Eurocracy

All roads continue to lead to Berlin, the powerhouse that runs and dictates Europe’s future. In this case, Berlin is spearheading an effort to keep Italy subjugated before an economic crisis (it’s already capitalizing off of) gets politically out of hand as it did in Greece, which is now a German vassal state. It’s Germany’s goal to create a United States of Europe and economic levers are but one tactic in harmonizing Europe how it sees fit in achieving that end.

 

 

ROME/BERLIN (Own report) – Following massive complaints from Germany, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella blocked a euroskeptic from becoming his country’s finance minister, appointing an IMF man – favored by Berlin – to be prime minister. The democratically elected 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right Lega Nord majority’s opportunity to form a government was thereby denied. Euroskeptic Paolo Savona, a renowned career economist, was rejected because he could not have insured the maintenance of the EU’s common currency. Under his administration, resistance to Berlin’s austerity dictate could have been expected, whereas the newly appointed Prime Minster Carlo Cottarelli passed the test a few years ago as the Rome government’s austerity commissioner (“Mr. Scissors”). Savona’s nomination is the result of Italy’s growing euroskepticism, which, in the meantime, is also shared by other economists. “Germany profits, Italy loses” through the introduction of the euro, concludes Savona’s alternative candidate to the post of finance minister.

Those Who Have, Shall Get

ATHENS/BERLIN (Own report) – Through loans and government bonds, Germany is reaping a billion euros in profits from Greece’s debt crisis. The German government has confirmed that profits from financial transactions with Greece have already reached €1.34 billion. German firms have also profited from the fact that, due to the crisis, Greece has been forced to sell government property. In a joint venture, just recently, a German investor bought the majority of shares of Greece’s Thessaloniki Port Authority – in cooperation with a fabulously rich Greek oligarch. At the same time, the German discounter Lidl was able to increase its market shares in competition with its Greek supermarket rivals because growing poverty is forcing people to buy low-priced groceries. Mass emigration, particularly that of highly qualified Greeks, is generating little noticed profits. Many Greeks, whose expensive education was paid by Athens, now work in Germany – placing their skills, for which Germany has not paid a cent, at Germany’s disposal.

Rome on verge of WAR between migrants and the poor, mayor of Italy’s capital warns

ROME is on the verge of war as friction grows between poor Italians and and an increasing number of migrants, the city’s mayor has warned.

Virginia Raggi told an immigration summit of European city leaders mayors need to be the first to welcome refugees with “warmth, shelter and accommodation”.

She was speaking just days after a Moroccan family was prevented from moving into a council flat given to them by the authorities after neighbours shouted: “We do not want these n*****s.”

Germany’s War Record (II)

BERLIN/KABUL (Own report) – Nearly 15 years ago, NATO launched its war on Afghanistan. Under the occupation – with Germany playing a significant role – the economic and social conditions of the country are disastrous and the security situation, desolate. Since 2001, more than 220,000 people have been killed in the war, either as direct victims of combat or indirectly, according to a comprehensive analysis. The security situation in the country has “dramatically deteriorated,” affirms the German Bundestag’s Defense Commissioner. Today, soldiers must be flown by helicopter from one base to another, because use of the roads is too dangerous, even for armored vehicles. According to the United Nations, the number of refugees has reached 1.1 million, tendency rising. Opium cultivation is still Afghanistan’s largest economic sector. By national standards, 39.1 percent of the Afghans are living below the poverty line; 2.7 million are undernourished. The Bundeswehr, however, detects a positive development and recommends “patience and endurance.” (This is part 2 of a german-foreign-policy.com series, reporting on consequences of German military interventions over the past two decades, in light of the German government’s announcement of plans to increase its “global” – including military – interventions.)

Socialist hell: 120,000 desperate Venezuelans cross into Colombia for food, medicine

Some 120,000 desperate Venezuelans poured into Colombia over the weekend to buy food and medicine that are in short supply in socialist Venezeula.

Under the 21st century socialist, or “chavismo”, movement started by Hugo Chavez and continued by his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro, 70 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty amid triple-digit inflation, mortality rates are skyrocketing, public services are collapsing, crime is out of control, and hospitals do not have basic, inexpensive medicines.

Attention President Obama: One Third Of U.S. Households Can No Longer Afford Food, Rent And Transportation

While the Fed has long been focusing on the revenue part of the household income statement (which unfortunately has not been rising nearly fast enough to stimulate benign inflation in the form of nominal wages rising at the Fed’s preferred clip of 3.5% or higher), one largely ignored aspect of said balance sheet has been the expense side: after all, for any money to be left over and saved, income has to surpass expenses. However, according to a striking new Pew study while household spending has returned to pre-recession levels (the average household spent $36,800 in 2014) incomes have not.

Specifically, while the median income had fallen by 13% from 2004 levels over the next decade, expenditures had increased by nearly 14%. But nobody was more impacted than the one-third of households which the study defines as “low-income.” Pew finds that while all households had less slack in their budgets in 2014 than in 2004, lower-income households went into the red by over $2,300.

Germany in a state of SIEGE: Merkel was cheered when she opened the floodgates to migrants. Now, with gangs of men roaming the streets and young German women being told to cover up, the mood’s changing

• Thousands of economic migrants are posing as refugees to reach Europe
• David Cameron said this week that Europe must said [sic] failed asylum claimants back to their countries
• Demands for Germany’s ‘open doors and windows’ policy to be scrapped
• Women said rape and child abuse were rife in Giessen’s refugee camp

On the busy shopping street in Giessen, a German university town twinned with Winchester, migrant Atif Zahoor tucks into a chicken dish with his brother and cousin at the curry restaurant Chillie To Go.

They have left good jobs back in Karachi, Pakistan, and now want to be Europeans.

In late July the three slipped into Germany with their wives and children, using illegal documents. They live together in a five-bedroom house, rented for them by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, a 40-minute drive away from Giessen, which is home to the biggest migrants’ camp in the country.

Is Europe Losing Control Over Its Destiny?

• The move by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels to force European countries to throw open their borders — and to require them to provide migrants with free clothing, food, housing and healthcare for an indefinite period of time — not only represents an audacious usurpation of national sovereignty, it is also certain to encourage millions of additional migrants from the Muslim world to begin making their way to Europe.
• “We are not facing a refugee crisis, we are facing a migration crisis… Let us not forget that those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? If we lose sight of this, the idea of Europe could become a minority interest in its own continent.” — Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary.

Germany ‘took our Jews and gave us Arabs,’ French ex-minister says

Patrick Devedjian apologizes for ‘misplaced’ jest about Syrians, Iraqis as France gets set to accept thousands of refugees

A former French minister stirred up controversy Friday after saying Germany “took our Jews and gave us Arabs” as France began taking some of the thousands of refugees arriving in Germany.

The First Defeat

ATHENS/BERLIN/PARIS (Own report) – Germany’s imposition of its austerity policy suffered a first serious defeat in yesterday’s Greek referendum. Over 61 percent of the Greek voters rejected an agreement with the creditors that would have provided for a continuation of the German austerity measures. This defeat is all the more serious for Berlin, because German politicians had massively interfered in the Greek referendum debate. The decision whether there will be new negotiations – and if so, under what conditions – must now be taken. Whereas many Greeks celebrated the rejection of the austerity dictate yesterday evening, German politicians declared that it is “difficult to imagine” new negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Tsipras (the German Minister of the Economy, Sigmar Gabriel). Greece is heading toward a Grexit and a “humanitarian catastrophe” (Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament). Paris however is risking conflict with Berlin. Yesterday evening, the governing Parti Socialiste (PS) took a clear stand “against the austerity measures,” which has “shriveled Greece’s Gross Domestic Product and driven a large number of Greeks into poverty.” Today’s meeting between the German chancellor and the French president may produce the first decisions.

We have six months to save the world, says leading economist

Three key meetings set for July, September and November represent ‘our generation’s best chance to get on track’, says UN special adviser Jeffrey Sachs

Decisions made by the world’s governments at a series of meetings over the next six months will be crucial in safeguarding the future of the planet, one of the world’s most respected economists has said.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the UN special adviser and director of The Earth Institute who is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on international development, told The Independent that three key meetings set for July, September and November represented “our generation’s best chance to get on track”.

California Passes Stealth Law Banning Businesses That Aren’t Profitable and Fair Enough

Essentially, voters allowed themselves to be duped into voting themselves out of business. Look for the cannibalization of the economy through layoffs and closures of businesses to begin a little before 2018, when the law goes into effect.

 

Business owner who supported new minimum wage realizes math isn’t strong suit—layoffs now likely.

What would you do if some small-minded government bureaucrat told you that your coffee shop or widget factory didn’t make enough money to justify letting you stay in business, and you were hereby ordered to shut down?

You would probably show him the exit.

Mexico Looks To Back Peso With Silver: “Would Unleash a Global Power Shift”

 

For many Americans the country of Mexico conjures up images of a third world nation. The poverty, lack of basic services, and extreme violence has left the populace so desperate that thousands of people on a daily basis head to the United States for a better life.

But according to Future Money Trends, all that could change in the near future as key Mexican financial leaders and politicians have been working to institute sweeping monetary change that, if implemented, could unleash a global power shift of epic proportions.

Why America’s poisonous politics makes ‘Market Leninism’ an attractive alternative

“Market Leninism” has become the biggest challenge to our society, writes John Avlon. And the problem with this alternative to Western governance is that it promises prosperity at the expense of individual freedom – while dismissing democracy as ineffective

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The ideology of communism may have ended up on the ash heap of history like Nazism before it, but now “Market Leninism” is taking its place as a challenge to liberty in the 21st Century.

The fault lines reflect Cold War regions.

Russia and China and some of their old satellite states have traded Marx and Lenin for Market Leninism.

India’s dangerous ‘food bubble’

Grain production is up, but wells are going dry from the unsustainable use of irrigation water.

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In recent years about 27 million wells have been drilled, chasing water tables downward in every Indian state. Even the typically conservative World Bank warned in 2005 that 15% of India’s food was being produced by overpumping groundwater. The situation has not improved, meaning that about 190 million Indians are being fed using water that cannot be sustained. This means that the dietary foundation for about 190 million people could disappear with little warning.