The European Parliament and Council have both agreed this week to push ahead with stricter regulations for hedge funds, private equity funds and other alternative investment methods.
Today, any objective appraisal would conclude that Greece is far more economically viable and solvent then Citibank. Portugal is more viable than Goldman Sachs. Italy has a brighter economic future by far than J.P. Morgan.
A group of Italian economists led by Franco Debenedetti of the famous financier clan and the banker Paolo Savona, obviously fearful that the Berlusconi-Tremonti government of Italy will join last Tuesday’s successful German ban on the type of toxic derivative known as the naked credit default swap, have sent an alarmed warning to the Corriere della Sera of Milan1. Debenedetti has contributed an article expressing similar sentiments to the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore in which he rails at the “Mrs. Merkel market” now in force in Germany2. These economists, obviously inspired by the doctrines of Friedrich von Hayek and the Austrian school, want Italy to remain faithful no matter what to the widely discredited ideas of laissez-faire economics, even as those doctrines are everywhere under attack for having caused the current world economic depression. For these neoliberal and monetarist thinkers, any attempt to ban derivatives or tax speculation must be condemned as “economic populism,” which for these writers is a term of opprobrium.
Tuesday’s German ban on naked credit default swaps – a measure repeatedly demanded by this web site over recent months — has been in effect now for about three days, and it is working. The panic slide of the euro has been stopped for now, and the forces of depression and destruction have been re-directed against US stocks, commodities, and certain emerging markets. The goal of euro stability has been momentarily achieved. Sarkozy, who talked a good game of limiting speculation, has been exposed as a Euro-wimp, too weak to buck the Anglo-Saxons and go along with Berlin. The Germans had to act alone because of the obvious sabotage of the eurogarchs of the Brussels Commission, which is now promising to come up with their proposal by October (!). Given the ferocity of the hedge fund assault, many Europeans by October will have lost their shirts, and will be living under bridges dressed in barrels, if more measures are not taken this month.
A quick survey of British media opinion on the eurozone crisis reveals much about the British psyche. Firstly, thinking in Britain is a collective rather than an individual process. Secondly, there is no corrective mechanism: once we start talking shit there is nothing than can stop it.
Net purchases of US Treasury securities from abroad doubled between February and March, from $48 billion to $109 billion. About half the total $45 billion came from London, that is, international banks; another half came from Asia ($45 billion), with China ($19 billion) and Japan ($15 billion) the largest contributors. The geographic breakdown suggests that in addition to the $50 billion a month in carry-trade financing of the deficit by international banks, reserve accumulation by Asian countries pushed another $50 billion or so into US coffers.
Most of all, what the developing world sees is the past – US,France, Britain, Germany – fighting against the advance of the future – China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia. The global security architecture – policed by a bunch of fearful, self-appointed Western guardians – is in a coma. The “Atlanticist” West is sinking Titanic-style.
Let’s face it: Hillary Clinton is one hell of a dominatrix.
At first the United States Secretary of State said the Brazil-Turkey mediation to get Iran to accept a nuclear fuel swap was destined to fail. Then the US State Department said it was the “last chance” for an agreement without sanctions. And finally, less than 24 hours after a successful agreement in Tehran, Hillary whips the UN Security Council into submission and triumphantly proclaims to the world a draft resolution for a fourth UN round of sanctions against Iran has been reached.
Germany and Europe have now made some promising initial steps in the direction of their necessary self-defense against the depredations of those zombie banks and hedge fund hyenas who have been organizing a massive speculative attack on Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy with a view to destabilizing the euro and perpetuating the world hegemony of the troubled US dollar.
The Dutch government is under pressure to lobby for a Europe-wide ban on speculative dealing such as the one introduced by Germany, following a parliamentary vote calling for similar limits in the Netherlands.
Brzezinski explained that global political leadership had become “much more diversified unlike what it was until relatively recently,”
At least old Zbigniew has an eye for reality, This couldn’t be clearer as an expression of disillusionment with a rapidly failing project:the empire is collapsing in the face of popular and national resistance throughout the world!
At a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, co-founder with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that a “global political awakening,” in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.
Brzezinski explained that global political leadership had become “much more diversified unlike what it was until relatively recently,” noting the rise of China as a geopolitical power, and that global leadership in the context of the G20 was “lacking internal unity with many of its members in bilateral antagonisms.”
In other words, the global elite is infighting amongst itself and this is hampering efforts to rescue the agenda for global government, which seems to be failing on almost every front.
Brzezinski then explained another significant factor in that, “For the first time in all of human history mankind is politically awakened – that’s a total new reality – it has not been so for most of human history.”
Brzezinski continued, “The whole world has become politically awakened,” adding that all over the world people were aware of what was happening politically and were “consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation.”
“Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring,” said Brzezinski, adding that this in combination with a fractured elite “makes it a much more difficult context for any major power, including currently the leading world power, the United States.”
During a subsequent question and answer session, Brzezinski was asked if he thought another organization should replace the United Nations as the de facto “one world government,” to which Brzezinski responded, “There should be such an organization,” before pointing out that the UN was not it in its current role.
As the text at the end of the video makes clear, Brzezinski’s admission that humanity has undergone a political awakening is not a positive development in the eyes of the elite.
In his 1970 book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski wrote the following.
“The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”
The “elite” to which Brzezinski refers included many of those who were in attendance for his speech at the CFR meeting. The global political awakening which Brzezinski discussed represents part of the resistance to that very elite dominated society and the systems of control, subjugation and surveillance that they have imposed upon the human race in pursuit of a “more controlled society” and a one world government.