Reflections on S & P’s Downgrade of European Debt (Except for Germany’s): Pushing “Austerereich”

COMMENT: Stan­dard & Poor’s recent down­grade of euro­zone coun­tries’ credit rat­ings leaves us with much to ponder:

Germany’s credit rat­ing remained at triple-A.
The McGraw family–owners of S & P–are decades-long power elite asso­ciates of the Bush fam­ily.
As noted by Paul Krug­man (and the vig­i­lant “ter­rafractyl”)  S & P’s own analy­sis warns that the “con­tin­ued austerity” [...]

Behind the “Merkozy” Phenomenon: German Domination of Corporate France

COMMENT: Dur­ing the euro­zone debt cri­sis, France and Ger­many have jointly announced/proposed var­i­ous ele­ments of solu­tion, with state­ments care­fully crafted to shape the actions as best for all par­ties involved and deriv­ing from mutual inter­ests.
Yet, the media have rec­og­nized that the solu­tion will be a “Europa Ger­man­ica,” with Ger­man polit­i­cal and eco­nomic will [...]

Francois Mitterand’s Fascist Past and the Formation of the European Monetary Union

COMMENT: As the global econ­omy reels from the Euro­zone debt cri­sis, it may be use­ful to pon­der a lit­tle known aspect of the back­ground of for­mer French Pres­i­dent Fran­cois Mit­terand, the man who [offi­cially] insisted on the for­ma­tion of the com­mon Euro­pean cur­rency.
As dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M61, Mitterand [...]

A 9/11 Message

Dave Emory is tem­porar­ily sus­pend­ing pro­duc­tion of new “For The Record” programs.

McGraw Family (Owners of S & P) are Longtime Intimates of the Bush Family

COMMENT: Stan­dard and Poor’s is owned by pub­lish­ing giant McGraw-Hill. In the wake of S & P’s down­grade of U.S. bonds’ rat­ing from AAA (for the first time in his­tory), it comes as no great sur­prise that the McGraw fam­ily are long time asso­ciates of the “Fam­ily of Secrets.”
This multi-generational asso­ci­a­tion goes back [...]

“That’s the Way to Do It!”: Fascism, That Is (with apologies to Dire Straits)

COMMENT: As the U.S. descends into fas­cism, it is worth not­ing how vio­lence directed against the Democ­rats goes unheeded. In Wis­con­sin, the Demo­c­ra­tic We Are Wis­con­sin head­quar­ters was destroyed by fire, shortly before recall elec­tions to neu­tral­ize Tea Party Repub­li­cans were sched­uled. This is a numb­ing con­tin­u­a­tion of the epi­demic of vio­lence directed at [...]

S and P Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating: “Hail Victory” for the SS Kampfgruppe Norquist

COMMENT: Well, folks, they’ve done it. The GOP’s Tea Party fas­cists (with a gen­er­ous assist from an appar­ently clue­less and def­i­nitely gut­less Barack Obama) have suc­ceeded in caus­ing S & P to down­grade the U.S.‘s credit rat­ing from AAA–the first time in his­tory that this has been done.
In FTR #412, we out­lined the strat­egy of [...]

Update on the Alabama Body Count and FTR #742

COMMENT: The coura­geous and inci­sive legal/political blog Legal Schnau­zer con­tin­ues its ground­break­ing cov­er­age of  an epi­demic of lethal polit­i­cal skull­dug­gery in Alabama, all of it appar­ently linked to the Karl Rove/GOP con­spir­acy against for­mer gov­er­nor Don Siegel­man. The key to Rove’s destruc­tion of Siegel­man was the manip­u­la­tion and politi­ciza­tion of U.S. attorneys–Rove was [...]

Plane Speaking in D.C.

COMMENT: With the bud­get talks com­ing down to the wire and grow­ing [pre­dictably] more acri­mo­nious, it is worth not­ing the num­ber of small planes that have intruded into Camp David air space–5 in one month. All appar­ently did so while Obama was at the retreat.
This is rem­i­nis­cent of a num­ber of “high, hard ones”–a [...]

Senate, Obama Administration Join Deadly Alabama Political Farce Surrounding Don Siegelman

 
COMMENT: Appoint­ing a quin­tes­sen­tial fox to guard the Alabama polit­i­cal chicken house, the U.S. Sen­ate, fol­low­ing Obama’s shame­ful lead, sees fit to ignore the “body count” dis­cussed in FTR #742.
Worth remem­ber­ing in the con­text of Alabama polit­i­cal mis­chief is the fact that the the state’s Air National Guard was under the super­vi­sion of the governor [...]