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” [...]

Eurozone Debt Crisis, Balkanization and the Growth of Greater Germany

COMMENT: The invalu­able german-foreign-policy.com newslet­ter (which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page of this web­site) sheds inter­est­ing light on how the indebt­ed­ness of fail­ing Euro­pean economies plays into the hands of those who aspire to the geo­graph­i­cal expan­sion of Ger­many.
Wealth­ier areas of strug­gling nations are mov­ing toward seces­sion, in some cases looking [...]

Daily Mail [UK]: Will 2012 Be the New 1932?

COMMENT: As things dete­ri­o­rate, a grow­ing num­ber of voices are echo­ing a warn­ing I’ve sounded for decades.
In the arti­cle below, Dominic Sand­brook notes that the col­lapse of the global econ­omy dur­ing the Great Depres­sion drove the des­per­ate into the arms of polit­i­cal extrem­ism.
Not­ing the inabil­ity of the feck­less coali­tion gov­ern­ment in Britain to [...]

Depression and Fascism: Krugman’s Analysis

COMMENT: Although he insists on refrain­ing from using the “F” word for what is tran­spir­ing in Europe, Nobel Prize-winning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man has noted in a New York Times col­umn that the “aus­ter­ity” mea­sures cham­pi­oned by Ger­many (and also the GOP in the U.S.) and being cur­rently imple­mented, are dri­ving for­ward extreme right pol­i­tics in [...]

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 [...]

“Now, Europe Will Speak German!” Germany to UK: Adopt the Euro, or Else!

COMMENT: As Ger­many cements its con­trol over the Euro­pean econ­omy and the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank, the Ger­man power elite are openly and deri­sively call­ing for Britain to join the EMU.
(Note that the ECB could solve much of the euro­zone debt cri­sis by lend­ing money, but has been blocked by Ger­many from doing so. The only [...]

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 [...]

Democracy? Nichte! [Not!]

COMMENT: As cited by “ter­rafractyl” in a com­ment about “His­tory Teaches Us that We Learn Noth­ing from His­tory,” Floyd Nor­ris  com­mented in The New York Times, “Why Not Give Greeks Their Say?” A stark answer is to be found in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally excel­lent piece from German-Foreign-Policy.com, which feeds along the bot­tom of the front [...]

History Teaches Us that We Learn Nothing from History

COMMENT: The title of this quote is, appro­pri­ately enough, from a Ger­man. Euro­pean nations are becom­ing fear­ful of dom­i­na­tion by Ger­many, the only coun­try with suf­fi­cient funds to bailout the ail­ing Euro­zone.
The advent of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is no acci­dent. It has been planned for a long time and should come as a surprise [...]

Germany’s Not that Sorry Anymore

COMMENT: A recent For­eign Pol­icy arti­cle ana­lyzes Germany’s seem­ingly schizoid behav­ior toward bail­ing out the Euro as result­ing from a desire on the part of that coun­try to assert its inde­pen­dence from World War II  guilt.
“Germany’s Not that Sorry Any­more” by Yascha Mounk; For­eign Pol­icy; 10/14/2011.
EXCERPT: With mar­ket con­fi­dence in Greece and Italy fur­ther eroding, [...]