CYPRUS BAILOUT; EU & IMF Threatened Cyprus With ‘Monetary Blockade’ If They Rejected ‘Bailout Deal’; ECONOMIC WARFARE
“This by contrast is a bank robbery… on Friday, following the rejection of the earlier plan, which was substantially very similar, the European Central Bank (ECB) did something which it has no legal right to do at all, and that was to threaten to cut all liquidity to Cypriot banks this afternoon, today Monday, by the end of trading… it has no legal right to do that, and it said to the Cypriot government that if it didn’t agree to an EU and IMF plan then this monetary blockade would be imposed.” – John Laughland
So this is the brotherly love of the EU… economic warfare was threatened against Cyprus if they didn’t accept the EU and IMF “bailout deal”.
How long will it be before we see another EU country offered a similar “bailout deal”, refuse it, and then try to leave the EU? Will the EU allow a country to leave the union? I highly doubt this will be allowed since a default could lead to the entire EU Ponzi scheme collapsing.
The question now must be asked… will the EU send in their EU Army troops, 60K strong when I last checked, to enforce “bailout deals” and/or to prevent countries from leaving this new Empire, this new Holy Roman Empire (ie, Fourth Reich), called the EU????
2013.3.25 ‘Cyprus Deal Pushes EU Closer To French, Bolshevik Revolutions’ (RT, youtube.com):
Depositors in the Bank of Cyprus, the biggest bank on the island, will reportedly lose from 30 to 40 per cent on their holdings above 100,000 euro as result of a bailout agreement which Cyprus and the troika of international backers signed on Monday.
John Laughland, the director of studies at the Institute of democracy and cooperation in Paris, believes that the developments in Cyprus share their roots with a number of historic revolutions.
CYPRUS BAILOUT; Residents Rush To Pull Money From Cyprus Banks As EU Takes Aim At Russian Deposits; GREECE CONNNECTION
‘Cypriot banks are invested heavily in Greek government bonds, which were restructured last year at the EU’s demand, incurring big losses on bondholders.’ – FOX News
The Cyprus bailout is therefore spill over from the Greek bailout… it looks like the EU dominos have already begun to fall.
This could additionally be viewed as some sort of economic warfare against Russia, or Russian oligarchs, possibly for their continued to support of Syria, but I’m not convinced of this scenario. It appears more like a cash grab by the ECB to set a precedent so this can occur in other EU countries as the dominos continue to fall.
2013.3.18 Residents Rush To Pull Money From Cyprus Banks As EU Takes Aim At Russian Deposits (foxnews.com):
Cypriots rushed to pull their money out of banks and ATMs before the tiny Mediterranean nation’s government could finalize a plan to seize depositors’ funds to satisfy euro zone leaders, sparking a run that prompted banks to be closed until at least Thursday.
The island nation’s leaders were huddling to come up with a way to soften the blow on average depositors, with one proposal targeting accounts with deposits above $130,000. The plan elicited an angry response from Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation’s oligarchs may have as much as $19 billion secretly deposited in Cyprus banks.
“Putin said that this decision, in case of its adoption, will be unfair, unprofessional and dangerous,” Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
The Brussels-based euro zone agreed on Saturday to give Cyprus a $13 billion bailout, but demanded levies that would take between 6.75 and 9.9 percent of bank deposits.
Analysts believe the measure is designed to ensure that the bailout doesn’t go toward propping up Russia ‘s billionaires – including Putin himself.
“It is clear that (Cyprus) is under tremendous pressure from the European Union,” Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov told Interfax.
The $19 billion figure comes from Moody’s, and would account for as much as half of all Cypriot deposits. Cyprus’ bank deposits dwarf by 8-to-1 the gross domestic product of the nation of 1 million, indicating a dangerously oversized banking system stuffed with foreign cash. And Cypriot banks are invested heavily in Greek government bonds, which were restructured last year at the EU’s demand, incurring big losses on bondholders.
News of the coming bank accounts seizure sent shockwaves rippling through Europe and beyond. Not only did it spook wealthy foreigners who have long parked money in the island nation’s banks, it was seen as possibly setting the stage for similar grabs in bigger nations within the troubled euro zone.
“If I were a saver, certainly in Spain or maybe Italy, I think I’d be looking askance at these measures and think this could yet happen to me,” Peter Dixon, global financial economist at Commerzbank, told Reuters.
The Cypriot Parliament put off a vote on the measure until Tuesday in order to blunt the pain for small savers. But without the EU bailout, Cyprus would be headed for default, according to experts. If depositors – especially the foreigners who have made Cyprus the Cayman Islands of Eastern Europe, pull their money from banks, action by the European Central Bank may be all that can stop regional contagion. The Cypriot central bank announced all banks will remain closed until Thursday while talks on the savings seizure continue.
Russian mining tycoon and owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets Mikhail Prokhorov said euro zone leaders “had set a real financial mine under the idea of a single Europe.”
“And this is not because it touches Russian business, which can afford to lose $2 [billion] or $3 billion,” Prokhorov told the Kommersant business daily. “The European Union essentially opened a Pandora’s box.”
Some analysts say the move could send billions in Russian deposits to safer havens, such as Luxembourg, leaving Cyprus no way to pay down its bailout.
“The unhappiest of the Russians will simply look for other places to put their money,” Paragone Advisory Group analyst Alexander Zakharov told the Global Post.
White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment on the events, but said “a stable and strong Europe” is in the U.S.’s interest and that the President Obama is focused on domestic economic growth, which can help insulate the U.S. from foreign tumult.
Hugo Chavez vs “The Network”
March 15, 2013 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
Thursday, March 14, 2013
London, February 2002. A tiny, dark and intense woman waited at the end of a lecture until I was alone, brought her face strangely close to mine and whispered, “President Chavez needs you. Right now. To Caracas. Right now. You must come to see him.”
President Who? All I knew about this Hugo Chavez guy was that he was an Latin-American jefe, led a bungled coup and was filled with a lot of populist bullshit and a lot of oil.
And I also knew that no one at BBC Newsnight was going to blow the budget for me to fly to South America to talk about a nation that 92 percent of our viewers couldn’t find on a map and wouldn’t want to.
“Send me an email.”
“There will be a coup. March 15.”
“The Ides of March. I like that. Aren’t there always coups down there?”
“They’ll kill him, undo everything. He needs you to stop it, he wants to explain it to you because he knows you understand.”
Actually, you’d be surprised at the amount I don’t understand at all. “So talk.”
She did – for four hours – and wore me down into submission. But back at Newsnight I looked like an idiot when March 15 came and went with just a little gunfire in Caracas.
Three weeks later, the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was kidnapped and held hostage by the head of Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce. Suddenly the BBC had to get me on a plane.
When I got to the Presidential Palace, Chavez was already back at his desk, though the bullet holes in the palace’s walls weren’t yet filled in.
Chavez told me that he’d agreed to be taken hostage by gunmen on the condition that his staff and their trapped children would be allowed to escape. He was bundled into a helicopter, and when it swerved out to sea he assumed he would be pushed out: “I was calm. I was ready.”
So who was behind it?
Chavez gave me information on US military attachés who had met with the plotters. While I couldn’t verify any specific US directive to seize him, I didn’t have to: I had grinning photos of George W Bush’s new US Ambassador, Charles Shapiro, congratulating Chavez’ kidnappers.
The question was, why? Why the need to eliminate Chavez, by coup, by bullet, by propaganda, embargo, or, as we later discovered, by screwing with Venezuela’s vote count?
As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. Based on Palast’s several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television. DVDs also available. Watch the Video and share the link.
No doubt that for Bush’s oil-o-crats, Chavez’ doubling the royalties paid by Exxon and Chevron was worth the price of a bullet; but it was no more than the amount that Sarah Palin would seize from the oil companies when she ruled Alaska. So what was it?
The answer was in the movie Network.
“AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU, MR. BEALE? The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now THEY MUST GIVE IT BACK!
“It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. You are an old man who thinks in terms of national and peoples. THERE ARE NO NATIONS. There are no peoples. There is only ONE HOLISTIC SYSTEM OF SYSTEM, one vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars. Electro-dollars. Multi-dollars. IT IS THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY which determines the totality of life on this planet. Am I getting through to you? ”
Chavez had defied gravity, overpowered the tide. Venezuela earned billions in petro-dollars from the USA – but then, Chavez refused to “give it back”.
Third World nations are not supposed to keep the dollars paid to suck out their oil and mineral blood. For every dollar US consumers pay the Saudis for their oil, about $1.24 is given back as Saudis return the funds by purchasing US Treasury debt or hunks of US banks, CitiCorp for one.
Above: World Capital Flow 2005, from Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast
In 2005, the US spent $227 billion in Latin America, sapping its properties and resources. But the money turned right around and, added to the funds sent to Miami by Latin America’s elite, immediately became a $379 million loan to the US Treasury and financiers.
Argentina leant the US at 4 percent interest, then had to borrow its own money back at 16 percent – the whirring wheel, this grinder, left school teachers in Buenos Aires hunting in garbage cans for food. Riots followed and – in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere – this led to tanks in the street, currency collapse, crisis and the “rescue” by the IMF. Rescue meant forcing the mass sell-off of state industries, from oil to water systems, to the crushing of labour unions and to swallowing the whole bottle of poisons kept by the elite of the Northern Hemisphere for just such occasions.
And that was the plan. Literally. I’ve held the proof in my hands, about five thousand pages of financial agreements, all labelled “confidential” and “not to be distributed except by authorised persons”, which bore benign titles like “World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy, Argentina.”
Why would the IMF, World Bank and the bankers not want to make their wonderful plans for reducing poverty public? It was for the same reason the finance ministers who signed the documents didn’t even tell their own presidents: they were in fact “reduce-to-poverty” plans, complete resource surrender.
For these deliberately bankrupted nations, it was sign or starve. Until Hugo Chavez came along. Early on, Chavez withdrew $20 billion of Venezuela’s money leant to the US Federal Reserve, to create a giant micro-lending programme for his citizens. Then he went a step too far, establishing what the Wall Street Journal called, “a tropical IMF”.
In 2000 and after, when the IMF and banks moved to financially strangle these nations by making their debts unsalable, Hugo Chavez would roll up in his oil-gilded chariot. He effectively underwrote Argentina’s debt, providing 250million dollars worth of loans, and assistance to Ecuador. After Enron seized Argentina’s water system and Occidental seized Ecuador’s oil fields, Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner, followed by Ecuador’s Correa, told US banks to go fuck themselves. And the IMF, too.
Then there was the big one: Brazil. The World Bank/IMF “Poverty Reduction Strategy” for Brazil required the nation to close its publicly-owned banks, to sell off its vast oil properties, to give away its power industry and, to please the new foreign owners, slash wages and pensions. But with Chavez prepared to back up its new President, Lula Ignacio de Silva, the mighty little man from the Socialist Workers Party could tell the IMF to stick it where the free market don’t shine.
The late Hugo Chavez wearing the author’s hat
For the first time in contemporary history, resource states refused to give back the money received for their resource. At Chavez’ funeral, Lula, former President Ignacio de Silva of Brazil, praised this as Chavez’ most revolutionary act.
Now, instead of billions flowing North, Latin American capital was staying in Latin America. It is delicious irony that the European and American financiers, fleeing from the economic conflagration they’d ignited in their home countries, are loading their loot onto planes for Brazil. And that Venezuela’s central bank made a mint on its intra-continental loans.
And so, a coup was called for.
In 2002, Chavez’ oil company chief, Ali Rodriguez, told me: “America can’t let us stay in power. We are the exception to the New Globalisation Order. If we succeed, we are an example to all the Americas.”
That you were, Hugo Chavez. That you are, Venezuela. And all the Americas are ready.
FASCISM RISING; Greece, New Austerity Passed For New Bailout, Protesters Serve Molotov Cocktails, GREEK CIVIL WAR NEXT?
November 8, 2012 by Joel
Filed under Economy, Featured, Police State, World
The Greek police and “Golden Dawn” are working very closely together, so many of the riot police seen in the videos are actually “Golden Dawn” members. Therefore the “Golden Dawn”, who claim to be Greek nationalists, are actually suppressing the people from protesting the inhuman austerity being forced upon them. The “Golden Dawn” are protecting a Greek government full of rich oligarchs who are under threat of being exposed by the IMF’s “Lagarde List” and are therefore signing over Greece’s sovereignty, and assets, to the Fascist EU bankers. The Greek government refers to these protesters as either “Anarchists” or “Leftists”… this is a typical Fascist tactic… label any civilian that protests the government as some sort of “Communist” radical.
These are the same tactics used when the Fascist puppets of NATO’s “Operation Gladio”, which included the CIA, Nazis, and P2 Lodge Freemasons, ruled Greece.
2012.11.8 ‘Greece Faces Civil War If It Can’t Face Bankruptcy’ (RT Interviews Charlie McGrath) (youtube.com):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvFVSfMBw04&w=480&h=360]
Anger and violence have spilled over onto the streets of Athens – with police using tear gas and water cannon against Greeks protesting draconian new budget cuts. Demonstrators hurled petrol bombs – with more than a hundred detained – as the country’s Parliament passed an austerity package aimed at securing the latest bailout.
Journalist Charlie McGrath says the austerity cuts will heap further suffering on ordinary people, and that the situation won’t change for the better until Greece acknowledges it’s bankrupt.
2012.11.7 Austerity Arena; Video Of Greek Protesters Firing Molotov Cocktails, Police Shoot Tear Gas (RT, youtube.com):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6heY7U0CwM&w=480&h=360]
Demonstrators and police clashed in Athens Wednesday, with tens of thousands gathering to protest in front of the Greek parliament.
FASCISM RISING; EU, ‘Catastrophe About To Happen’, ‘GERMANY Enforces Same Austerity That Paved Way To THIRD REICH’, F. William Engdahl
“[The EU]… it’s a catastrophe about to happen…” – F. William Engdahl
In the following interview F. William Engdahl is suggesting that the austerity being forced upon various Euro countries is going “to bailout banks in France and elsewhere in the EU that are technically in insolvency because of their exposure…”.
I’ve heard this same idea suggested by other economists, and that the “elsewhere in the EU” just happens to be Germany, which coincidentally is leading the way in forcing, via threats, other EU countries to impose harsh austerity on their citizens. Historically austerity is a proven failure… it collapses economies, it does not grow them, it creates a negative feedback loop… this is a well know fact, therefore one must wonder if there’s not a hidden agenda to intentionally implode all these country’s economies, to destroy their sovereignty via debt, to achieve the EU fascists admitted goal of “deeper integration”.
F. William Engdahl (emphasis mine):
“… the core problem, I maintain, is NOT a sovereign debt problem, not the sovereign debt of Greece, nor of Italy, or other countries, the core problem has been from the beginning, and remains, a banking system, the major international banks in Europe, that are defacto INSOLVENT, and being held afloat on life support from the ECB (European Central Bank)… so the bailout measures toward Greece have not done anything to help the Greek economy, or stabilize Greece, they’ve gone to bailout banks in France and elsewhere in the EU that are technically in insolvency because of their exposure…”
“… I can’t imagine if you PLANNED A SCENARIO TO GET EVERYTHING WRONG in the way that the EU governments have done in the last four years of this crisis, or three and a half years… but from the get go they’ve shied away from any resolute action on the banks involved in the dodgy lending in the first place, during the financial bubble years… so those banks remain the source of the problem, there’s no lending going on to the real economy, and that’s the root cause of 25 percent unemployment in Spain, and Greece, and elsewhere across the EU… so the austerity that’s being demanded by EU governments, like Germany, is having the effect, and the irony is that this is what Bruning did in 1931 that paved the way for the Third Reich because of the unemployment across Germany, and Germany is enforcing that same policy on Greece, Spain, and other weaker southern European countries…”
2012.10.26 ‘Germany Enforces Same Austerity That Paved Way To Third Reich’ (F. William Engdahl) (RT, youtube.com):
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZZQzGeuBLQ&w=480&h=360]
One in four people are now officially out of work in Spain as unemployment in the debt-ridden country reaches another record. The grim news comes as Madrid’s transport workers go on strike, adding to a sixth day of protests in the capital against austerity cuts.
That’s as another epicentre of the EU crisis – Greece – looks likely to miss its promised deficit deadline. The forecast from the International Monetary Fund’s debt inspectors comes a year after EU leaders applauded what they considered a key deal to save Athens.
Author and publicist William Engdahl, says all the measures the EU leaders are imposing are failing to address the core problems on the continent.
FASCISM RISING; Spain, Anti Austerity Protesters Violently Attacked By Riot Police; NEO FRANKISH EMPIRE
September 26, 2012 by Joel
Filed under Economy, Featured, Police State, World
The videos speak for themselves… the beatings of young girls and old men are particularly disgusting.
If you look closely you can tell that some of the police beating people’s heads in with batons are women… yes, women. You’ve come a long way baby…
The European Union (EU) has forced various governments to agree to take on the responsibility of PRIVATE BANK DEBT. The European Central Bank (ECB), or IMF, then loan money to the freshly cash strapped government if, and only if, the government promises to pass, and ENFORCE, an austerity budget on the backs of “the people”.
Therefore you have wealth extraction from “the people”, via strong arm government enforcement mechanisms, to pay for corporate debt… some call this socializing corporate debt… THIS IS FASCISM.
So instead of governments representing “the people” of their country before the EU Parliament you actually have power flowing the opposite way, from the completely undemocratic and unelected EU dictatorship down through to the governments who act as enforcement arms to collect taxes.
The European Union therefore qualifies as an Empire, the countries within are vassal states, and “the people” within are serfs.
In my opinion this is the NEO FRANKISH EMPIRE.
2012.9.25 ‘Surround Congress’ Madrid Clashes; Dramatic Footage Of Night Violence In Spain (Night) (RT, youtube.com):
2012.9.25 Anti Austerity Violence; Riot Police Clashing With Protesters In Madrid (Day) (RT, youtube.com):
2012.9.25 ‘Democracy Kidnapped!’ Clashes In Madrid As Thousands Surround Spanish Congress (Commentary) (RT, youtube.com)
IMF chief: It’s “payback time” for Greek workers
May 29, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
And all you other MF's too!
28 May 2012
In an interview with the British Guardian newspaper published Friday, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, vented her class hatred for the workers of Greece, denouncing them as tax scofflaws and ruling out any respite from the austerity measures that have devastated the country.
In the interview, Lagarde was questioned about the social catastrophe resulting from five years of economic crisis and austerity measures dictated by the IMF and the European Union. She was asked, in particular, to respond to the plight of pregnant women who “won’t have access to a midwife when they give birth,” patients who “won’t get life-saving drugs,” and the elderly who “will die alone for lack of care.”
Contemptuously dismissing the suffering and death caused by the policies she is helping to impose, Lagarde replied: “I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day… I have them in my mind all the time, because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.”
The crocodile tears of Lagarde, formerly the finance minister under French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for the impoverished children of Africa carry little weight given the quasi-genocidal record of French imperialism in Africa and the neo-colonial interventions in the Ivory Coast, Libya and other parts of the continent carried out by the Sarkozy regime.
The IMF head continued: “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about … all these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”
Asked whether she thought more about non-payment of taxes than “all those now struggling to survive without jobs or public services,” Lagarde replied, “I think of them equally. And I think they should also help themselves collectively … by all paying their tax.”
The Guardian article continued: “It sounds as if she’s essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe, you’ve had a nice time and now it’s payback time. ‘That’s right.’ She nods calmly.”
Lagarde, who makes more than half a million dollars after taxes as IMF chief, reflects the outlook of the financial aristocracy that dictates policy in Europe and around the world. In condemning the people of Greece to unspeakable suffering and misery, she speaks for the entire European bourgeoisie and all of its national governments and European Union institutions.
Her “Let them eat cake” attitude sums up the loathing and fear of her class for the working class throughout Europe and internationally. Her remarks underscore the fact that Greece has been selected to serve as a benchmark for a deliberate policy of exploiting the capitalist crisis to effect a fundamental and permanent restructuring of class relations. The bourgeoisie is determined to eradicate all of the past social gains of the working class and carry through a social counterrevolution, imposing conditions of poverty and exploitation not seen since the end of the 19th century.
Following the defeat of Sarkozy and election of Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande in the May 6 French presidential election, a host of media commentaries predicted the “tide was turning against austerity in Europe” in favor of a “growth” strategy. Illusions in the new French government were encouraged, in particular, by politicians such as Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) in Greece, who maintained that Hollande would serve as a counterweight to Germany, leading to a softening of the austerity policies prescribed by Berlin and approved by Brussels.
Recent events have demonstrated the worthlessness of such claims. Just days after the French presidential election, the new French economics minister, Pierre Moscovici, gave an interview to the Financial Times to reassure the financial markets that Hollande was a “supply side” politician and by no means a “Keynesian,” i.e., that he could be relied on to support the austerity policy demanded by the banks.
One day before the EU summit held May 23 to discuss the European crisis, Hollande met with PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who, as finance minister in the PASOK government of George Papandreou, played the central role in implementing IMF and EU austerity policies. The meeting was said to have been warm and friendly.
On the day of the EU summit, the Financial Times Deutschland made clear that the talk of “growth” by the Hollande camp was primarily for the sake of electoral politics. The newspaper wrote: “Parliamentary elections are scheduled for mid-June in France, meaning it is still too early for the president (Hollande) to go back on his campaign positions.”
Revealing the priorities behind the “growth” agenda promised by Hollande, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called last weekend for changes to permit the European Central Bank to lend money directly to countries in crisis. The proposal is fiercely opposed by Germany but supported by the financial markets and the Spanish prime minister, who has urgently requested fresh injections of capital for his country’s ailing banks. On Friday, the directors of Spain’s Bankia asked the government for an additional €19 billion ($23.8 billion) in financial support.
While the French government is positioning itself to rapidly back down on its election promises, the German government and banks are preparing a fresh offensive against Greece.
A week ago, Germany’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, announced it was discussing plans for a so-called “geuro”—a special currency for Greece. According to Deutsche Bank chief economist Thomas Mayer, the geuro would allow Greece to devalue its own new currency, thereby allowing it to immediately cut real wages and buy time for further government “reforms.” In a separate speech, the newly appointed CEO of the bank, Jürgen Fitschen, described Greece as “a failed state … a corrupt state.”
The German Bundesbank also entered into the fray over the future of Greece and issued a report last week declaring that an exit by Greece from the euro would be “manageable.” It has now been confirmed that both the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank are drawing up contingency plans for a Greek euro exit—a move that would precipitate a run on the banks and drastic inflation, with immediate and devastating consequences for the Greek population.
The German government has floated proposals for the “restructuring” of the economy of Greece and other ailing European economies. According to a report in Der Spiegel, the plan calls for a variation of the “shock therapy” introduced by the West German government following the collapse of Stalinist East Germany (German Democratic Republic—GDR).
The German six-point plan includes more far-reaching privatizations, the wholesale elimination of business regulations, labor market “reforms” to make it easier to fire workers, and lower corporate tax rates. The plan also calls for the setting up of economic zones and creation of privatization agencies similar to those that devastated the industries of the former GDR and condemned broad regions of eastern Germany to high unemployment and poverty.
A principal aim of the plan is to establish across Europe the type of huge low-wage sector that now exists in Germany. The main opposition party in Germany, the Social Democratic Party, has signaled its support for the plan.
While there are significant differences between the major capitalist powers across the Atlantic and within Europe on how best to rescue the banks, there is unanimity within the bourgeois elite that the full cost of the crisis must be paid by the working class.
Meet Your Global Tax Collector (Same as the Old Boss…)
May 10, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
Global Corporate-Financier Mafia Grows New Tentacle: Global Tax Collectors.
by Tony Cartalucci
May 10, 2012 – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a 50 year old network constituting what is often known as the “West,” has been the premier promoter of expanding corporate-financier hegemony across the planet. Done under the guise of “progressive” initiatives, claiming to “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world,” it is demonstratively run by the most explicit examples of institutions and individuals impeding such lofty goals.
Not least amongst them is convicted criminal George Soros and his “Open Society Institute.” While surely the organization’s rank and file includes a majority of well-intentioned “liberal-progressives,” pursuing and promoting agendas seemingly benign, the reality is that the organization, in tandem with the US State Department and the British Foreign Ministry, is laying the groundwork for a homogeneous global network of administrators for what is literally a neo-imperial empire.
With characters like George Soros and his self-serving institution behind the OECD, Soros having been convicted and fined for insider trading in 2002, a conviction that was more recently upheld by the European Court of Human Rights,” it would be laughable for such an enterprise to pose as international arbiters fighting financial fraud. Yet that is exactly what the OECD portends to do – and most recently announced the creation of “Tax Inspectors Without Borders.” Its name invoking the equally well-intentioned, but ultimately fraudulent “Reporters Without Borders,” another Soros-US State Department building block for what is to be a “global empire,” it aims to “to help developing countries bolster their domestic revenues by making their tax systems fairer and more effective.”
In reality it aims at imposing an international standard upon tax collection, and as each nation is financially destroyed by international bankers, IMF loansharking, and foreign-funded destabilization, the austerity measures demanded to be paid in “bailouts” and for “reconstruction” will be managed and coached by the OECD’s new tentacle to ensure every unit of currency ends up in globalist coffers.
Image: OCED nations – also looking suspiciously like Wall Street and London’s sphere of influence and NATO’s membership.
Just as corporate-financier funded “human rights” organizations attempt to create a global homogeneous “civil society” to overwrite the indigenous social institutions of sovereign nation-states, the OECD’s “Tax Inspectors Without Borders” will attempt to create a global homogeneous tax collection system to replace that of sovereign nation-states.
As covered in February 2012′s “Soros Big-Busienss Accountability Project Funded by Big-Business,” there is nothing “international” or “plural” about the coming global government. In reality it is driven by a handful of corporate-financier interests working to consolidate their power over not only finance and industry, but over governments and societies worldwide. This is the natural progression of what banking magnates like JP Morgan, the Rothschilds, Goldman, and the Rockefellers were in the midst of when US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote “War is a Racket,” and is a progression that will continue as long as average people continue feeding on a monthly basis the summation of their work, energy, attention, and income into the corporations and institutions of this growing monopoly.
Eygptians try to bring Revolution… Die with no help from CNN – IMF swoops down
May 3, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
- Islamist protesters and their supporters clash with armed “thugs”, after an attack …
CAIRO (Reuters) – Eleven people were killed in Cairo on Wednesday, medics said, when armed men attacked protesters demanding an end to army rule, prompting several candidates to suspend presidential campaigns and heightening doubts on the transition to democracy.
Leaders from Islamist and secular camps blamed the trouble on hired “thugs” doing the bidding of entrenched interests behind military rule and warned the generals not to use it as a pretext to delay their departure; the army reaffirmed its stated commitment to handing power to civilians by July.
Unidentified men armed with guns and batons attacked demonstrators who included hundreds of ultraconservative Salafi Islamists protesting at their candidate’s exclusion from the ballot for a first-round presidential vote on May 23 and 24.
For hours after the dawn raid, the security forces seemed unable or unwilling to put an end to the violence. As fighting raged near the Defence Ministry in the Abbasiya district of central Cairo, Reuters reporters saw men carrying guns, even a sword, while protesters threw rocks, bottles and petrol bombs.
Only in the afternoon did riot police arrive in large numbers to break up the bloody melee and the clashes abated.
Democracy campaigners blasted the military rulers of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took over 15 months ago as veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was brought down by mass street protests during the Arab Spring of uprisings.
“SCAF and the government unable to protect civilians or in cahoots with thugs. Egypt going down the drain,” tweeted Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning former U.N. official.
ARMY PLEDGE
Members of the SCAF met representatives of political parties and repeated a pledge to hold elections on time. Politicians who were present said they even offered to return to barracks over a month before the July deadline – in the albeit unlikely event that one of the 13 first-round candidates wins outright in May.
A runoff between the top two contenders would be in June.
However, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest Islamist group which dominates a parliament elected in December, refused to join talks with the generals, saying Wednesday’s violence showed the army was trying to “obstruct the handover of power”.
The Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi suspended campaigning for two days, saying they would be mourning the dead. Several political groups said they would call on followers to mass in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday.
“I think it will be the practical response to all of what is happening now, be it the blood being spilt or the foot-dragging in the defined date for handing over power,” said senior Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian.
The other leading Islamist candidate, Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, suspended campaigning indefinitely in protest at the way the authorities had handled the clashes, a spokesman said.
Abol Fotouh and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, the frontrunner among those with past ties to Mubarak, are seen as the most likely candidates to contest a head-to-head runoff.
On Twitter, Abol Fotouh said he could not now take part in an unprecedented televised debate with Moussa planned for Thursday “when today our youths are drowning in their blood”.
The hosting TV channel also said the event was delayed.
Moussa said: “The number of dead and injured foreshadows a disaster and it is unacceptable for security agencies to stand and watch as clashes continue and blood is shed.”
STREET BATTLE
Medical and judicial sources gave a toll of 11 dead and over 160 wounded. The Interior Ministry said seven had died.
Ahmed Shahir, 24, a pharmacology student working at a makeshift clinic set up the scene, said men he described as thugs fired shots at an encampment of protesters including supporters of Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, the Salafi cleric barred from the election, and members of pro-democracy youth movements.
Local residents joined in the attack on the protesters.
Among the protesters were hardcore soccer fans and diehard secular revolutionaries skilled in street combat who dashed back and forth across debris-scattered streets, hurling rocks.
Wounded men were hauled away and others filled bottles with gasoline to throw at their opponents. Shots rang out and a Reuters journalist saw at least one attacker wielding a sword.
“Where is the army? Why are they not stopping these people?” cried a bystander.
The army, hailed as national saviour when it rallied behind protesters last year to oust fellow military man Mubarak, sent troops to the scene. But some armoured vehicles then beat a retreat when protesters attacked an officer who was taking video footage. Riot police later arrived in larger numbers and separated the two sides. The violence subsided by the afternoon.
Days of street violence also preceded the start of a staggered parliamentary election in November. That vote, Egypt’s first democratic election after six decades of rule by a succession of military autocrats, was mostly smooth.
Official campaigning for the presidential election began this week under a cloud, with the Brotherhood demanding that the army sack the cabinet of Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri.
Parliament suspended its work for several days, saying the government was failing to respect its decisions.
Many Egyptians suspect the generals, who have built up vast economic and business interests over the years, will seek a strong influence even after the new president assumes power.
The latest unrest, limited to Cairo, was on too small a scale so far to influence the election, said Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University.
“These are small groups,” he said, adding that the violence could harden public attitudes against continued military rule.
IMF and other MF’s – Vultures picking the Bones of Freedom and national sovereignty
DUBAI (Reuters) – Egypt needs to do more to secure a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, including gathering broad political support and identifying other sources to finance its funding gap of up to $12 billion, an IMF official said on Wednesday.
Masood Ahmed, IMF director for the Middle East, told Reuters that Egypt still needed to do “some technical work” to finalize its economic programme.
Asked whether he thought there was enough domestic political support for the programme, Ahmed said: “I think that process (of getting political support) is advancing but I do not think we are at the point yet where we could move forward.”
“There’s still more work to be done to close down those three areas,” he said, referring to the economic programme, political support and alternative financial sources.
“We are ready as soon as pillars are there for that programme to move forward relatively quickly,” Ahmed said after presenting the regional economic outlook in Dubai.
Egypt and the IMF are in discussions on a $3.2 billion loan programme, which Egypt had requested earlier this year but which had been opposed by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
Egypt’s $236 billion economy has been laid low by 18 months of political turmoil.
Last week, parliament overwhelmingly rejected the army-appointed cabinet’s plan to cut state spending, hampering the government’s efforts to secure IMF help needed to avoid a fiscal crisis and potential currency devaluation.
“Egypt has pressing economic and financial challenges and that’s why we believe it is important to move forward now to finalize the content of the programme, to get support for it and to mobilize the financing for it,” Ahmed said.
The country’s finance minister said last week the government expected the Fund’s aid to start flowing from May.
The IMF is insisting that any agreement on financing is backed by Egypt’s government and political partners ahead of presidential elections later this month. This would ensure the deal would outlast the political transition following the polls.
The IMF expects Egypt’s inflation-adjusted economic growth to ease to 1.5 percent this year, which would be the slowest pace since a 0.3 percent expansion in 1992 and down from 1.8 percent in 2011. Its fiscal gap should widen to 10 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, from 9.9 percent last year.
Egypt has said it expects Saudi Arabia to deposit $1 billion at the Egyptian central bank by the end of April as part of a $2.7 billion package to support Egypt’s battered finances.
Egypt’s foreign reserves have tumbled by more than $20 billion to $15 billion during a year of political turmoil following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
YEMEN AID
Ahmed also said the IMF would consider further aid for Yemen after approving a $93.7 million loan for the poorest country in the Arab world in April, which was aimed at addressing an urgent balance of payments deficit.
“It’s hard to say yet (what the financing needs will be). But clearly the financing requirements for Yemen to embark on the programme of expanding employment and the economy will be significantly larger than the current phase of how to stabilize the economy after the crisis,” he said.
Yemeni officials have previously said the public sector would play a key role in job creation as the country attempts to stave off economic collapse after 15 months of political turmoil that saw President Ali Abdullah Saleh forced from office.
“In that context, that they move to the medium-term strategy the IMF would also consider how to support and accompany them during that process, including by providing financial support over a longer-term period and with amounts that are likely to be larger than the amount, we had so far provided for the immediate stabilization,” he said.
“The fiscal situation deteriorated significantly, this year, we believe it will stabilize,” Ahmed said.
Yemen’s $34 billion economy is seen shrinking 0.9 percent in real terms this year after a 10.5 percent plunge in 2011, the worst contraction since North and South Yemen unified in 1990, the IMF’s updated regional outlook showed on Thursday.
The IMF did not provide economic growth forecasts and 2011 estimates for Syria, rocked by a 14-month old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, but Ahmed said that its economy was likely to contract this year as it did in 2011.
“It (the impact of sanctions) is hard to judge because it depends a bit on how rigorously the sanctions can be forced and depends on the shape and course of the conflict, which is hard to tell, and how it is going to affect production and what help if any Syria will be able to get,” he said.
“But nevertheless the best estimate is that there is going to be a continuous contraction of the Syrian economy this year.”
Hungarian PM attacks EU ‘blackmail’ over IMF loan
April 14, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under World
Blackmail! Finally someone said it! Now lets talk about the extortion!
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban attacked the European Union for imposing political conditions on an EU-IMF loan desperately needed by Budapest, in an interview on Friday.
“Creating political conditions — for example over the justice system — would amount to blackmail, which is unacceptable within the European Union,” Orban told national radio MR1 in his weekly interview.
“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not set financial conditions, but the EU is flirting with the idea of imposing political conditions,” Orban added.
Hungary asked the International Monetary Fund and European Union for a 15-20 billion euro ($20-26 billion) credit line last November, as the forint dropped to record low levels against the euro and borrowing costs rose to record highs.
But Brussels later warned that any money would depend on Budapest proving its commitment to democratic principles.
Orban’s government has come under fire for a series of laws as well as a new constitution that critics say curb the independence of its central bank and judiciary, and limit press freedoms, among other things.
Last month, the European Commission gave Hungary one month to bring two controversial laws — on the judicial system and its data protection authority — in line with EU principles or face court action.
On Friday, Brussels appeared reluctant to get drawn into a new argument with Orban.
“I will not react to the Hungarian prime minister’s declarations,” said Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly.
“We are analysing the response we received from the Hungarian authorities (to Brussels’ concerns), we will inform you of the commissioners’ response as soon as the evaluation has been made and a decision has been taken.”
Orban is due to meet with Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels on April 23.
