In a recent The Daily Bell interview, Dr. Antal Fekete, who is always a compelling figure (he consistently champions thinking over doctrinaire recitations), suggested that deflation is “a pathological slowing in the velocity of money.” Even though Dr. Fekete perhaps misplaces the locus of this pathology, he deserves kudos for highlighting the overriding behavioral dimension of the current deflation.
Washington’s EU vassals might be finding their backbone. Britain, Germany, France, and Italy are reported to have defied Washington’s orders and applied to join the Chinese-led Asian Investment Bank. Australia, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and Luxembourg might also join.
Slaying the Euro monitaur is not easy. Greeks have been suffering for years now, having learned the hard way that prosperity with shiny euros in their hands was not miraculously just waiting around the corner.
Remember when the infamous Goldman Sachs delivered a thinly-veiled threat to the Greek Parliament in December, warning them to elect a pro-austerity prime minister or risk having central bank liquidity cut off to their banks? (See January 6th post here.) It seems the European Central Bank (headed by Mario Draghi, former managing director of Goldman Sachs International) has now made good on the threat.
Given Western civilization’s debt to Greek society, you might think haughty Berlin, itself not long removed from the days of marauding hordes descending on urbane Rome from the thicket of the Black Forest, might have it in them to declare a debt jubilee for the long-suffering Greeks. Sorry, say the neoliberal ideologues that peer down from the commanding heights of the world’s second largest economic zone. We forgave 100 billion euros in 2012 and look where it got us: nowhere.
Like a neutrino bomb on the landscape of banking, regulation and journalism, the HSBC tax evasion story via its Swiss subsidiary keeps spreading with devastating effect – at least for those whose careers concern it. According to investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who managed to get hold of rather golden whistleblower material from Nicholas Wilson, a “conspiracy of silence” has characterised the treatment of HSBC within the regulatory community, law-enforcement authorities and the media generally.
“The world can only be changed by people who don’t like it,” wrote Bertolt Brecht in explaining why radicals have a negative attitude about the society we live in. We don’t like the way things are. Sometimes our dislike can even become loathing.
The Brussels agreement to extend the EU programme for Greece means a humiliating defeat for the Sýriza government. Their attempts to rally support within the union’s governments miserably failed. The German imposition uncompromisingly defending the narrow interests of the financial oligarchy prevailed bearing witness of the impossibility of a social turn within the power structures of the EU. Game over? We believe that there remains a possibility to thwart the EU starvation programme.
The fliers touted new ballfields, science labs and modern classrooms. They didn’t mention the crushing debt or the investment bank that stood to make millions.
— Melody Peterson, Orange County Register, February 15, 2013
The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union. If the ruling Syriza government capitulates to the demands of the EU bankers and agrees to continue the austerity programs, Greece will be condemned to decades of regression, destitution, and colonial rule.
