Ger­many will undoubt­edly ‘invade’ and or take con­trol of var­i­ous euro­pean states. But I sus­pect not openly as the Bun­deswehr; they will do it as a blue-uniformed ‘Euro Task Force’.

Uber Alles.

I am reminded of the song “Liv­ing In The Past” …

Once I used to join in
every boy and girl was my friend.

Now there’s rev­o­lu­tion,
but they don’t know what they’re fighting.

Let us close out eyes;
out­side their lives go on much faster.

Oh, we won’t give in,
we’ll keep liv­ing in the past.

–

It’s not Ger­many, it’s the right wing, and it’s not even the right wing … the only way it can sur­vive is by being invisible.

Great...so now it sounds like the Greek bailout, itself, is being man­aged by the ‘troika’ in such a way that it almost doesn’t mat­ter how bad Greece’s econ­omy gets it can’t default. And why is that? Because the troika is only lend­ing Greece enough money to pay inter­est on it’s debts. THAT’S the bailout and even funds intended to keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning are being with­held. Why? Because help­ing more would remove the nec­es­sary pres­sure for tax-collection reforms.on the nation. So the econonmy is being inten­tion­ally gut­ted pres­sured in order to achieve the goal of rais­ing more taxes. In other words, the troika is using a tech­nique that destroys Greece’s econ­omy (to raise taxes!?) because that tech­nique pre­vents a tech­ni­cal Greek dafault. In other other words, the EU had bet­ter start prepar­ing those ‘peace keep­ing’ forces because it sounds like no mat­ter how bad it gets this roller coaster ride is going to go on for a long time:

NY Times
Most Aid to Athens Cir­cles Back to Europe
By LIZ ALDERMAN and JACK EWING
Pub­lished: May 29, 2012

PARIS — Its mem­ber­ship in the euro cur­rency union hang­ing in the bal­ance, Greece con­tin­ues to receive bil­lions of euros in emer­gency assis­tance from a so-called troika of lenders over­see­ing its bailout.

But almost none of the money is going to the Greek gov­ern­ment to pay for vital pub­lic ser­vices. Instead, it is flow­ing directly back into the troika’s pockets.

The Euro­pean bailout of 130 bil­lion euros ($163.4 bil­lion) that was sup­posed to buy time for Greece is mainly ser­vic­ing only the inter­est on the country’s debt — while the Greek econ­omy con­tin­ues to struggle.

If that seems to make lit­tle sense eco­nom­i­cally, it has a cer­tain logic in the pol­i­tics of euro-finance. After all, the money dis­pensed by the troika — the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank, the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion — comes from Euro­pean tax­pay­ers, many of whom are increas­ingly wary of the polit­i­cal dis­ar­ray that has afflicted Athens and clouded the future of the euro zone.

As they pay them­selves, though, the troika mem­bers are also with­hold­ing other funds intended to keep the Greek gov­ern­ment in operation.

Last week, the Athens office that tracks rev­enue said Greece could run out of money by July. If so, Greece could default on its debts — except those due to the cen­tral bank, the mon­e­tary fund and the Euro­pean Union.

“Greece will not default on the troika because the troika is pay­ing them­selves,” said Thomas Mayer, a senior adviser at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.

In an elab­o­rate pay­ment sys­tem that began after the May 6 elec­tion that brought down the Greek gov­ern­ment and is meant to ensure that the Greeks do not touch the cash, the big three cred­i­tors are now wiring bailout pay­ments to an escrow account in Greece. There the money sits for two or three days — before much of it is sent back to the troika as inter­est pay­ments on the Greek bonds that Europe accepted under terms of the bailout deal struck in February.

...

Some peo­ple close to the sit­u­a­tion say the troika is also try­ing to put finan­cial pres­sure on Greece to do what it can to col­lect tax rev­enue from an increas­ingly dev­as­tated econ­omy.

The man­ag­ing direc­tor of the I.M.F., Chris­tine Lagarde, prompted a furor in Greece over the week­end when she chas­tised Greeks for not pay­ing taxes, in an inter­view with The Guardian.

A Greek gov­ern­ment adviser who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity, for fear of alien­at­ing the Euro­pean lenders, said of the troika: “They made sure that the sum for domes­tic spend­ing is kept small enough to force Greece to dra­mat­i­cally raise its own revenues.”

On its face, the sit­u­a­tion seems absurd. The Euro­pean author­i­ties are effec­tively lend­ing Greece money so Greece can repay the money it bor­rowed from them.

“You send the money, you call it a ‘loan’ — you get it back and call it an ‘inter­est rate,’ ” said Stephane Deo, global head of asset allo­ca­tion in Lon­don for UBS. Mr. Deo said such arrange­ments were com­mon in sit­u­a­tions where gov­ern­ments were in dan­ger of default­ing on their debts.

...

Only a third has been ear­marked to finance gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions, with only a tiny sliver spent on stim­u­lus projects for the ane­mic economy.

...

The Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank became one of Greece’s biggest cred­i­tors after it started buy­ing debt from trou­bled euro zone coun­tries in 2010 to help sta­bi­lize prices. The bank does not dis­close how much Greek debt it bought, but esti­mates are from $44 bil­lion to $69 billion.

Greek bonds are a prof­itable invest­ment for the bank as long as Greece con­tin­ues to make inter­est pay­ments. The bank exempted itself from the debt restruc­tur­ing deal. And Greek bonds were already trad­ing at a big dis­count when the cen­tral bank started buy­ing them. As a result, the bank is earn­ing an effec­tive inter­est rate of 10 per­cent or so, Mr. Deo estimated.

...

How­ever harsh the pay­back terms might seem, the Euro­pean author­i­ties have a strong inter­est in avoid­ing the even higher costs that would result if Greece left the euro zone or defaulted com­pletely on its debt.

As early as next year, accord­ing to opti­mistic esti­mates, Greece could reach the point where tax receipts exceed gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing expenses.

...

So the opti­mists think this ride might be done in a year? Well, at least this all sounds like its highly prof­itable for the troika. They might need the cash.

Since the world is offer­ing Greece advice, here’s some more:
Ignore the first guy:

Michael Casey’s FX Hori­zons
May 30, 2012, 10:41 a.m. EDT
Argen­tines offer Greeks tough advice on cri­sis
Com­men­tary: Lead­ers must look beyond short-term politics

By Michael Casey

NEW YORK (Mar­ket­Watch) — With a Greek exit from the euro zone now widely seen as a fore­gone con­clu­sion, it is worth reflect­ing on the following:

...

I asked the two Argen­tine pol­icy mak­ers most directly involved in try­ing to save Argentina from that out­come to reflect on those moments and offer advice to the Greeks. Strik­ingly, their pre­scrip­tions dif­fered, which seemed to cor­re­spond with the extent to which each was polit­i­cally invested in pro­tect­ing the con­vert­ibil­ity plan 10 years ago.

“To me it is a bar­bar­ity that many are rec­om­mend­ing a euro exit,” said Domingo Cav­allo, who was the econ­omy min­is­ter until Pres­i­dent Fer­nando de la Rua’s down­fall on Dec. 21, 2001. “The more they rec­om­mend it, the more it will aggra­vate Greece’s cri­sis.” Greece, he said, should hang on to the euro because leav­ing it will only invite hyper­in­fla­tion and turn the coun­try into the “pariah of Europe,” much as Argentina was turned into an inter­na­tional rogue by its actions.

Cav­allo was known as the father of the con­vert­ibil­ity plan, hav­ing intro­duced the dol­lar peg dur­ing his first min­is­te­r­ial stint in 1991, which imme­di­ately ended a hyper­in­fla­tion night­mare. Ten years later, De la Rua brought him back to try to save the sys­tem. His entire rep­u­ta­tion was invested in doing so. Now teach­ing at Yale, he has con­tin­ued to reject the con­ven­tional wis­dom that the peg had to go. In his mind, its end reflected “a fail­ure of leadership.”

But how should the gov­ern­ment have con­tended with society’s fierce resis­tance to aus­ter­ity, I asked. Cavallo’s response: “That’s what it means to gov­ern. You must make tough deci­sions.” Sim­i­larly, he said, the IMF and Argentina’s cred­i­tors lacked lead­er­ship in not rec­og­niz­ing the inter­na­tional ram­i­fi­ca­tions of their actions. By pulling the plug on Argentina, Cav­allo said, they fanned the flames of anti-market, anti-U.S. sen­ti­ment across Latin Amer­ica, which brought Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela and led to the fail­ure of the Washington-backed Free Trade Area of the Amer­i­cas. It should be a warn­ing to Ger­many, he said.

The approach of Daniel Marx, who was finance sec­re­tary under Cav­allo until he abruptly resigned on Dec. 15, 2001, is a dif­fer­ent one. He said the most impor­tant steps were to “build polit­i­cal con­sen­sus” within Greek soci­ety and estab­lish poli­cies that “dis­trib­ute losses fairly” and pro­tect “the social fab­ric,” includ­ing a deval­u­a­tion if need be.

...

Yes Greece, you really want to avoid going down that path. It ain’t pretty:

NY Times
Paul Krug­man
May 3, 2012, 12:09 pm
Down Argentina Way

Matt Ygle­sias, who just spent time in Argentina, writes about the lessons of that country’s recov­ery fol­low­ing its exit from the one-peso-one-dollar “con­vert­ibil­ity law”. As he says, it’s a remark­able suc­cess story, one that arguably holds lessons for the euro zone.

I’d just add some­thing else: press cov­er­age of Argentina is another one of those exam­ples of how con­ven­tional wis­dom can appar­ently make it impos­si­ble to get basic facts right. We keep get­ting sto­ries about Ireland’s recov­ery when there is, in fact, no recov­ery — but there should be, darn it, because they’ve done the “right” thing, so that’s what we’ll report.

...

Yep, if Greece goes down that path it’ll get down­right ugly.

Given all the fun changes we’ve seen in the euro­zone and EU just in the last cou­ple of years, you have to won­der what an EU that’s “a real actor on the global scene” is going to look like:

EU heavy­weights call for rad­i­cal for­eign and defence pol­icy overhaul

Five of six biggest EU coun­tries back plans which include pan-European for­eign min­istry and major­ity vot­ing to bypass UK veto

Ian Traynor in Brus­sels
guardian.co.uk, Tues­day 18 Sep­tem­ber 2012 12.09 EDT

Five of the six biggest coun­tries in the EU, exclud­ing Britain, have called for a rad­i­cal over­haul of Euro­pean for­eign and defence poli­cies to cre­ate a pow­er­ful new pan-European for­eign min­istry, major­ity vot­ing on com­mon for­eign poli­cies to bypass a British veto, a pos­si­ble Euro­pean army, and a sin­gle mar­ket for EU defence indus­tries.

The German-led push, sup­ported by 11 of 27 EU coun­tries, embraces recent calls in Berlin and Brus­sels for a directly elected Euro­pean pres­i­dent, sweep­ing new pow­ers for the Euro­pean par­lia­ment, and fur­ther split­ting of the EU by cre­at­ing a new par­lia­men­tary sub-chamber for the 17 coun­tries of the euro­zone.

While the call for a Euro­pean army was not sup­ported by all 11, the doc­u­ment also calls for a new Euro­pean police organ­i­sa­tion to guard the union’s exter­nal bor­ders and for a sin­gle Euro­pean visa.

Nine months of brain­storm­ing over the future of Europe by the for­eign min­is­ters of the 11 coun­tries, launched by Guido West­er­welle, the Ger­man for­eign min­is­ter, has resulted in a 12-page doc­u­ment crammed with pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions. It will prove hugely con­tentious and, if imple­mented, will increase the pres­sure on Britain to quit the EU.

“To make the EU into a real actor on the global scene we believe that we should in the long term intro­duce more major­ity deci­sions in the com­mon for­eign and secu­rity pol­icy sphere, or at least pre­vent one sin­gle mem­ber state from being able to obstruct ini­tia­tives,” the doc­u­ment said.

“Aim for a Euro­pean defence pol­icy with joint efforts regard­ing the defence indus­try (eg the cre­ation of a sin­gle mar­ket for arma­ment projects); for some mem­bers of the group this could even­tu­ally involve a Euro­pean army.”

The back­ers include Ger­many, France, Italy, Spain and Poland, five of the six biggest EU coun­tries omit­ting Britain. The Nether­lands, Bel­gium, Den­mark, Aus­tria, Por­tu­gal and Lux­em­bourg also signed up.

The rec­om­men­da­tions include more incen­di­ary steps, includ­ing a pro­posal to re-open and change Euro­pean treaties by major­ity vot­ing because get­ting con­sen­sus in a union of 27 or 28 has become too slow, acri­mo­nious and unwieldy.
...

Had a lit­tle trou­ble find­ing the right cat­e­gory for this, but it’s important.

From NPR

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/25/172858159/germany-called-on-to-evolve-its-gobal-military-role

Ger­many Eval­u­ates Its Global Mil­i­tary Role
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nel­son
Feb­ru­ary 25, 2013

(Excerpts, full text at link)

“For decades after the dev­as­ta­tion of World War Two, Ger­many recoiled from any prospect of mil­i­tary engage­ment. Now the coun­try is under pres­sure to get involved in for­eign mil­i­tary con­flicts as the U.S. cuts back its role as the world’s police­man. Germany’s grow­ing mil­i­tary role is now being debated in gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­mic cir­cles.
(snip)
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Thomas de Maiziere wants his coun­try­men to talk about the evolv­ing role of the Ger­man mil­i­tary. The min­is­ter tells NPR that in Europe, Ger­many is sec­ond only to Britain in troop deploy­ments, but that few here like to think about that.
THOMAS DE MAIZIERE: (Through trans­la­tor) In Ger­many, the military’s oper­a­tional con­cept was not to go on mis­sions. Things have changed since reuni­fi­ca­tion, but many Ger­mans like to live in the past and haven’t inter­nal­ized their country’s impor­tance.
(snip)
NELSON: He and other Ger­man ana­lysts say that the gov­ern­ment is under grow­ing inter­na­tional pres­sure to get involved mil­i­tar­ily in for­eign con­flicts, espe­cially as Amer­ica cuts back on its role as the world’s police­man. They say being a polit­i­cal pow­er­house in the Euro­pean Union and serv­ing as pay­mas­ter in the euro-crisis is no longer enough.
(snip)
Some here accuse Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s gov­ern­ment of sell­ing arms rather than send­ing in Ger­man troops to address secu­rity con­cerns. A Decem­ber cover story in Der Spiegel mag­a­zine out­lined a Merkel doc­trine, in which key coun­tries in unsta­ble areas were being sold high-tech Ger­man weapons so they could main­tain secu­rity on their own.
That wor­ries Edel­gard Bul­mahn, an oppo­si­tion law­maker with the Social Democ­rats, who serves on the Bun­destag for­eign affairs com­mit­tee.
EDELGARD BULMAHN: We always real­ized that mil­i­tary approach doesn’t really solve the con­flict. But nev­er­the­less, arms exports can’t be a sub­sti­tute for a role of our coun­try.
(snip)
NELSON: Bul­mahn and other law­mak­ers took part in a con­tentious Bun­destag debate in late Jan­u­ary about the lack of trans­parency in arms exports. Ger­many is the third biggest exporter of arms world­wide, although it trails far behind the U.S. and Rus­sia.
Olaf Simon­sen, a retired vice pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Office of Eco­nom­ics and Exports, says secret deals are only part of the prob­lem. He charges that changes to Euro­pean trade laws are giv­ing the Ger­man gov­ern­ment greater free­dom to sell arms to more Third World coun­tries, even if it doesn’t have a license for those coun­tries.
OLAF SIMONSEN: For exam­ple, if France has no prob­lems to deliver items to a for­mer colony in Africa, it’s now allowed for the Ger­man exporter to trans­fer an item from Ger­many to France. And then France can export trans­fer the final prod­uct to this country.”

More at Link

@SWAMP–Quite pre­dictable, unfortunately.

The fal­la­cious pre­sump­tion is that Ger­many has changed.

Wrong!

Aside from the fact that the Ger­man army was re-staffed with Nazis after WWII, there is every rea­son to sup­pose that the insti­tu­tional iner­tia in the Bun­deswehr has continued.

In FTR #595, we noted that con­tem­po­rary Bun­deswehr recruits are being trained with live-fire prac­tice on sim­u­lated African-Americans!!

In FTR #50, we noted that the head of the Bundeswehr–Klaus Naumann–told his offi­cers that the task fac­ing Ger­many was to roll back “the val­ues of 1945″ i.e. denazification.

He also said that it was also their duty to roll back the val­ues of “lib­erte, equalite et fraternite”–the val­ues of the French rev­o­lu­tion and the enlightenment!

In FTR #86, we noted that con­victed neo-Nazi ter­ror bomber Man­fred Roeder was selected to lec­ture at the Ger­man mil­i­tary acad­emy! The Bun­deswehr also donated sur­plus vehi­cles to Roeder’s organization!

Stay tuned!

Dave Emory

Agreed.
Sub­mit­ted “For the record”, so to speak...

From the above report:

” ..but many Ger­mans like to live in the past and haven’t inter­nal­ized their country’s impor­tance.“
–
And the aggres­sion begins here:

“NELSON: He and other Ger­man ana­lysts say that the gov­ern­ment is under grow­ing inter­na­tional pres­sure to get involved mil­i­tar­ily in for­eign con­flicts, espe­cially as Amer­ica cuts back on its role as the world’s police­man. They say being a polit­i­cal pow­er­house in the Euro­pean Union and serv­ing as pay­mas­ter in the euro-crisis is no longer enough.”

@SWAMP–BTW, Ger­man defense min­is­ter Thomas de Maiziere is the son of Ulrich de Maiziere, a for­mer Inspec­tor Gen­eral of the Bun­deswehr (equiv­a­lent to the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and WWII gen­eral under Hitler.

The elder de Maiziere was an aide to Gen­eral Adolf Heusinger, who planned every Nazi mil­i­tary cam­paign after 1940, includ­ing Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, the geno­ci­dal inva­sion of the Soviet Union.

Heusinger was the first Inspec­tor Gen­eral of the “new” Bundeswehr.

Best,

Dave Emory