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So It Begins: Does Proposed US, EU Single Market Augur American Economic Subjugation?

 

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: As the media fix­ate on the “dis­clo­sures” of career spook Baby Face Snow­den (pre­dictably fail­ing to note how the entire affair tracks back to the far right/Cato Institute/Koch Broth­ers milieu), a huge and poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing (for the U.S.) devel­op­ment is being eclipsed.

Oba­ma and British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron are lin­ing up behind an enor­mous EU/US trade deal, which would bring the U.S. and the EU into a sin­gle market–the largest in the world.

As a gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tion, we don’t approve of these kinds of agree­ments. NAFTA and its lit­ter-mates gen­er­al­ly ben­e­fit cor­po­rate inter­ests at the expense of the cit­i­zens whose pros­per­i­ty they are sup­posed to ele­vate.

We are very, very leery of this whop­per. 

No doubt we will be del­uged by rhetoric assur­ing us that the agree­ment will bring jobs, jobs, jobs and lots of good vibes all around.

Indeed it may do just that–for Ger­many, in all like­li­hood.

In this regard, we bring up some­thing we have not­ed in many posts and broad­casts–the blue­print for Ger­man world wide dom­i­na­tion craft­ed by Friedrich List in the 19th cen­tu­ry and real­ized by the Third Reich in its above-ground and under­ground man­i­fes­ta­tions.

The Third Reich’s eco­nom­ic tem­plate was set forth by Dorothy Thomp­son in a 1940 arti­cle, reviewed (from a T.H. H. Tetens text) below.

Suf­fice it to say that eco­nom­ic forces and pres­sure are seen as the means for sub­ju­gat­ing the Unit­ed States, and that this will be accom­plished by offer­ing com­pet­i­tive advan­tages to com­mer­cial inter­ests with which Cor­po­rate Ger­many has already net­worked.

In more pro­grams and posts than we could link or note here, we have doc­u­ment­ed that the EMU and EU are the real­iza­tion of the Lis­t­ian blue­print. The bru­tal real­i­ties being imposed on the trou­bled nations of that con­ti­nent are dec­i­mat­ing those soci­eties and dri­ving the cit­i­zens in the direc­tion of fas­cism.

We are con­fi­dent that many cheer­ful state­ments will be issued reas­sur­ing the wary that this will all be fine and well–it’s just a sin­gle mar­ket, after all.

This is pre­cise­ly how Britain was maneu­vered into accept­ing mar­ket con­ti­nu­ity with Ger­many and the EU. This has­n’t worked well for Britain, which did man­age to avoid get­ting roped into the Euro.

Once Britain was “reeled in,” it devel­oped that the rules were being made on the con­ti­nent and were estab­lished to the detri­ment of the U.K.

The full chron­i­cle of how this was done is beyond the scope of this post and requires lengthy aca­d­e­m­ic con­sid­er­a­tion.

We strong­ly rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing web­site for seri­ous perusal and dis­sem­i­na­tion. This is how it was done to the U.K.

Will it be done to the U.S. in a sim­i­lar fash­ion?

In this con­text, we should nev­er lose sight of the deci­sive pow­er wield­ed by the immense­ly secre­tive, pow­er­ful Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, which has major cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in major Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions, in addi­tion to dom­i­nat­ing Cor­po­rate Ger­many. (Note, in this con­text, that any Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tion that would decline to coop­er­ate with this “sin­gle mar­ket” could have its stock val­ue col­lapsed by a sell-off.)

Orga­nized labor, in par­tic­u­lar, should be alert­ed to the strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that this sin­gle mar­ket will not work to the advan­tage of the Unit­ed States.

“EU and US ‘In Biggest Trade Deal’ ”; BBC; 6/17/2013.

EXCERPT: UK Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron has announced plans for what could be “the biggest bilat­er­al trade deal in his­to­ry” between the EU and the US.

He announced the start of for­mal nego­ti­a­tions on a trade deal worth hun­dreds of bil­lions of pounds, aimed at boost­ing exports and dri­ving growth.

Mr Cameron said a suc­cess­ful agree­ment would have a greater impact than all oth­er world trade deals put togeth­er.

The talks were announced ahead of the G8 sum­mit in North­ern Ire­land.

US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said the first round of nego­ti­a­tions would take place in Wash­ing­ton in July. They aim to con­clude by the end of 2014.

The French have already expressed mis­giv­ings about parts of the trade deal. They are wor­ried that if they can­not pro­tect their film indus­try from Hol­ly­wood’s dom­i­nance, their unique artis­tic cul­ture will be under­mined.

After intense talks with oth­er EU coun­tries last week, it seems the French have per­suad­ed the nego­tia­tors to hon­our what they call a cul­tur­al exclu­sion.

That leaves the way open for oth­er sec­tors to say they are also excep­tion­al and should not be includ­ed in the trade deal.

The French claim the Amer­i­cans want to exclude finan­cial ser­vices from the free trade nego­ti­a­tions. The Amer­i­cans have not acknowl­edged that pub­licly but it is a reminder that behind closed doors the dis­cus­sions might be very dif­fi­cult.

Mr Oba­ma said he was con­fi­dent of reach­ing an agree­ment.

“There are going to be sen­si­tiv­i­ties on both sides... but if we can look beyond the nar­row con­cerns to stay focused on the big pic­ture... I’m hope­ful we can achieve [a deal].” . . . .

. . . . The EU has said the deal will focus on bring­ing down remain­ing tar­iffs and oth­er bar­ri­ers to trade, and stan­dard­ize tech­ni­cal reg­u­la­tions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. . . .

. . . . Cur­rent­ly the US and EU impose rel­a­tive­ly low tar­iffs on goods trad­ed between them, but ana­lysts say oth­er bar­ri­ers are often in place to pre­vent Euro­pean com­pa­nies com­pet­ing in the US and vice ver­sa.
One exam­ple is found in the car indus­try, where the EU and the US employ equal­ly strict — but dif­fer­ing — safe­ty stan­dards, mean­ing that Euro­pean car mak­ers must meet both before they can sell cars in the US mar­ket, putting them at a dis­ad­van­tage.

Agri­cul­ture is also expect­ed to be a sig­nif­i­cant bone of con­tention.

The Euro­pean farm­ing indus­try is already heav­i­ly sub­si­dized through the Com­mon Agri­cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy, and the Euro­pean agri­cul­ture min­is­ter has already expressed reser­va­tions about the impact a free-trade deal might have. . . .

Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin; T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man [HC]; 1953; p. 92.

. . . . The Ger­mans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of vic­tory. I believe that I know the essen­tial details of that plan. I have heard it from a suf­fi­cient num­ber of impor­tant Ger­mans to cred­it its authen­tic­ity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a cus­toms union of Europe, with com­plete finan­cial and eco­nomic con­trol cen­tered in Berlin. This will cre­ate at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned econ­omy in the world. In West­ern Europe alone . . . there will be an eco­nomic uni­ty of 400 mil­lion per­sons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Bel­gian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Ger­man­i­ca . . .

“The Ger­mans count upon polit­i­cal pow­er fol­low­ing eco­nomic pow­er, and not vice ver­sa. Ter­ri­to­r­ial changes do not con­cern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘Eng­land,’ except as lan­guage groups. Lit­tle imme­di­ate con­cern is felt regard­ing polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions . . . . No nation will have the con­trol of its own finan­cial or eco­nomic sys­tem or of its cus­toms. The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of all coun­tries will be accom­plished by eco­nomic pres­sure. In all coun­tries, con­tacts have been estab­lished long ago with sym­pa­thetic busi­ness­men and indus­tri­al­ists . . . . As far as the Unit­ed States is con­cerned, the plan­ners of the World Ger­man­ica laugh off the idea of any armed inva­sion. They say that it will be com­pletely unnec­es­sary to take mil­i­tary action against the Unit­ed States to force it to play ball with this sys­tem. . . . Here, as in every oth­er coun­try, they have estab­lished rela­tions with numer­ous indus­tries and com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions, to whom they will offer advan­tages in co-oper­a­tion with Ger­many. . . . [Ital­ics and bold-face are mine–D.E.]

 

Discussion

One comment for “So It Begins: Does Proposed US, EU Single Market Augur American Economic Subjugation?”

  1. The sources are flawed for the fol­low­ing arti­cle. One source is the far-Left “World Social­ist Web­site” and the oth­er is the (cough) Lib­er­tar­i­an “Prime Eco­nom­ics” web­site. These are the only two places where the JP Mor­gan pol­i­cy paper in ques­tion, call­ing for a fas­cist Europe, is cur­rent­ly found on Google.

    Con­nect the dots or don’t to this page.

    Pter­rafractyl post­ed a par­al­lel sto­ry (“Euro-Area Eco­nom­ic Adjust­ment Only Half Com­plete, Moody’s Says” at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012–08-21/euro-area-economic-adjustment-only-half-complete-moody-s-says.html). One won­ders about the author­ship of the Moody’s advise­ment.

    http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/17/morg-j17.html

    JPMor­gan calls for author­i­tar­i­an regimes in Europe
    By Ste­fan Stein­berg
    17 June 2013

    In a doc­u­ment released at the end of May, the Amer­i­can bank­ing and invest­ment giant JP Mor­gan Chase calls for the over­turn­ing of the bour­geois demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tions estab­lished in a series of Euro­pean coun­tries after the Sec­ond World War and the instal­la­tion of author­i­tar­i­an regimes.

    The 16-page doc­u­ment was pro­duced by the Europe Eco­nom­ic Research group of JP Mor­gan and titled “The Euro Area Adjustment—About Half-Way There.” The doc­u­ment begins by not­ing that the cri­sis in the euro zone has two dimen­sions.

    First, the paper argues, finan­cial mea­sures are nec­es­sary to ensure that major invest­ment hous­es such as JP Mor­gan can con­tin­ue to reap huge prof­its from their spec­u­la­tive activ­i­ties in Europe. Sec­ond, the authors main­tain, it is nec­es­sary to impose “polit­i­cal reforms” aimed at sup­press­ing oppo­si­tion to the mas­sive­ly unpop­u­lar aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures being car­ried out at the behest of the banks.

    The report express­es sat­is­fac­tion with the imple­men­ta­tion of a num­ber of finan­cial mech­a­nisms by the Euro­pean Union to secure bank­ing inter­ests. In this respect, the study main­tains, reform of the euro area is about halfway there. The report does, how­ev­er, call for more action by the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank (ECB).

    Since the erup­tion of the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis in 2008, the ECB has made tril­lions of euros avail­able to the banks to enable them to wipe out their bad debts and com­mence a new round of spec­u­la­tion. In the face of mount­ing pres­sure from the finan­cial mar­kets, ECB chief Mario Draghi declared last sum­mer that he would do what­ev­er was nec­es­sary to shore up the banks.

    This, how­ev­er, is not suf­fi­cient as far as the ana­lysts at JPMor­gan are con­cerned. They demand a “more dra­mat­ic response” to the cri­sis from the ECB.
    The harsh­est crit­i­cisms in the doc­u­ment, how­ev­er, are reserved for nation­al gov­ern­ments that have been much too tardy in imple­ment­ing the type of author­i­tar­i­an mea­sures nec­es­sary to impose aus­ter­i­ty. The process of such “polit­i­cal reform,” the study notes, has “hard­ly even begun.”

    Towards the end of the doc­u­ment, the authors explain what they mean by “polit­i­cal reform.” They write: “In the ear­ly days of the cri­sis it was thought that these nation­al lega­cy prob­lems were large­ly eco­nom­ic,” but “it has become appar­ent that there are deep-seat­ed polit­i­cal prob­lems in the periph­ery, which, in our view, need to change if EMU (the Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union) is to func­tion in the long run.”

    The paper then details prob­lems in the polit­i­cal sys­tems of the periph­er­al coun­tries of the Euro­pean Union—Greece, Spain, Por­tu­gal and Italy—that have been at the cen­ter of the Euro­pean debt cri­sis.
    The authors write: “The polit­i­cal sys­tems in the periph­ery were estab­lished in the after­math of dic­ta­tor­ship, and were defined by that expe­ri­ence. Con­sti­tu­tions tend to show a strong social­ist influ­ence, reflect­ing the polit­i­cal strength that left-wing par­ties gained after the defeat of fas­cism.

    “Polit­i­cal sys­tems around the periph­ery typ­i­cal­ly dis­play sev­er­al of the fol­low­ing fea­tures: weak exec­u­tives; weak cen­tral states rel­a­tive to regions; con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion of labour rights; con­sen­sus-build­ing sys­tems which fos­ter polit­i­cal clien­tal­ism; and the right to protest if unwel­come changes are made to the polit­i­cal sta­tus quo. The short­com­ings of this polit­i­cal lega­cy have been revealed by the cri­sis. “ What­ev­er the his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies in their analy­sis, there can not be the slight­est doubt that the authors of the JPMor­gan report are argu­ing for gov­ern­ments to adopt dic­ta­to­r­i­al-type pow­ers to com­plete the process of social coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion that is already well under­way across Europe.

    In real­i­ty, there was noth­ing gen­uine­ly social­ist about the con­sti­tu­tions estab­lished across Europe in the post­war peri­od. Such con­sti­tu­tions were aimed at secur­ing bour­geois rule under con­di­tions where the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and its polit­i­cal agents had been thor­ough­ly com­pro­mised by the crimes of Fas­cist and dic­ta­to­r­i­al regimes.

    The con­sti­tu­tions of Euro­pean states, includ­ing those of Italy, Spain, Greece and Por­tu­gal, were elab­o­rat­ed and imple­ment­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the country’s respec­tive Social­ist and Com­mu­nist par­ties, which played the key role in demo­bil­is­ing the work­ing class and per­mit­ting the bour­geoisie to main­tain its rule.

    At the same time, how­ev­er, Europe’s dis­cred­it­ed rul­ing class­es were well aware that the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion remained a polit­i­cal bea­con for many work­ers. They felt com­pelled to make a series of con­ces­sions to the work­ing class to pre­vent revolution—in the form of pre­cise­ly the social and con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, includ­ing the right to protest, that JPMor­gan would now like to see abol­ished.

    To some extent, the bank’s crit­i­cism of Euro­pean gov­ern­ments for their lack of author­i­tar­i­an­ism rings hol­low. Across Europe, gov­ern­ments have repeat­ed­ly resort­ed in recent years to police state mea­sures to sup­press oppo­si­tion to their poli­cies.

    In France, Spain and Greece, emer­gency decrees and the mil­i­tary have been used to break strikes. The con­sti­tu­tion adopt­ed in Greece in 1975, fol­low­ing the fall of the colonels’ dic­ta­tor­ship, has not pre­vent­ed the Greek gov­ern­ment from sack­ing pub­lic work­ers en masse. And in a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries, rul­ing par­ties are encour­ag­ing the growth of neo­fas­cist par­ties such as the Gold­en Dawn move­ment in Greece.

    For JPMor­gan, how­ev­er, this is not enough. In order to avoid social rev­o­lu­tion in the com­ing peri­od, its ana­lysts warn, it is nec­es­sary for cap­i­tal­ist gov­ern­ments across Europe to move as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to set up dic­ta­to­r­i­al forms of rule.

    At the end of the doc­u­ment, the authors put for­ward a series of sce­nar­ios that they claim could result from the fail­ure of Euro­pean gov­ern­ments to erect author­i­tar­i­an sys­tems. These vari­ants include: “1) the col­lapse of sev­er­al reform-mind­ed gov­ern­ments in the Euro­pean south, 2) a col­lapse in sup­port for the euro or the EU, 3) an out­right elec­toral vic­to­ry for rad­i­cal anti-Euro­pean par­ties some­where in the region, or 4) the effec­tive ungovern­abil­i­ty of some Mem­ber States once social costs (par­tic­u­lar­ly unem­ploy­ment) pass a par­tic­u­lar lev­el.”

    This is the unadul­ter­at­ed voice of finance cap­i­tal speak­ing. It should be recalled that JPMor­gan is deeply impli­cat­ed in the spec­u­la­tive oper­a­tions that have dev­as­tat­ed the lives of hun­dreds of mil­lions of work­ers around the world. In March of this year, a US Sen­ate com­mit­tee released a 300-page report doc­u­ment­ing the crim­i­nal prac­tices and fraud car­ried out by JPMor­gan, the largest bank in the US and the world’s biggest deal­er in deriv­a­tives. Despite the detailed rev­e­la­tions in the report, no action will be tak­en against the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, who enjoys the per­son­al con­fi­dence of the US pres­i­dent.

    The same bank now pre­sumes to lec­ture gov­ern­ments. Sev­en­ty years after the assump­tion of pow­er by Hitler and the Nazis in Ger­many, with cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for Europe and the world, JPMor­gan is lead­ing the call for author­i­tar­i­an mea­sures to sup­press the work­ing class and wipe out its social gains.

    http://www.primeeconomics.org/?p=1898

    Whale of a Nerve! JP Mor­gan tell Europe’s States, your anti-fas­cist Con­sti­tu­tions are Unfit for Pur­pose

    By Jere­my Smith, 9th June 2013

    It’s Bilder­berg week­end in Wat­ford, so it’s fair game to run a piece on how right-wing bankers and their polit­i­cal agents are work­ing to rebuild our world in their own image and inter­est…. But like all the best con­spir­a­cy tales, this one has the mer­it of truth… they are!

    For some time, I’ve been fol­low­ing the ongo­ing process of pro­mot­ing the “Cred­i­tors’ Con­sti­tu­tion” for Euro­pean coun­tries. The Span­ish gov­ern­ment rushed through a Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in 2011 to give “absolute pri­or­i­ty” to pay­ments to their cred­i­tors, above all oth­er inter­ests (here’s the detail, but viewed from a pro-cred­i­tor per­spec­tive); and in ear­ly 2012, the Eurogroup of Finance Min­is­ters pushed the Greek gov­ern­ment into promis­ing to do the same. The spate of “debt-brake” (and bal­anced bud­get) con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in the last 2 years also tend in the same direc­tion, prompt­ed by the EU Sta­bil­i­ty etc. Treaty.

    And now here we are giv­en a new keynote mes­sage, which comes from the very same out­fit who brought us “The Lon­don Whale, a Study in Bank­ing Pro­bity and Respon­si­bil­i­ty”. Yes, JP Mor­gan. In sum­ma­ry, their new report tells us:

    ” ... Euro­peans, your nation­al Con­sti­tu­tions, born out of vic­to­ry over fas­cism, are today unfit for pur­pose. They show a strong social­ist influ­ence, includ­ing pro­tec­tion of labour rights and the right to protest if you’re unhap­py. They must be changed.”

    I think I have nev­er seen bankers argue so crude­ly (in polit­i­cal terms) as J P Mor­gan do in their report, “The Euro Area Adjust­ment – About Half Way There”, Europe Eco­nom­ic Research, 28th May 2013. And thanks to Leigh Phillips of EU Observ­er blog for draw­ing atten­tion to it in his post, from which it can be down­loaded.

    Here are the rel­e­vant para­graphs from their “Research”:

    ” ... In the ear­ly days of the cri­sis, it was thought that these nation­al lega­cy prob­lems were large­ly eco­nom­ic: over-lev­ered sov­er­eigns, banks and house­holds, inter­nal real exchange rate mis­align­ments, and struc­tur­al rigidi­ties. But, over time it has become clear that there are also nation­al lega­cy prob­lems of a polit­i­cal nature. The con­sti­tu­tions and polit­i­cal set­tle­ments in the south­ern periph­ery, put in place in the after­math of the fall of fas­cism, have a num­ber of fea­tures which appear to be unsuit­ed to fur­ther inte­gra­tion in the region. When Ger­man politi­cians and pol­i­cy­mak­ers talk of a decade-long process of adjust­ment, they like­ly have in mind the need for both eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal reform.

    ” ... At the start of the cri­sis, it was gen­er­al­ly assumed that the nation­al lega­cy prob­lems were eco­nom­ic in nature. But, as the cri­sis has evolved, it has become appar­ent that there are deep seat­ed polit­i­cal prob­lems in the periph­ery, which, in our view, need to change if EMU is going to func­tion prop­er­ly in the long run.

    ” ... The polit­i­cal sys­tems in the periph­ery were estab­lished in the after­math of dic­ta­tor­ship, and were defined by that expe­ri­ence. Con­sti­tu­tions tend to show a strong social­ist influ­ence, reflect­ing the polit­i­cal strength that left wing par­ties gained after the defeat of fas­cism. Polit­i­cal sys­tems around the periph­ery typ­i­cal­ly dis­play sev­er­al of the fol­low­ing fea­tures: weak exec­u­tives; weak cen­tral states rel­a­tive to regions; con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion of labor rights; con­sen­sus build­ing sys­tems which fos­ter polit­i­cal clien­tal­ism; and the right to protest if unwel­come changes are made to the polit­i­cal sta­tus quo. The short­com­ings of this polit­i­cal lega­cy have been revealed by the cri­sis. “

    There you have it, in its reac­tionary cru­di­ty. It’s a tru­ly dis­grace­ful doc­u­ment.

    Posted by R. Wilson | June 18, 2013, 8:03 pm

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