial and political meltdown.
The ineluctable truth is that Italy is now a ticking time bomb, and I fear it is only a question of time before it explodes, with consequences for the continent which are impossible to predict.
How ironic that the founders of the EU’s predecessor, the EEC, were driven in part by a desire to prevent a repeat of the terrible bloodshed of the two great wars of the 20th century, but their hubristic attempts at political and economic union have instead created division and hatred.
Europe is not just creaking — it is falling apart.
Is it any surprise the British people had the good sense to vote to leave the EU? _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
ROME (Reuters) - Efforts to form a coalition government collapsed on Sunday after the Italian president rejected a eurosceptic pick for the key economy ministry, triggering a possible constitutional crisis and opening the prospect of fresh elections.
Italy's Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte leaves after a meeting with the Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, Italy, May 27, 2018. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
The leaders of the two parties trying to field a government, the far-right League and anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, accused President Sergio Mattarella of abusing his authority and working under the orders of European powers.
5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio, whose party won the most seats at an inconclusive March 4 vote, demanded that parliament impeach Mattarella, raising the spectre of political turmoil in the euro zone’s third biggest economy.
Giuseppe Conte was formally appointed prime minister on Wednesday
Any move by Italy’s insurgent government to issue parallel liquidity will set off a red alert in financial markets and call into question the survival of Europe’s monetary union, Standard & Poor’s has warned.
The rating agency said the ‘minibot’ plan being prepared by anti-euro Lega nationalists and the alt-Left Five Star Movement would create a rival payment structure based on ‘IOU’ notes. This subverts the monetary control of the European Central Bank and risks a disastrous chain-reaction.
“People need to be very careful. It is equivalent to introducing a quasi-second currency,” said Jean-Michel Six, S&P’s European strategist.
Press say Corbyn is terrorist & MI5 aid 3 terror attacks before 2017 election. Catalonian #Puigdemont wins, made a fugitive. Greece vote to leave Euro but it's blocked. Italy’s president prevents elected Euro-sceptic government taking office. There is no democracy left in Europe. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
29 May 201815:07NEWS
(ANSA) - Rome, May 29 - The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League on Tuesday blasted European Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger for saying markets would persuade Italians not to vote for the two populist parties.
M5S) European Parliament delegation head Laura Agea said "we ask European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to immediately deny Commissioner Oettinger.
She said "his words are of an unprecedented gravity and are proof of the clear manipulations that Italian democracy has suffered in the last few days".
League leader Matteo Salvini said: "They are without shame in Brussels. "The European budget commissioner, Germany's (Guenther) Oettinger, says that 'the markets will teach Italians to vote for the right thing'. If that isn't a threat...I'm not scared #Italiansfirst".
Fallout on the financial markets will prompt Italians not to vote for populist parties, Oettinger of Germany said Tuesday, according to an excerpt from a Deutsche Welle interview to be published tonight. "The negative development of the markets will lead Italians not to vote much longer for the populists," he reportedly said. Two populist parties, the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the League, came out on top in the March 4 general election and are set to score even heavier in the next elections, expected in September or October. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
After months of political deadlock following an inconclusive election, Italy is on the verge of a major political crisis with global implications. Earlier this month, the far-right League party and the Five Star Movement - which practices a new breed of "centrist populism" - proposed a new government that European Union officials saw as a threat.
On May 27, Italian President Sergio Mattarella vetoed the appointment of a Eurosceptic finance minister in an attempt to reassure financial markets and dispel the risk of Italy abandoning the euro, the EU's single currency. But his decision might deliver just that.
While it is customary for Italian presidents to oversee government formation and to intervene to block a minister deemed unfit for the role, Mattarella's decision marks the first time that a veto is used because of a candidate's political views on the economy.
It is to be noted that Mattarella had no qualms about accepting Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, as an interior minister, despite his calls for the deportation of up to half a million migrants and refugees and his racist views.
The Five Star Movement and the League have refused to propose an alternative name for the finance minister's position. In a clear sign of the state of confusion Italian politics is in, the two parties are oscillating between demanding that the president is impeached and asking him for another chance to form a government.
Italy has traded a Eurosceptic finance minister today for a much more vehemently anti-euro government tomorrow.
In the meantime, Mattarella has responded by appointing a technocratic cabinet with no chance of securing a parliamentary majority. If confirmed, its task would be to lead the country to early elections.
Regardless of what happens, the president's veto has led to further polarisation of the political scene, with Italians being compelled to join one of two radically opposed camps. On one side, there are the parties supporting the president, defending Italy's Eurozone membership and advocating continuity in political and economic policies.
They are perceived to be part of the "the establishment" and gravitate around the Democratic Party, which was previously in power. Their victory would lock Italy's commitment to the EU and guarantee business as usual on the economic front. Unfortunately, for many Italians, business as usual means a stagnating economy and enduring double-digit unemployment within an unsustainable Eurozone.
The alternative, however, is worse. On the other side, the League and the Five Star Movement cry out against the excessive influence of international financial markets and the EU bureaucracy over the Italian democracy. They demand that Italy "regains" its sovereignty and stops being "a colony of the Germans or the French". A reckless EU establishment has admittedly helped these ideas gain much traction in the Italian society. On Monday, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger sparked outrage after saying that the whip of the financial markets should dissuade Italians from voting for populists.
The financial markets have reacted in horror, with Italian government debt under pressure and a plummeting stock exchange. And the reason for all this is simple: The upcoming elections will be perceived as a referendum on Italy's membership in the Eurozone, while Mattarella's actions have given an immense boost to the nationalist camp and have further radicalised its positions.
The latest polls show that the League has nearly doubled its popularity, with 27 percent of respondents saying that they would vote for the party (the League gained 17 percent in the March 4 election); the Five Star Movement is holding steady at 30 percent. Italy has traded a Eurosceptic finance minister today for a much more vehemently anti-euro government tomorrow.
More fundamentally, the ongoing crisis in Italy is part of a broader global trend: the division of the political space into two apparently opposed, but ultimately symbiotic, fields.
WATCH: Italy - New interim PM to set up government quickly for fresh vote (2:32)
One is the new wave of nationalism nurtured by an establishment clinging to an obsolete economic model generating inequality and injustice and depriving a growing number of people of their right to a decent life. The so-called Washington consensus - promoting neoliberal globalisation, unfettered financial flows and booming international trade - is dead in the water. And the attempt of a discredited political class to cling to it is creating political monsters.
On the other side, the establishment needs the nationalists to ground its last attempt to remain in power. Remember Hillary Clinton's statement during the 2016 US election campaign: "I am the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse"? This is "project fear", the last trick of the elites. In Italy's case, the establishment is using the danger of a Eurozone break-up to scare the electorate.
And so the establishment praising continuity and the nationalist-populist backlash end up feeding off and reinforcing each other.
It is no coincidence that the EU finds itself at the centre-stage of this crisis. Its policies combine elements of unbridled neoliberalism - for instance, in the form of a Central Bank indifferent to the plight of the unemployed - with elements of international solidarity - in the form of structural funds for the poorer areas of the continent.
The common currency was meant to bring its peoples closer together and nurture the beginning of a transnational democracy. But a currency without political oversight has achieved, just like Mattarella's actions, a result opposite to the intended one.
The euro is setting nations and peoples apart. Without deep reform, and without a real democratisation of the EU, the Eurozone is ultimately bound to disintegrate. This would be a disaster of immense proportions. But while Europe would need urgent, serious, committed political and institutional change, all that seems to be on offer is a false choice between suicidal continuity and nationalist implosion.
What is happening in Italy today has global implications. An Italian exit from the Eurozone would trigger a crisis without precedent, dragging the EU into political and financial mayhem and possibly plunging the world back into recession.
But, more importantly, Italy is a canary in a mine - foretelling an imminent political crisis sweeping across the globe, from India to the US, from the Philippines to Hungary. It remains to be seen whether a world faced with a discredited establishment and resurgent nationalism will find the strength and vision to reform a dying international order.
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and Jean-Claude Juncker (see 14.25), underline the importance of mid-September in the future of the eurozone.
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