Posted by Graham_Lister on Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:34 | #

I have seen Russia Today from time to time but have not seen this guy before.

GW as for Gideon Osborne being a no-nothing, braying airhead with a taste for sexual degeneracy, well that sounds about the norm for the typical Tory minister.

Posted by jamesUK on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:55 | #

He did a good show with the guy who did the Money Masters documentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrSWpmtm0kY

What happened to Majority Rights radio?

Posted by john on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:09 | #

He takes the same position as the lady who wrote Web of Debt. They are Greenbackers, so yes socialist.

Posted by Comprehensiveboy on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:10 | #

I’be become something of an addict for this show.  The first casual or accidental viewing you notice an incredibly annoying, braying, odd voice and hysterical style. Subsequently you see what is going on and take in the content.  I think it’s the modern version of Kremlin propaganda updated for the Putin era.  It is a savage criticsm of western contries and especially financial institutions and personalities with the emphasis not on idealogy but instead on criminality in the in the legal and broader sense.  This would chime with the modern mindset of the discontented in the west and work well as destabalisation.  I’m not sure to what extent RT is controlled by the Kremlin in detail but I’d expect it to be.  It is well tailored as propaganda.  Max Keiser has an insider’s view and a real desire to strike his targets.  He’s highly entertaining.  Interviewees are off the leash in terms of having to give a bland ‘balanced view’ and this is very refreshing - maybe alla Fox in a different way.  Bottom line - Russia is still out there, self aware,  and persuing its own agenda.  Good on them I say.

Posted by Nick Dean on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:53 | #

He takes the same position as the lady who wrote Web of Debt. They are Greenbackers, so yes socialist.

He has plenty of gold standard advocates on the show. Only Ellen Brown among his regulars comes out for public banking. I assumed that implied agnosticism.

By ‘socialistic’ you mean something done for the benefit of the nation as a whole - not just its private bankers?

Posted by Nick Dean on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:56 | #

You’d think he has to know that Bernanke is Jewish and Geithner nore Jewish than owt else, but recently he went out of his way to say they were not. Might mean something, might not ...

Posted by dolmen on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:52 | #

Big Finance Moves In

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/14/big-finance-moves-in/

Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have both been forced from office and replaced by representatives of big finance. Mario Monti, who will replace Berlusconi, was formerly the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a member of the Bilderberg Group. He is also listed on Goldman Sachs board of international advisers.

Lucas Papademos, who will replace Papandreou, was formerly the Vice President of the European Central Bank (ECB), and served as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1980. He’s also been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.

It’s also worth noting that the ECB’s new president, Mario Draghi, is a trustee at the Brookings Institution, a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and a former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.

Posted by dolmen on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:30 | #

Merkel doing Big Finance’s bidding:

Merkel Says Germany Is Ready to Cede Some Sovereignty to Save the Euro

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-16/merkel-says-germany-ready-to-cede-some-sovereignty-to-eu-for-closer-ties.html

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany is ready to cede some sovereignty to strengthen the euro area and restore confidence in the common currency.

European Union treaty changes to strengthen EU institutions and patrol tighter budget rules are needed “to make the euro zone more crisis-proof,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin today at a joint briefing with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

“Germany sees the need in this context to show the markets and the world public that the euro will remain together, that the euro must be defended, but also that we are prepared to give up a little bit of national sovereignty,” Merkel said. Germany wants a strong EU and a euro “of 17 member states that is just as strong and inspires confidence on international markets.”

Germany, the largest contributor to euro-area bailouts, is ruffling feathers with its plans for an overhaul of the EU’s guiding rules. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron rebuffed Merkel’s proposal for treaty change, saying Nov. 14 that the crisis offers the opportunity to allow powers to “ebb back” to national states from Brussels.

Merkel explained that treaty change would mean “an intervention and oversight role in respect of the preparation of national budgets, but with flexibility to certain countries to do their own particularly budgetary strategy,” Kenny said.

Posted by dolmen on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:42 | #

Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-the-new-democracy-goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count….by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank’s alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund’s European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as “the Vampire Squid”, and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman’s interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The 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.