As we noted yesterday, EU-IMF mandated austerity is beinging things close to boiling point on the streets of Athens.
Portuguese sources are reporting this morning that Chairman of the EuroGroup Jean-Claude Juncker has received "death threats" from Greece.
And the German tabloid Bild today reports that a delegation of German MPs who visited Greece in May were threatened by Greek socialist MP Maria Skrafnaki, who said that "if you don't support our country (...) then your countrymen will know the same fate as those during the second world war in Crete". If accurate, it's hard to get any harsher than that. CSU MP Michael Hennrich told the newspaper that "Greek Parliament Speaker Philippos Petsalnikos has insulted us in the same way", which was denied by the latter.
Apparently, the WWII reference was not translated for the German MPs at the time, and only surfaced recently, which is why it took so long for the story to come out.
With further austerity on the way in the form of a second Greek bailout, things may sadly get even uglier. Again we pose the question, what is the political breaking point?
There is no political breaking point.
ReplyDeleteEven if the ECB gets bankrupted, as long as the European System of Central Banksters (ESCB) continues to mark its gold reserves to market (not to the model of $35 like the USA), the euro will continue to flourish.
[The ECB has] just released the new market-based revaluation of their monetary reserve assets, including gold. They do this once every three months. It sort of lets the world know the true, market-based strength of their monetary foundation. It’s not that the currency is redeemable in government gold like the old gold standard. They simply make sure physical gold is available, tax free, at the floating market price.
fofoa.blogspot. com/2011/04/reference-point-gold-update-2.html
The process of marking to market (MTM) the Eurosystem’s gold reserves has resulted during the FIRST decade of the Freegold (ECB MTM FLOATING gold price) "experiment", in gold rising from 30% to 60% of the Eurosystem’s (international liquidity) reserves.
fofoa.blogspot. com/2010/07/gold-ultimate-wealth-consolidator.html
“gold’s role [in the reserves of the Eurosystem] has gained musculature from a mere 30.5% proportion to its current dominance now at 67.1%.” That means that at the beginning, in 1999, Eurosystem reserves were made up of 69.5% foreign fiat paper and 30.5% gold. Today that has shifted qualitatively to a net foreign paper position of only 32.9% to gold’s 67.1%, a virtual flip flop!
fofoa.blogspot. com/2011/01/reference-point-gold-update-1.html
This is an ECONOMIC question.
The ruling class embraces the EU, the source of so many of our problems. Its handouts fuel property bubbles, in Ireland especially. The EU imposes sanctions on Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Britain. This is economic warfare – youth unemployment is 20 per cent here, 40 per cent in Greece and 45 per cent in Spain.
ReplyDeleteIt stops them devaluing. It forces bailouts on them that don’t work; they only drive countries deeper into debt, which can never be repaid. We should not pay the debts; we should not further enrich the bankers. Argentina’s default in 2001 was the biggest in history. “So successful did its default prove (economic growth has since surged …) that many economists were left to ponder why any sovereign debtor ever honours its commitments to foreign bondholders.” Who says? Would you believe, Thatcherite historian Niall Ferguson of all people. Default really is good for you – unless you are a bondholder.
The monster that wrecked a continent is in deep crisis right now – the euro and the borderless Schengen agreement falling apart, Strauss-Kahn imploding. Yet it is good for some – there are more Spanish and Italian millionaires than ever.
The ruling class pays billions of our money supposedly to bail out Portugal, Greece and Ireland. These bailouts – handouts - are all to save the euro, save the EU. The ruling class refuses to hold the promised referendum on the EU; it accepts the EU’s majority-voted decisions. But our sovereignty is not lost, just loaned.