Greece thwarts Barbarossa, yet again

Posted by Eddie Booth on March 11, 2010, 10:24 AM | #

Germans insulting Greeks, Greeks calling Germans ‘nazis’, so where is the ‘communitaire’ spirit?

Posted by jamesUK on March 11, 2010, 01:28 PM | #

And that is the problem with nationalism it can be used as a weapon distracting away from the real culprits causing divisions. 

The real agenda behind the economic crisis from an article removed from Lord Rothschild’s Daily Telegraph online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7G_5F2lxKo

ECB prepares legal grounds for euro rupture as Greece festers

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Sunday, January 17, 2010

http://www.gata.org/node/8246

I wonder how this will impact the forth coing war against Russia and Eurasia. It would be good if Dugin had some commentary on the issue.

Posted by Dan Dare on March 11, 2010, 03:35 PM | #

It’s hard to avoid a little Schadenfreude at Germany’s predicament, not least because this is an entirely predictable outcome of the decision to admit the weaker Mediterranean economies into the Eurozone.

German hubris at becoming Europe’s central banker, egged on by a paranoid France with its particular animus against ‘Anglo-Saxon’ financial hegemony, has resulted in a lopsided vessel in which three strong currencies (the DM, the guilder and the Belgian franc) were unnecessarily commingled with thirteen weak, all on dubious political rather than sound economic grounds.

The structural instability of the Eurozone mirrors that of the EU itself and, like the latte, is the result of Franco-German machinations (with the French playing the leading role). Hopefully what will finally ensue is a recognition that monetary union is no panacea and that pipedreams of political union will have to be shelved for decades, if not permanently. 

The Spiegel article is very good btw, particularly in its analysis of the political background to the founding of the Eurozone and on how the high-flown principals of financial probity were systematically flouted.

The Delors proposal was “a muddled vision” with “wild ideas,” Karl Otto Pöhl, the then-chairman of Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, later told author David Marsh. Pöhl didn’t believe that a monetary union would materialize within the foreseeable future. “I thought that maybe it would happen sometime in the next 100 years,” he said.
But Germany’s top central banker had underestimated the sheer force of political events. The fall of the Berlin Wall triggered the resurgence of old fears of German economic dominance, particularly in France. At the time, French President François Mitterrand believed that a monetary union was a suitable means of destroying the dominant position of the German currency. In return for agreeing to part ways with the German mark, Chancellor Helmut Kohl secured France’s approval of German reunification and, for himself, a second entry into the history books: Not only was he the chancellor behind German unity, he could also take credit for a common European currency.

…

Only financially sound nations were to be accepted, and to satisfy this criterion, the pact stipulated so-called stability criteria for the member states. Under these criteria, no country was permitted to accumulate debts exceeding 60 percent of its gross domestic product. In addition, member states were only permitted to take on new debt if the scope of the loans did not exceed 3 percent of their GDP. “Three point zero is three point zero,” Waigel’s rule stated. Violations were to be rigorously punished.

…

Since joining the euro zone, the 16 euro countries have violated the deficit rule, under which net new debt cannot exceed 3 percent of GDP, 43 times. Most of the infractions have occurred in the last two years. Greece is at the top of the list of violators. Only once did the country manage to push its deficit rate below the magic limit, and only with an extremely creative trick: The Greeks sugarcoated their statistics by including prostitution, black-market trade and gambling in the calculation of economic output. As a result, GDP rose by a stunning 25 percent in 2006, and the deficit dropped to 2.9 percent.

Posted by Grimoire on March 12, 2010, 01:06 AM | #

...............it’s interesting to note the lack of recognition, despite the evidence of poor management of the Mediterranean countries, that the current dilemma, along with that other global economic catastrophe that started in 1929. had one epicentre - Wall St. NY,NY,USA.

...............This is no exaggeration. In both cases the conflagration began with commercial banks dumping unregulated low interest credit onto the market creating a balloon economy, at the pivotal moment a leading bank declares insolvency, the dominoes begin to topple and the rug is pulled out from under.
..................At some point later, 1930 and 2009, the other banks buy out the insolvent banks accounts at pennies on the dollar, thus gaining financial control over the assets of thousands of companies, for a fraction of their value, while assuming zero liability for the insolvent banks debt. In 2009, these ‘traders’ also gained control over 100’s of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to prop up insolvent accounts, while they sell their real assets for pennies on the dollar.

............those responsible for the balloon retire fantastically rich - suggesting a planned maneuver.

............the answer may lie not in expelling Mediterranean Europe, which may be a part of what is intended, but in a quarantine and alienation of what was the sole cause for this, and the disaster of 1929.

The so described ‘Masters Of the Universe’. Wall St. NY, NY, USA

Posted by Dasein on March 12, 2010, 06:38 AM | #

Grimoire,

I think the ‘one size fits all’ assumption underlying the Euro is the biggest problem.  Greece was living beyond its means, taking advantage of the lower interest rates that came with monetary union.  The Heuschrecken are doing what Heuschrecken do.  Until it’s possible to contain them, it’s best to at least act under the assumption that they will strike at any opportune moment.

Posted by Grimoire on March 12, 2010, 07:35 AM | #

Wein, junge Frauen und Sonne und nicht dachten für morgen. How to encourage responsibility in a country like Greece?

Posted by Obvious on March 16, 2010, 12:07 AM | #

Re:Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal: countries filled with a lot of Turkized/Arabized people tend to have bad economies, na ja?