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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Beginning with analysis from German Foreign Policy, we note the reaction in Europe and elsewhere to German economic dictatorship and hegemony as seen in practice against Greece in the recent referendum. Of particular significance is the CV of German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble. Among the figures implementing the institution of German economic domination of Europe, Schauble employed Theodor Veiter, a Third Reich veteran and specialist in cross-border subversion.
“. . . In the 1990s, Wolfgang Schäuble, who, today, administers the austerity dictate as German Minister of Finances, had also played a role in creating the German power base, which has permitted Berlin’s consistent clean sweep. In the early 1980s, as Chair of the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR), Schäuble had organized the first economic initiatives [and not just] toward France. Theodor Veiter [6] a former Nazi specialist for border subversion was one of Schäuble’s advisors as chair of the AEBR. . . .”
The information here might be weighed against the material presented in FTR #s 99, 802.
A telling, accurate assessment of the nature of the Brussels Settlement was presented in an article in the Huffington Post.
” . . . . And on Sunday night, it marched into Athens with an offer to Greece that would end the idea that capitalism and democracy can survive together there. [Italics mine–D.E.] Reads the offer, provided by a source close to the talks, from the European financial elite, which call themselves the institutions: “The [Greek] government needs to consult and agree with the institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament.” It would be a government in name only. Not only would the Greek people be forced to accept the kind of deal they rejected overwhelmingly at the polls just a week earlier, but they’d be blocked from implementing any future policies Germany disapproved of. . . .”
Numerous observers feel that the German goal is actually the humiliation/subjugation/destruction of Greece.
” . . . . . The problem is that Greece’s economy is in so much worse shape now than it was even a few weeks ago that the tax hikes and spending cuts, which would have produced a 1 percent budget surplus before, won’t anymore. That’s what happens , after all, when the European Central Bank pulls enough of the plug on your banks that they have to close their doors for now to avoid having to close their doors for good. Businesses can’t get the credit they need to, well, stay in business, and will then default on the banks that are about to go out of business themselves. The entire economy, in other words, shuts down. . . .”
Paul Krugman’s observations about the “coup” have been widely quoted: “. . . . This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for,” he said.”
Some background information to flesh out listeners’ understanding of these issues can be found in an introduction to the anti-fascist books available for download on this website. Other posts and programs have dealt with the issue of Germany, the EMU, Greece’s debt and the Third Reich’s economic exploitation of “the cradle of democracy.” The political, historical and economic dynamics underlying Greece’s perils exemplify why we so often cite the primary importance of the Bormann capital network. Be sure to click on the link below to hear Lucy’s question at the CFR talk, as well as links to an important interview with Albrecht Ritschl.
Much of the program highlights the continuity of German, political, military and economic policy through the late nineteenth century, the two World Wars and the “Post-wars” that followed them.
Program Highlights Include:
- The plan formulated by Friedrich List in the nineteenth century, projecting German european and world hegemony through a German-dominated European economic union.
- The continuity of that plan through German prosecution of the First World War.
- The development of that plan on the eve of World War II.
- The evolution of the plan through World War II.
- The Third Reich’s stated goal of a German-dominated European union as detailed in a captured document.
- The troika’s imposition of a fascist party as part of a provisional government installed in Greece–this without the permission of the Greek people.
- Discussion of the difference in German corporations’ approach to cartel agreements and those of their competitors and cartel partners in foreign countries.
1. Beginning with analysis from German Foreign Policy, we note the reaction in Europe and elsewhere to German economic dictatorship and hegemony as seen in practice against Greece in the recent referendum. Of particular significance is the CV of German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble. Among the figures implementing the institution of German economic domination of Europe, Schauble employed Theodor Veiter, a Third Reich veteran and specialist in cross-border subversion.
“The Brussels Agreement”; german-foreign-policy.com; 7/15/2014.
In several western and southern European countries, the agreement on Greece reached in Brussels signals a looming collapse of the continental post-war order and Germany’s revival as an ostentatious dictatorial power. Whereas social-democratic observers do not exclude an attenuation of the contradictions, southern European conservative media are among those who speak of a revival of German hegemonic ambitions, which had largely determined or triggered the First and Second World Wars. The consequences of the French-Italian submission during negotiations in Brussels are generating those fears, because Paris had not succeeded to and Rome had not even seriously attempted to thwart the German dictates of sovereignty over Greece. Both, Italy and France are aware of the dangers of becoming the next victim of German financial dictatorship. They are competing for admission in a northern European core Europe, whose membership will be decided by Berlin, in the case of a possible collapse of the European Union. Current events are directly linked to German foreign policy endeavors in the 1990s and the territorial expansion of Germany’s economic basis through the so-called reunification.
The Burden of History
Commentators of diverse political orientations speak of a revival of German hegemonic ambitions. In Italy, for example, following the negotiations in Brussels, the liberal “La Repubblica” carried the headline “Greece has its back to the wall” and noted, “the Eurogroup” is “in the hands of German hawks.” Athens is confronted with “a series of dictates, one harsher then the other.” “Hawks are triumphantly circling in the European skies,” the article continues, “and impose an impossible ultimatum on Tsipras similar to the one Austria imposed on the Serbs, which triggered the First World War.”[1] “The end of innocence has been reached, because everyone [in the EU, gfp.com] knows, without a doubt, who the real ring master is,” the Italian conservative “Il Messaggero” wrote. “The real ring master is Germany.” The paper continues, “Sedan is returning, when Germany trampled on France in 1870” — and later — “did not follow Bismarck’s advice,” not to make enemies, both in the West and the East at the same time. In fact, Germany made “enemies everywhere” after WW I, “Il Messaggero” recalled — except perhaps in northern Europe’s “vassal states” or in the 1930s, temporarily Poland, “which, because of its own painful history, thought it could not act otherwise than direct its hatred toward the Russians.” The commentator concluded, “the burden of history has returned and seems insurmountable.”[2]
The Same Arrogance
Warnings, based on historical experience, can also be heard in France. “Germany wants to smash Greece by forcing it, under threat of the Grexit, to accept a deadly plan of total submission,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of the Parti de Gauche, twittered on the weekend.[3] On TV, he had already expressed himself in greater detail. “For the third time in history, the stubbornness of a German government is in the process of destroying Europe.” Of course, one cannot insinuate that today’s Federal Republic of Germany is ideologically on the same level as its predecessor regime. Still Berlin displays “the same arrogance, the same blindness” as in earlier phases of its historical reign.[4]
Aggressive Financial Policy
However, the fact that Berlin had not begun only in 2015 to threaten with a further radicalization of its aggressive economic and financial policy has remained largely in the background. In fact, current events are directly linked to German foreign policy endeavors in the 1990s and the territorial expansion of Germany’s economic basis through the so-called reunification. According to a popular myth, the latter was bought by German Chancellor at the time, Helmut Kohl’s consent to the introduction of the uniform EU currency — the Euro. In fact, Bonn had only consented to the common currency under the condition — as a contemporary observer of the event remembers — that “the rules governing the monetary union and the European central banking system be primarily oriented on the model of German rules and the German Federal Bank.” “The Euro speaks German,” declared the then German Minister of Finances, Theo Waigel in 1998.[5] Thanks to the Euro, with its specifically German patent, the Federal Republic of Germany has been able to take full advantage of its economic strength in relationship to the other countries in the Eurozone and drive many of them into a — debt inducing — excessive foreign trade deficit. In 2014, approximately 34.5 billion Euros flowed from France to Germany, and Greece was still transferring more than 3.2 billion Euros. The German austerity dictate, which ultimately insures the flow of currency into the Federal Republic of Germany, are a result of the German patent on the Euro, imposed back in the 1990s.
Core Europe
In the 1990s, Wolfgang Schäuble, who, today, administers the austerity dictate as German Minister of Finances, had also played a role in creating the German power base, which has permitted Berlin’s consistent clean sweep. In the early 1980s, as Chair of the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR), Schäuble had organized the first economic initiatives [and not just] toward France. Theodor Veiter [6] a former Nazi specialist for border subversion was one of Schäuble’s advisors as chair of the AEBR. On the reinforced basis following the collapse of Europe’s socialist system and the annexation of the German Democratic Republic, Schäuble assisted in imposing the EU’s eastward expansion.[7] This initiative had placed Germany at a clear advantage over France, whose traditional zone of influence, around the Mediterranean Basin and in Francophonie Africa cannot be comparably affiliated with the EU. It was also Schäuble, who, in the mid 1990s, developed the “core Europe” concept, meaning “a strong focal point” within the EU centered on Germany, which will form a tight-knit “core,” that will not only hold the EU together, but actually should determine EU policy.[8] Today, part of that core is represented by the Eurogroup, which Sunday reached very sweeping decisions, on no less than the continuation of the EU in its current form. Nine EU member nations — including Great Britain, Sweden, and Poland — could not participate in these decisions. The Eurogroup core is one of the formats allowing Berlin to place its seal on this confederation.
Nothing Accomplished
The hopes of being able to have an impact on “Europe’s” history, by being a member of the EU’s “core,” should there be a breach with individual or a group of Eurozone members — for example, Greece or several other southern European countries — has characterized the policies of France and Italy to the present. Both countries are economically increasingly losing ground to Germany and must — particularly in the case of Italy — fear being drawn further downward under austerity conditions — similar to those in Greece. Therefore, France’s President François Hollande had announced several times previous to the Eurogroup Summit, last Sunday, that he would seek mitigations and a partial debt remission for Greece. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had declared, “I say to Germany, enough is enough.”[9] Ultimately, both had to submit to German pressure. They accomplished nothing. It is doubtful that their caving in to Berlin will shore up their long-term positions in light of the economic developments of their countries. This would also not be new in history. Hopes of avoiding German aggression had also been the motivation behind the September 1938 Munich Agreement, when Great Britain, France, and Italy, seeking to appease the German Reich, acquiesced to the latter’s occupation of the “Sudeten territories.”[10] It did not take long before they too were victims of German aggression.
Without or Against the USA
“Il Messaggero” commented on Italy’s perspective of the results. “Today, the loss of innocence was accompanied by [Italy’s] horrific silence in the international arena.” On the other hand, Germany “believes it can assume the reign over Europe.” In reference to Berlin’s global political perspective, the commentator of “Messaggero” noted that this takes place, “without or against the USA.”[11]
Please read also The First Defeat and Austerity or Democracy.
[1] Andrea Bonanni in: La Repubblica 13.07.2015.
[2] Giulio Sapelli in: Il Messaggero 13.07.2015.
[3] Grèce: quand l’Allemagne de Merkel est comparée à celle d’Hitler. www.lefigaro.fr 13.07.2015.
[4] Mélenchon: “Pour la 3e fois, un gouvernement allemend est en train de détruire l’Europe”. bfmbusiness.bfmtv.com 12.07.2015.
[5] Beat Gygi: Der Euro spricht neudeutsch. www.nzz.ch 28.09.2013.
[6] See Hintergrundbericht: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Europäischer Grenzregionen (AGEG).
[7] In a paper published on the 55th Anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, Wolfgang Schäuble justified as follows his demand that German concepts be applied: “Without such a further development of (west) European integration, Germany could be called upon or be tempted, out of its own security imperatives, to undertake alone the stabilization of eastern Europe and do it in the traditional way.” Wolfgang Schäuble, Karl Lamers: Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik. 01.09.1994.
[8] Wolfgang Schäuble, Karl Lamers: Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik. 01.09.1994.
[9] See Die Politik des Staatsstreichs.
[10] In reaction to the Munich Agreement, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister at the time, Kamil Krofta, declared: “On behalf of the President of the Republic, as well as my government, I declare that we submit to the conditions of the Munich Agreement which has come into being without Czechoslovakia and against her […] I do not want to criticize, but this is a catastrophe, we do not deserve. We submit and will endeavour to secure our people a peaceful life. I do not know if the decisions taken in Munich will be advantageous to your countries. Besides, we are not the last ones, others will be affected after us.” Quoted from Boris Celovsky: Das Münchener Abkommen 1938. Stuttgart 1958
[11] Giulio Sapelli in: Il Messaggero 13.07.2015.
2. Say hello to the new meme that symbolizes the state of affairs for one of the most important democratic projects in history: #ThisIsACoup:
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama famously declared an end to history. Things, of course, would continue to happen, he said, but the clash of rival ideologies was over with the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.”
It was 1992, and it was a time to celebrate. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government,” he wrote in his landmark essay-turned-book.
With Germany and its Eurozone squeezing the life out of Greece on Sunday night — and the hashtag #ThisIsACoup trending — it became clearer than ever that only one half of that bargain — the economics — remained alive.
Within just a few years of Fukuyama’s pronouncement, protesters in Western nations, and governments and people in the global South, began suggesting that the new democratic system was, in the end, perhaps not so democratic. The International Monetary Fund and other global creditors began writing laws, mostly for Third World countries, enforcing what they called “structural adjustment” — which was bloodless bureaucratic language referring to the pillaging of a nation’s assets and resources, coupled with the gutting of its social services, pensions and other advances that came in the 20th Century. The first major protest to capture global attention was in Seattle, Washington, in 1999, at a World Trade Organization meeting. The movement spread around the globe, with protests hitting capital after capital, wherever economic leaders gathered, until the attacks of September 11, 2001. A planned protest in Washington, D.C., against the IMF and World Bank was supplanted by a peace march.
The world’s rich nations assumed that what institutions like the IMF did in the South wouldn’t hit the North. Capital, however, marched on. And on Sunday night, it marched into Athens with an offer to Greece that would end the idea that capitalism and democracy can survive together there. Reads the offer, provided by a source close to the talks, from the European financial elite, which call themselves the institutions: “The [Greek] government needs to consult and agree with the institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament.” It would be a government in name only. Not only would the Greek people be forced to accept the kind of deal they rejected overwhelmingly at the polls just a week earlier, but they’d be blocked from implementing any future policies Germany disapproved of.
“The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism,” Fukuyama wrote. But, instead, the absence of a viable alternative emboldened capital: with the threat of socialism gone, there is less need for either half of what’s known in Europe as social democracy. In a previous interview with HuffPost, French economist Thomas Piketty highlighted the interaction. “The existence of a counter model was one of the reasons that a number of reforms or policies were accepted,” he said arguing that people in capitalist countries fared better thanks to the threat of communism. “In France, it’s very striking to see that in 1920, the political majorities adopted steeply progressive taxation. Exactly the same people refused the income tax in 1914 with a 2 percent tax rate. And in between, the Bolshevik revolution made them feel, after all, that progressive taxation is not so dangerous as revolution.”
During negotiations over the future of Greece, the Greek Syriza government repeatedly offered such progressive taxation as a way of achieving some of the budget surpluses the institutions were demanding. The offer was rejected, however, with the institutions arguing that higher taxes on the rich might slow growth. With no fear of revolution, the interest in progressive taxation is gone.
Paul Krugman, under the headline “Killing the European Project,” put the blame squarely on Germany::
The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.
Rena Dourou, a member of Syriza, wrote for HuffPost Greecet hat the next few days and hours “will either meet the goals of its founders — Democracy and Solidarity for the prosperity of the people of Europe — or enter on a path of decay.”
Yanis Varoufakis, the economist who was until recently Greece’s finance minister, said in a blog post Sunday that his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble, flat-out told him that his end goal was to ease Greece out of the Eurozone in order to teach a lesson to other nations that might want to pursue political paths at odds with his vision. Fox Business reported Sunday that the IMF was demanding Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resign, a claim the bank later denied...
Italy’s Prime Minister, meanwhile, begged Germany to call off the dogs. “Now common sense must prevail and an agreement must be reached. Italy does not want Greece to exit the euro and to Germany I say: enough is enough,” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said.“Now that Tsipras has made proposals in line with the European demands, we must absolutely sign a deal. Humiliating a European partner after Greece has given up on just about everything is unthinkable.”
The United States has done precious little to support Greece or the principle of democracy in Europe. The Soviet Union may be gone, but the U.S. reluctance to intervenecomes largely from the desire tokeep Germany as a strong ally while the U.S. wages a proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine.
If European history is any guide, the too-clever calculations and the petty vindictiveness will backfire in a bad way.
...
Greece has offered an almost unconditional surrender on its bailout, but Germany might not accept anything less than a Carthaginian peace. In other words, a deal that not only forces Athens to submit, but also humiliates it in the process.
This latest melodrama, playing out in Brusselsas European finance ministers meet to discuss whether or not to approve a new Greek bailout, appears so nonsensical that it can be hard to believe these people are deciding the future of Europe. Although you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, the truth is that Greece and Europe have been close to a deal for awhile now. Both sides agreed about how much austerity Athens should do, but disagreed about how Athens should do it—at least until last Thursday. That’s when Greece came up with an offer that was not only nearly identicalto Europe’s, but also to the one its people had just rejected in a referendum. French President François Hollande, whose government helped put the proposal togehter, called it a “serious” and “credible” one. At the very least, it seemed like the basis for new negotiations.
But maybe not. The problem is that Greece’s economy is in so much worse shape now than it was even a few weeks ago that the tax hikes and spending cuts, which would have produced a 1 percent budget surplus before, won’t anymore. That’s what happens , after all, when the European Central Bank pulls enough of the plug on your banks that they have to close their doors for now to avoid having to close their doors for good. Businesses can’t get the credit they need to, well, stay in business, and will then default on the banks that are about to go out of business themselves. The entire economy, in other words, shuts down. And that’s why Europe estimates that Greece would actually need an 82 billion euro bailout—with 25 billion of that going to its banks—instead of the 53.5 billion euros Athens is asking for. So Greece would have to do more austerity than Europe wanted before to get more money than Europe was offering before.
If, that is, Europe is even offering Greece any money anymore. It might not be. The simple story is that Germany and the other hardline countries don’t trust Greece’s anti-austerity Syriza party to actually implement, well, austerity. And so rather than coughing up another 60 or 70 or 80 billion euros, they seem to want to push to kick Greece out of the common currency instead. That, at least, was the plan that leaked on Saturday. And now it’s part of the actual plan on Sunday. Indeed, it’s tentatively been includedin the European finance ministers’ latest joint statement. This isn’t just what Germany is considering. It’s what Germany is trying to get the rest of Europe to go along with.
Under the plan, the only way Germany would let Greece stay in the euro now is if it sells 50 billion euros of “very valuable Greek assets,” allows international observers to monitor its bailout, and puts automatic spending cuts in place in case it misses its deficit targets. Otherwise, Germany wants Greece to take at least a five year “timeout” from the euro, during which time its debts could be restructured and it could receive humanitarian aid. The entire proposalwas less than a page long.
In case there was any doubt, this is an offer Greece can’t accept. Sure, selling assets would lower Greece’s debt today, but it would make the rest of Greece’s debt harder to pay back tomorrow—which, according to the International Monetary Fund, is already unpayable. It’s the kind of thing you ask for if you want Athens to say no.
But does that mean Germany really wants to get rid of Greece or is this just a ploy to get more concessions out of Greece? Yes. The problem is it’s hard to know what Chancellor Angela Merkel really wants. Up till now, she’s been willing to do whatever the least is to keep Greece in the euro, but her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has been pushingher to give them the boot. That’s let them play a pretty effective good-cop, bad-cop to get the most out of Athens, but this time that’s turned into bad-cop, worse-cop. Schäuble’s plan—and it is his plan—for Greece to “temporarily” exit the euro reportedly has Merkel’s backing. There are even rumorsit has Finland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia’s support as well.
If Greece does leave the euro, though, it will only be temporary in the sense that all life is temporary. Bringing back the drachma would either be such a boon to Greece’s economy that it’d never want to go back to the euro, or be such a disaster that Europe would never want to invite it back. But in either case, Greece and Europe’s trial separation would turn into a divorce. That might actually be better for Greece now that it’s already gone through a lot of the pain of ditching the euro—like a financial crisis—but it could be a catastrophe for Europe. It wouldn’t just show that countries can leave the euro, but maybe that countries have to leave the euro to recover. So the next time an anti-austerity party wins power, it might decide to do the same, at which point the euro zone would be more like a northern euro zone, if that. Especially if France decides that this makes the euro not worth saving anymore.
...
Note this key point in the new terms that make Greece new troikan-straighjacket so much more dangerous than the one it’s currently wearing: Under the new terms, if Greece’s mandatory surprluses ever fall behind and prevent it from fully making the scheduled debt repayments, a quasi-automatic mechanism will step in to force additional spending cuts...and since those repayment shortfalls are most likely to happen during an economic downturn, those auto-cuts are likely going to just lead to more auto-cuts!
A new deal for Athens is the worst of all worlds and solves nothing
Like the Neapolitan Bourbons – benign by comparison – the leaders of the eurozone have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.
The cruel capitulation forced upon Greece after 31 hours on the diplomatic rack offers no conceivable way out the country’s perpetual crisis. The terms are harsher by a full order of magnitude than those rejected by Greek voters in a landslide referendum a week ago, and therefore can never command democratic assent.
They must be carried through by a Greek parliament still dominated by MPs from Left and Right who loathe every line of the summit statement, the infamous SN 4070/15, and have only agreed – if they have agreed – with a knife to their throats.
EMU inspectors can veto legislation. The emasculation of the Greek parliament has been slipped into the text. All that is missing is a unit of EMU gendarmes.
Such terms are unenforceable. The creditors have sought to nail down the new memorandum by transferring €50bn of Greek assets to “an independent fund that will monetise the assets through privatisations and other means”. It will be used in part to pay off debts.
This fund will be under EU “supervision”. The cosmetic niceties of sovereignty will be preserved by letting the Greek authorities manage its day to day affairs. Nobody is fooled.
In other words, they are seizing Greece’s few remaining jewels at source. This is not really different from the International Committee for Greek Debt Management in 1898 imposed on Greece after the country went bankrupt following a disastrous Balkan war.
A six-power league of bondholders, led by British bankers, impounded customs duties in the Port of Piraeus, and seized revenues from stamp duty, tobacco, salt, kerosene, all the way down to playing cards. But at least there was no humbug about solidarity and helping Greece on that occasion.
“It is the Versailles Treaty for the present age,” said Mr Varoufakis this morning, talking to me from from his island home in Aegina.
Under the new terms, Greece must tighten fiscal policy by roughly 2pc of GDP by next year, pushing the country further into a debt-deflation spiral and into the next downwards leg of its six-year depression.
This will cause the government to miss the budget targets yet again – probably by a large margin – in an exact repeat of the self-defeating policy that caused Greek debt dynamics to spin out of control in the last two Troika loan packages.
As the International Monetary Fund acknowledged in its famous mea culpa, if you misjudge the fiscal multiplier and force austerity beyond the therapeutic dose, you make matters worse. The debt to GDP ratio rises despite the cuts.
EMU leaders have an answer to this. Like Canute’s courtiers, they will simply command the waves to retreat. The text states that on top of pension cuts and tax increases there should be “quasi-automatic spending cuts in case of deviations from ambitious primary surplus targets”,.
In other words, they will be forced to implement pro-cyclical contractionary policies. The fiscal slippage that acted as a slight cushion over the last five years will be not be tolerated this time.
And let us not forget that these primary surpluses never made any sense in the first place. They were not drawn up on the basis of macro-economic analysis. They were written into prior agreements because that is what would be needed – ceteris paribus – to pretend that debt is sustainable, and therefore that the IMF could sign off on the accords. What a charade.
Nobel economist Paul Krugman says the EMU demands are “madness” on every level. “What we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity,” he said.
“This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for,” he said.
Yes, Syriza has blinked, though there are many chapters in this sorry saga yet to come.
The Greek banks are on the verge of collapse. There is not enough cash left to cover ATM withdrawals of €60bn each day through this week, or to cover weekly payments of €120 to pensioners and the unemployed – that is the to say, the tiny fraction of the jobless who receive anything at all.
Capital controls have led to an economic stand-still. Almost nothing is coming into the country. Firms are running down their last stocks of raw materials and vital imports. Hundreds of factories, mills, and processing plants have already cut shifts and are preparing to shut down operations as soon as this week.
Late tourist bookings have crashed by 30pc. Syriza faced a serious risk that the country would run out of imported food stocks by end of this month, with calamitous consequences at the peak of the tourist season. So yes, faced with the full horror of what is happening, they recoiled.
There is no doubt that Syriza sold the Greek people a false prospectus with its incompatible promises both to tear up the Troika Memorandum and to keep Greece in the euro. They have learned a horrible lesson.
Yet that is only half the story. We have also watched the EMU creditor powers bring a country to knees by cutting off the emergency liquidity (ELA) to the banking system.
Let there be no doubt, it was the decision by the European Central Bank to freeze ELA at €89bn two weeks ago that precipitated the final crisis and broke Syriza’s will to resist. The lines of authority on this episode are blurred. Personally, I do not blame the ECB’s Mario Draghi for this abuse of power. It was in essence a political decision by the Eurogroup.
But however you dress it up, the fact remains that the ECB is by its acts dictating a political settlement, and serving as the enforcement arm of the creditors rather than upholding EU treaty law.
It took a stand that further destabilised the financial system of an EMU member state that was already in grave trouble, and arguably did so in breach of its primary treaty duty to uphold financial stability. It is a watershed moment.
What we have all seen with great clarity is that the EMU creditor powers can subjugate an unruly state – provided it is small — by shutting down its banking system. We have seen too that a small country has no defences whatsoever. This is monetary power run amok.
To make matters worse Greek premier Alexis Tsipras cannot make a plausible case to his own people that he has secured debt relief, the one prize that could have saved him. Germany blocked even this.
It did so despite massive pressure from the Obama White House and the IMF, and even though France, Italy, and the leaders of the EU Commission and Council accept that a haircut of some sort is necessary.
The IMF says debt relief must be at least 30pc of GDP. Even this is too low. Given the damage done by six years of economic implosion, a lost decade of investment, chronic hysteresis, youth unemployment of 50pc or higher, a brain drain of the educated, and a ruined banking system, it would still be inadequate even if the entire debt was written off. That is what this EMU experiment has done to the country.
Yet all the Greeks get is vague talk of a “possible” extension of maturities, at some point in the future, once they have jumped through umpteen hoops and passed their exams. This is what they were promised in 2012. It never happened.
“If the specifics of debt relief are not written clearly into the overall package, this is not worth anything,” said Mr Varoufakis.
The summit document asserts with self-serving dishonesty that Greece’s debt has come off the rails due to the failure of Greek governments to stick to the Memorandum over the last year. Had this not occurred, the debt would still be sustainable.
This is a lie. Public debt ballooned to 180pc late last year – long before Syriza was elected – and even though the New Democracy government had complied with most Troika demands.
The truth is that Greece was already bankrupt in 2010. EMU creditors refused to allow a normal debt restructuring to take place because it would have led to instant contagion to Portugal, Spain, and Italy at a time when the eurozone had no lender-of-last resort or defences.
Leaked documents from the IMF leave no doubt that the rescue was intended to save the euro and European banks, not Greece. More debt was shoveled onto the Greek taxpayers in order to buy time, both in 2010 and again in 2012, storing up the crisis that Europe faces today.
In an odd way, the only European politician who was really offering Greece a way out of the impasse was Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, even if his offer was made in a graceless fashion, almost in the form of diktat.
His plan for a five-year velvet withdrawal from EMU – a euphemism, since he really meant Grexit – with Paris Club debt relief, humanitarian help, and a package of growth measures, might allow Greece to regain competitiveness under the drachma in an orderly way.
Such a formula would imply intervention by the ECB to stabilise the drachma, preventing an overshoot and dangerous downward spiral. It would certainly have been better than the atrocious document that Mr Tsipras must now take back to Athens.
The crushed Syriza leader must sell a settlement that leaves Greece in a permanent debt trap, under neo-colonial control, and so economically fragile that it is almost guaranteed to crash into a fresh crisis in the next global downturn or European recession.
At that point, everybody will blame the Greeks again, unfairly, and we will go through yet another round of bitter negotiations, until something finally breaks this grim cycle of failure and recrimination.
For the eurozone this “deal” is the worst of all worlds. They have solved nothing. Germany and its allies have for the first time attempted to eject a country from the euro, and by doing so have violated the sanctity of monetary union.
...
I will return to the behaviour of Germany and the diplomatic disaster that has unfolded over coming days. For now let me just quote the verdict of historian Simon Schama.
“If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum the beginning of the end of the EU,” he said. Exactly.
...
Under the new terms, Greece must tighten fiscal policy by roughly 2pc of GDP by next year, pushing the country further into a debt-deflation spiral and into the next downwards leg of its six-year depression.
This will cause the government to miss the budget targets yet again – probably by a large margin – in an exact repeat of the self-defeating policy that caused Greek debt dynamics to spin out of control in the last two Troika loan packages.
As the International Monetary Fund acknowledged in its famous mea culpa, if you misjudge the fiscal multiplier and force austerity beyond the therapeutic dose, you make matters worse. The debt to GDP ratio rises despite the cuts.
EMU leaders have an answer to this. Like Canute’s courtiers, they will simply command the waves to retreat. The text states that on top of pension cuts and tax increases there should be “quasi-automatic spending cuts in case of deviations from ambitious primary surplus targets”,.
In other words, they will be forced to implement pro-cyclical contractionary policies. The fiscal slippage that acted as a slight cushion over the last five years will be not be tolerated this time.
...
Greeks reacted with an air of vindication and outrage at the International Monetary Fund’s admission it erred in its handling of the country’s bailout, berating an apology that comes too late to salvage an economy and countless lives in ruins.
Anger was palpable on the streets of Athens, where the EU-IMF austerity recipe that the Washington-based fund says it sharply misjudged has left rows of shuttered stores and many scrounging for scraps of food in trash cans.
“Really? Thanks for letting us know but we can’t forgive you,” said Apostolos Trikalinos, a 59-year old garbage collector and a father of two.
“Let’s not fool ourselves. They’ll never give us anything back. I’m sorry for all the people who killed themselves because of austerity. How are we going to bring them back? How?”
The IMF acknowledged on Wednesday that it underestimated the damage done to Greece’s economy from spending cuts and tax hikes imposed in a bailout, which was accompanied by one of the worst economic collapses ever experienced by a country in peacetime.
A report looking back on the bailout said the Fund veered from its own standards to overestimate how much debt Greece could bear, and should have pushed harder and sooner for private lenders to take a “haircut” to reduce Greece’s debt burden.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told reporters the acknowledgment justified his positions. He had criticized from the outset “what the IMF has called mistakes”.
“And we have been correcting those mistakes over the past year,” Samaras told reporters during a visit to Helsinki.
Greeks have seen their incomes plunge by about a third since the debt crisis erupted in 2009 and prompted Greece to seek two bailouts from the EU and the IMF. The unemployment rate has hit nearly 27 percent and suicide rates have soared. Worst hit have been the youth, nearly 60 percent of whom are unemployed.
“The IMF admits to the crime,” the leftist Avgi newspaper declared on its front page. Top selling newspaper Ta Nea branded it an “admission of failure”.
In the corridors of power, some officials suggested the admission could strengthen their hand in future talks with the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank, collectively known as the troika, on debt relief or new austerity measures.
“It is positive that the report recognizes that there were mistakes in Greece’s program in the past and we hope that they will not be repeated in the future and then create the need for corrective action,” a senior government official told Reuters.
...
The crushed Syriza leader must sell a settlement that leaves Greece in a permanent debt trap, under neo-colonial control, and so economically fragile that it is almost guaranteed to crash into a fresh crisis in the next global downturn or European recession.
At that point, everybody will blame the Greeks again, unfairly, and we will go through yet another round of bitter negotiations, until something finally breaks this grim cycle of failure and recrimination.
For the eurozone this “deal” is the worst of all worlds. They have solved nothing. Germany and its allies have for the first time attempted to eject a country from the euro, and by doing so have violated the sanctity of monetary union.
...
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday. With a politician’s practiced spin, he declared that Germany didn’t owe any money from billions it had extorted from Greece during its World War II occupation, because for a period after the war, it had no sovereign government. WHAT!
Lucy asks Schäuble to explain difference in morality of Germans and Greeks repaying debts.
According to Forbes, the amount owed to Greece, without interest, in today’s money, would amount to $14 billion. With interest at 3% over 66 years, that would come to at least $95 billion.
The Greek debt is $341 billion. The latest cliff-hanger debt repayment to the IMF was $486 million. Done with money that could have gone to health care, pensions, jobs. Do the math.
I asked Schäuble: “What is the moral distinction between the obligation of Greece to pay back loans that were negotiated by previous corrupt governments and Germany’s obligation to pay back the loan that the Nazi government extorted from Greece?”GOVTS HAVE TO PAY PAST GOVT DEBTS, EXCEPT IF THEY ARE NAZIS
On Greece paying its debts, he said: “The problem of Greece is not the problem of whether former Greek governments have been a better legitimization than the given government. That is always in democracies. The people elect in a parliament or a president and then this is a given government, and the next government has to take liability from the former government. Otherwise, you can’t—it’s difficult to get the world in a—in a civilized—(inaudible).
“Whether Greek governments have been corrupt or not, it’s not the subject to be judged by others. And of course, we know fighting corruption is not only in Greece a problem, but in a lot of member states.
“But having said this, the problem of Greek is not the loans given. The problem of Greece is the lack of competitiveness. And the problem of Greece is that Greece has enjoyed, since having joined the Eurozone, low interest rates. And they didn’t use this opportunity to increase their competitiveness, what has been the assumption in joining the Eurozone.”
Wolfgang Schäuble answers Lucy’s question.
But on Germany paying its debts, everything was reversed. “So what is the German, you can’t—would you really compare a former Greek government with the Nazi—with the Nazi times? It makes no sense.”
Does he mean that if a government is really bad, criminal, murderous, genocidal, it doesn’t have to pay its debts?
Schäuble: “And having said, I would like—I have been born in 1942. I have the memory that in—since 1945, Germany had not any sovereignty. We had—it was—in some way it was something like—(chuckles)—the end of German history as a state. And we only regained our full sovereignty in 1990—in 1990—on the start of October, 1990.
“And what we have to—what we have—how we had to deal with our ongoing responsibility for our past. And I feel strongly responsible for the heritage of German history, to be very clear. But you can’t mix it, the one with the other. And we have international rules. We have international law. We have international courts. We accept all decisions of international courts, even the criminal court.
“Not any well-admired member state does accept membership in the International Criminal Court, by the way. For example, we do—of course, we do, German. But having said this, it’s nothing to be compared. I’m sorry. I have no idea to compare this.”
I have been reading and rereading his answer. And I am dizzy. Are you dizzy yet?
The idea is that because Germany was defeated in 1945 and was no longer a state, its debts until 1990 don’t count. So what happened about the part that a government takes liability from the former government? Except for Germany? Remember that the Nazis were elected. Not to mention that now the Germans are very rich and one of its victim countries, which suffered massive destruction by the Nazis, is very poor.
GET OUT OF DEBT FREE CARD
And there are “international law” and “international courts” — which have conveniently been used to absolve Germany of its debts. The best explanation of the “get out of debt free” card I’ve seen is by Albrecht Ritschl, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics. He says this in an interview with Michael Nevradakis, a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Athens.
Albrecht Ritschl, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics.
After WWII: “The first thing the occupation authorities did was to block all kinds of claims by and against the German government, under the legal fiction that that the German government and the German state didn’t exist anymore.”
The U.S. blocked claims on the German war debt “through an ingenious and slightly malicious device: Whichever country wanted to receive Marshall aid from the Americans under the Marshall Plan had to sign a waiver waiving all kinds of financial claims against Germany from World War II against Marshall aid.
“This means that it would not be entirely blocked, but it would have to [be] put on hold until postwar Germany had paid off its Marshall aid from the United States.
“In technical terms what that did was to make reparation and credit claims against Germany from World War II junior, second rank, lower in rank to Marshall assistance to Germany. And since everybody wanted to get Marshall aid from America, everybody grudgingly signed these waivers. So the situation during the Marshall Plan period was that all these debts still existed on paper, but they were worthless in the sense that the debt was blocked.”
The London Agreement on German Debt continued to block claims. “In the early 1950s, negotiations were started between West Germany and the creditor countries about what to do with all of this. A solution was found – basically imposed again by the Americans and to some extent by the British – that did two things. First, it lumped together the war debts with the reparations – which is not an innocuous step to take. Second, it used slightly fuzzy language, which is open to interpretations, which said that settlement of these issues would be postponed until after future German reunification.”
Reunification happened in 1990. But still no payment. Circle back to the first point. The Germany that incurred the debt no longer existed. And forget the part about countries being liable for the debts of former governments.
The money Germany would owe is huge. Ritschl said, “If we accept that Germany’s national product is somewhere to the tune of over 2 trillion euros, which is beyond 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars, we would be talking about a default and debt forgiveness of somewhere in the range of 10 trillion dollars. I would tend to think that this is probably unrivaled in 20th century history.”
GOVTS HAVE TO PAY PAST GOVT DEBTS, EXCEPT IF THEY WERE NAZIS
At reunification, Germany got another “get out of debt free” card. Ritschl says, “In 1990. Germany received this kind of baptism certificate for a unified Germany which is incredibly subtly worded and whose only purpose was, apparently, to prevent reparation or restitution claims against unified Germany being raised on the grounds of the fact that there is a unified German state now and that something like article 5 of the London debt agreement could all of a sudden be reactivated.
“The German point of view is essentially that the so-called 2+4 treaty of 1990 is not making any mention of any reparations or wartime debts of Nazi Germany, and given the fact that this issue is not covered by the treaty, the issue is essentially dead. This has consistently been the position of the German government. The German position has so far been quite successful . . . several attempts to challenge it in the European court have been unsuccessful, and it seems to me that from a legal standpoint, there is relatively little chance that this will be successfully challenged.”
Power trumps morality every time.
7. The rest of this program description presents information set forth in previous broadcasts about the Greek tragedy. As noted in FTR #788, in late 2011, the Troika (the IMF, European Commission and ECB–read “Germany”) imposed the inclusion of an outright fascist party headed by a Holocaust denier as part of the imposition of EU/EMU “Clausewitzian economics” on Greece.
. . . Recently, a rightwing extremist party was again made a direct coalition partner in a country’s government — in Greece. The newly installed transitional government — imposed under the supervision of Berlin and Brussels — includes not only the conservative and social democratic parties but also the LAOS Party (Laikós Orthódoxos Synagermés, “Orthodox People’s Alarm”). The LAOS Party musters also partisans of the former military dictatorship and is known for its racist and anti-Semitic invectives. Giorgos Karatzaferis, LAOS Party Chairperson, is quoted to have proclaimed that he is proud “not to be Jewish, homosexual and communist,” which “only few can claim.“[5] He is said to have called out to the Israeli ambassador: “Jew ambassador, watch out where you tread! Let’s discuss the Holocaust, let’s talk about all the fairy tales about Auschwitz and Dachau.“[6] Makis Voridis, a member of the LAOS Party and minister of transportation in the Greek government, imposed by Berlin and Brussels, began his political career as the leader of a youth organization of the party presided over by Georgios Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos had been the military commander of the junta. He founded that party after he had been released from prison, in the aftermath of the overthrow of his dictatorship. The German government evidently considers the LAOS Party helpful for implementing its austerity dictate. . . .
8. “The Hammer” is back. Makis “The Hammer” Voridis is Greece’s new Health Minister.
In FTR #788, we noted the joint progress of German/EU-imposed “austerity” and fascism in Greece.
With the country’s poverty-driven health care approximating a lethal, slow-motion eugenics program, Greece’s “Clausewitzian Economics” figures to accelerate with the appointment of Makis Voridis, a doctrinaire Nazi, to administer the Greek Health Ministry.
As the German-dominated EMU and EU “bring the hammer down” on the European economy and citizenry, it is grimly fascinating to watch this hands-on application of Von Clausewitz’s theoretical principles.
Generally considered in the context of military strategy and tactics, Von Clausewitz’s concept of Total War lends itself readily to economics and social policy.
Having Voridis as Greece’s Health Minister reminds us of Josef Mengele, selecting those fit for work from those designated for immediate gassing at Auschwitz.
Good and bad economics news out of the birthplace of democracy.
The good news: According to the Wall Street Journal, Greece is seeing a boom in tech startups. Of course, that boom starts from a very low number, as the Journal reports:
“there were 144 startups in Greece in 2013, up from just 16 in 2010. The money invested in them has climbed to €42 million ($57 million), compared with just €500,000 three years ago.”
Most of the funding is geared towards servicing the sector of Greece that hasn’t been ruined by the past few years of EU-imposed austerity, which rules out a large percentage of under-35s, the presumed Internet generation. The unemployment rate for young Greeks aged 15–24 is 58.3%, while for 25–34 year old Greeks, the unemployment rate is 35.5%. Exciting new Greek startups attracting outside VC capital, like incrediblue— an online yacht booking service — and Taxibeat, a mobile taxicab hailing app — aren’t going to be much use to them.
Still, Greece’s “booming” tech sector is the good news.
Now, the bad news: Greece’s pro-EU ruling conservative party, the New Democrats, just named an actual neo-Nazi, Makis “The Hammer” Voridis, as Greece’s new Health Minister. Jewish groups are outraged over the news that Voridis—a longtime neo-fascist activist and anti-Semite who has publicly promoted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as worthy of scholarship, and doubted the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank—is serving as a prominent minister in the ruling party’s cabinet, in charge of an important ministry at a time when Greece has been gutting its health care budgets, causing widespread misery.
I wrote about Voridis in November 2011, because I was shocked that a government coalition essentially imposed on Greece by the EU and Western creditors would demand that the allegedly technocratic “austerity coalition” included members of Greece’s anti-Semitic, neo-fascist LAOS party. Including Makis “The Hammer” Voridis, who served as minister of infrastructure and transport.
I call him “The Hammer” because photographs surfaced showing Voridis as a University of Athens law student, carrying a makeshift stone hammer in hand which he used to bash suspected leftwing students with. That was in 1985, when Voridis was in a fascist group called “Student Alternative” which supported Greece’s bloody military coup and military junta that ruled from 1967–1974.
Voridis was expelled from law school for clubbing leftist students, and went on to Big Things in the world of neo-fascist Greek politics. In 1994, he founded the far-right Hellenic Front, which in 2004 formed a coalition with a self-described Nazi, Konstantinos Plevris, who openly advocated for the extermination of Greece’s remaining Jews. In 2005, Voridis merged his party into the LAOS party, whose leader, Georgios Karatzaferis, publicly mocked Auschwitz and Dachau death camps as “myths,” blamed Jews for 9/11 during a speech in parliament, and said “the Jews have no legitimacy to speak in Greece.”
In late 2011, as Greece politics collapsed under the weight of its debts and the harsh EU-imposed austerity measures, the EU imposed a new “austerity” government that included “The Hammer” Voridis and other members of the neo-fascist LAOS party. The austerity government ran Greece until new elections were called in mid-2012. In those interim months, the austerity coalition pushed through radical austerity measures that caused LAOS’ fascist voters to desert them for an even more violent, more extreme neo-Nazi party, the Golden Dawn Party. One would’ve thought that’d be the end of Makis Voridis.
But Voridis is one of the slyer fascists. He joined the austerity cabinet and served from November 2011 through June 2012. In the June 2012 elections, after LAOS was obliterated for participating in the austerity government, Voridis abandoned LAOS and joined the new ruling party that won the elections, the respectable right-wing New Democracy party.
And now New Democracy is paying back the favor to their favorite austerity fascist.
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9. The program reviews the European Monetary Union as the realization of the theories of Pan-German theoretician Friedrich List.
Writing in 1943, Paul Winkler foresaw that the Prusso-Teutonics would realize their goals through the creation of a German-dominated central European economic union (bearing a striking resemblance to today’s European Monetary Union.) One of the principal influences on List’s thinking was the “continental” concept of Napoleon, who attempted to economically unite Europe under French influence.
The Thousand-Year Conspiracy; by Paul Winkler; Charles Scribner’s Sons [HC]; 1943; pp. 15–16.
Charles Andler, a French author, summed up certain ideas of List in his work, The Origins of Pan-Germanism, (published in 1915.) ‘It is necessary to organize continental Europe against England. Napoleon I, a great strategist, also knew the methods of economic hegemony. His continental system, which met with opposition even from countries which might have profited from such an arrangement should be revived, but, this time, not as an instrument of Napoleonic domination. The idea of united Europe in a closed trade bloc is no longer shocking if Germany assumes domination over such a bloc—and not France. [Emphasis added.] Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, willingly or by force, will enter this ‘Customs Federation.’ Austria is assumed to be won over at the outset. Even France, if she gets rid of her notions of military conquest, will not be excluded. The first steps the Confederation would take to assure unity of thought and action would be to establish a joint representative body, as well as to organize a common fleet. But of course, both the headquarters of the Federation and its parliamentary seat would be in Germany. [Emphasis added.]”
10. List’s doctrine was in full swing during Germany’s prosecution of the First World War:
. . . . This is a direct translation of [German Chancellor] Bethman-Hollweg’s internal memo on Germany’s war aims, from September 1914. . . .
“. . . . We must create a central European economic association through common customs treaties, to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway. This association will not have any common constitutional supreme authority and all its members will be formally equal, but in practice will be under German leadership and must stabilize Germany’s economic dominance over ‘Middle Europe’ . . .”
11. The Listian model was put into effect by the Third Reich, as can be gleaned by reading Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of Germany’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic union. Ms. Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on page 92.
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. [Italics are mine–D.E.] 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. . . .
12. The European Economic Community was formally articulated by Reich officials during the war, with the clear design to extend and amplify the arrangement after the war. Below, we quote Gustave Koenigs, Secretary of State at a 1942 conference about the European Economic Community.
Europaische Wirtschafts Gemeinschaft (European Economic Community–translation).
. . . At the moment the so-called “European Economic Community” is not yet fact; there is no pact, no organisation, no council and no General Secretary. However, it is not just a part of our imagination or some dream by a politician — it is very real. . . .
. . . Its roots are in the economic co-operation of the European nations and it will develop after the war into a permanent European economic community. . . .
13. A captured German document from April of 1945–a few weeks before the end of World War II–that very succinctly lays out the plans for postwar Europe.
Germany Plots with the Kremlin; T.H. Tetens; Henry Schuman [HC]; 1953; p. 240.
Document II
THE EUROPEAN PEACE-ORDER
1. Liberation of the German people from suppression and occupation.
2. Repatration of the expellees (Heimholung der Verschleppten) [These are the vertriebene groups and the German ministry for Expellees–D.E.]
3. An integral German racial community.
4. Elimination of all arbitrary acts by the enemy.
5. European Union on a federalistic basis. [That IS the EU–D.E.]
6. Right to racial autonomy. [Note that, in the most recent German election, Polish citizens of German extraction were allowed to vote–D.E..]
7. European Common-Weal (“Gemeinnutz”).
8. European Court of Arbitration [The ICC is funded by Germany and is essentially a realization of this!–D.E.]
9. Community of related peoples with the final aim to create a Germanic Reich.
10. Common-wealth between Germany and Bohemia and Moravia.
11. Guaranteed protection of racial groups (“Volksgruppen-recht”).
12. Economic integration of Europe. [That is the EMU–D.E.]
13. Underlying Germany’s dominance of Europe is well over a century of applied Von Clausewitzian ecnomics.
Authors Borkin and Welsh analyze how the Nazis took advantage of the budding globalized economy to restrict both their enemies’ strategic production and their access to critical raw materials. The same cartel agreements gave the German war economy access to technological know-how and raw materials vital to the successful prosecution of modern industrial warfare. Learning the lessons of defeat from World War I, the German military-industrial complex also sought to use technological innovation to make up for key areas of shortfall. Utilizing leading-edge technology to great advantage, companies such as I.G. Farben developed processes to synthesize oil, rubber, narcotics to treat casualties and other innovations that greatly aided the German wartime economy.
Key to the German industrial offensive was the doctrine of the famous Prussian military philosopher Karl von Clausewitz—the first strategic thinker to formalize the concept of “Total War.” On pages 16 and 17, Borkin and Welsh discuss von Clausewitz’s analysis of the relationship between war and peace, essential to understanding the concept of Total War.
By contrast, the German firms’ foreign cartel partners looked on these relationships as mere vehicles to maximize profits by eliminating competition and limiting production.
. . . . Germany has long understood this strategy of total war. Karl von Clausewitz, the father of modern German militarism, set out its major premise when he said, ‘War is no independent thing; the main lineaments of all great strategic plans are of a political nature, the more so the more they include the totality of War and the State.’ To von Clausewitz, peace was a continuation of war by other means. In effect, he said to Germany, ‘Disarm your enemy in peace by diplomacy and trade if you would conquer him more readily on the field of battle.’ This philosophy of war-in-peace became the keynote of Germany’s political and economic intercourse with other nations. These tenets explain why, twice within a generation, we have entered war not only facing the might of German armies, but shackled by economic bondage to German industry. German-controlled cartels were at all times the servants of German interest. That their loyalty to Germany was undivided explains the uniformity of the agreements which they made. Germany’s industrial attack had as its cardinal purpose the reversal of blockade. Patents and secret ‘know-how’ were used to bar our access to our own technology. . . .
. . . To businessmen in the United States, England, and France, international cartels were an efficient means of guaranteeing monopoly. Industrialists outside of Germany thought in terms of low output, high prices, and maximum profits. They regarded divisions of both territory and fields of production as comfortable and easily policed methods by which they could free themselves from competition and create spheres of monopoly. . . .
15. As a result of this sharp disparity in the viewpoints of the German and Allied industrialists, the armies facing the Third Reich’s soldiers on the field of battle were placed at a fundamental disadvantage. On pages 13 and 14, Borkin and Welsh highlight the military results of the cartel agreements:
. . . Wherever there was a cartel before, in 1942, there was a military shortage. The Army and Navy petitioned civilians to turn in binoculars and lenses. The Baruch Committee reported that if we do not solve the synthetic rubber problem, we face a ‘civilian and military collapse.’ The gallant stand of MacArthur’s men on Bataan became more desperate because they found themselves without quinine. The growing priority lists of chemicals and plastics were an inventory of cartels. When we tried to tool up our new factories, with every second of passing time working against us, the lack of tungsten carbide blunted the edge of our effort. This roster of scarce materials and the absence of substitutes have a common cause.”
These shortages speak volumes for the brilliant planning of the German offensive. The first ‘Report to the Nation,’ issued January 14, 1942, by the Office of Facts and Figures, says: ‘[The enemy] has worked for many years to weaken our military potential. Through patent controls and cartel agreements he succeeded in limiting American production and export of many vital materials. He kept the prices of these materials up and the output down. He was waging war, and he did his work well, decoying important American companies into agreements, the purpose of which they did not sense. . . . The list of materials affected is long—beryllium, optical instruments, magnesium, tungsten carbide, pharmaceuticals, hormones, dyes, and many more. When you match each product with its military use, the significance of the attack becomes clear. Beryllium is a vital element for alloys that make shell springs; magnesium makes airplanes and incendiary bombs; tungsten carbide is essential for precision machine tools. Concealed behind dummy corporations, the enemy went unchecked for years, using our own legal machinery to hamstring us. [Italics added.]’ During the past twenty years, this cartel device has been the first line of German assault. . . .
15. Actualizing the von Clausewitz doctrine that “war is a continuation of policy by other means,” the Third Reich and its Axis allies used their military onslaught to drastically exacerbate the imbalance in strategic industrial production. On pages 15 and 16, the authors write: “The effect of Axis victories, in Europe and in the Pacific, give them an advantage which we will spend many thousands of lives to overcome. The reversal of position is starkly evident in the following figures on some of the major resources: ”
PERCENTAGE OF AXIS CONTROL OF WORLD PRODUCTION
Is the European Union (EU) is a continuation of a power structure designed to benefit German based or controlled multi-national corporations through a cartel system that was originally identified by Prussian Economist Frederick Von List then formalized with a plan by Frederick Naumann during World War I in his 1915 publication Mitteleuropa?” see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitteleuropa. The articles states:
“The Mitteleuropa plan was to achieve an economic and cultural hegemony over Central Europe by the German Empire[11][12] and subsequent economic and financial exploitation[13][14] of this region combined with direct annexations,[13] settlement of German colonists, expulsion of non-Germans from annexed areas, and eventual Germanization of puppet states created as a buffer between Germany and Russia. The issue of Central Europe was taken by German thinker Friedrich Naumann in 1915 in his work Mitteleuropa.
Mitteleuropa was to be created by establishing a series of puppet states whose political, economic and military aspects would be under the control of the German Reich.[18] The entire region was to serve as an economic backyard of Germany, whose exploitation would enable the German empire to better compete against strategic rivals like Britain, the United States and Japan.[18]
Political, military and economic organization was to be based on German domination,[19] with commercial treaties imposed on countries like Poland and Ukraine. It was believed that the German working classes could be appeased by German politicians through the economic benefits of territorial annexation, settlement of Germans in Central and Eastern Europe and exploitation of conquered countries for the material benefit of Germany.[20] Partial realization of these plans was reflected in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where guarantees of economic and military domination over Ukraine by Germany were laid out.[21] . “
[11] A history of eastern Europe: crisis and change Robert Bideleux,Ian Jeffries, page 12,Routledge 1998
[12] The Challenge of Hegemony: Grand Strategy, Trade, and Domestic Politics Steven E. Lobell, page 52, University of Michigan Press
[13] “War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War” Hein Erich Goemans, Princeton University, page 116 Press 2000
[14\ The First World War, 1914–1918 Gerd Hardach, page 235 University of California Press 1981…
[18] Imanuel Geiss“Tzw. polski pas graniczny 1914–1918”. Warszawa 1964
[19 ] Barry Hayes, Bismarck and Mitteleuropa, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994, p. 16
[20] “War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War” Hein Erich Goemans, page 115, Princeton University Press 2000
[21]“Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord”.Roy Arnold Prete, Keith Neilson 1983 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
This plan was further developed by Dorothy Thompson in her May 31, 1940 article in the Herald Tribune. The article stated:
“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-Russia is another chapter-there unify of 400,000,000 persons, skilled, civilized, white men, with a high standard of living. To these will be addled 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.”…
“The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic business men and industrialists, and those who have been openly hostile will be punished by boycott. The German occupation armies.”…
“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 in order to force it to play ball with this system. They point out that there will be no other foreign market for the raw materials and agricultural products of the United States, since these can hardly be sold in the Western Hemisphere. 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. Certain conditions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by personalities unfavorably regarded by the Nazis. No advertising contracts will be placed with newspapers directed by or publishing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi editors or writers.”…
“The German planners predict a stampede of the South to collaborate with this system. This stampede will be fostered and directed by their agents.”…
“[T]he economic penetration has already been established in all South American countries and in Mexico, and will be accompanied by political ultimatums and propaganda activities.”…
“To accomplish all this it is necessary to complete a total war against Britain and France.”…
“The Nazis believe in the system of hostages. They tried it first with the Jews to see whether world-Jewry would buy out its co-religionists. They thus demonstrated that the humanitarian impulses of the world are one of their own most useful weapons”…
“They argue that the tendency in all democracies demonstrate that workers only want to eat and have work, and care nothing for national matters or for individual liberty. What remnants are left of the pre-Hitlerian epoch myths will be terrorized out of the workers by the Gestapo. “And,” they add, nothing that capitalists will not do, if profitable. Democracies have taught their people, workers or corporation chiefs to believe only money.”…
“And, finally, only the master the Germans, will be allowed to bear arms. If, however, the United States wants to concur, all armaments be radically reduced.”
Is the European Union (EU) is a continuation of a power structure designed to benefit German based or controlled multi-national corporations through a cartel system that was originally identified by Prussian Economist Frederick Von List then formalized with a plan by Frederick Naumann during World War I in his 1915 publication Mitteleuropa?” see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitteleuropa. The articles states:
“The Mitteleuropa plan was to achieve an economic and cultural hegemony over Central Europe by the German Empire[11][12] and subsequent economic and financial exploitation[13][14] of this region combined with direct annexations,[13] settlement of German colonists, expulsion of non-Germans from annexed areas, and eventual Germanization of puppet states created as a buffer between Germany and Russia. The issue of Central Europe was taken by German thinker Friedrich Naumann in 1915 in his work Mitteleuropa.
Mitteleuropa was to be created by establishing a series of puppet states whose political, economic and military aspects would be under the control of the German Reich.[18] The entire region was to serve as an economic backyard of Germany, whose exploitation would enable the German empire to better compete against strategic rivals like Britain, the United States and Japan.[18]
Political, military and economic organization was to be based on German domination,[19] with commercial treaties imposed on countries like Poland and Ukraine. It was believed that the German working classes could be appeased by German politicians through the economic benefits of territorial annexation, settlement of Germans in Central and Eastern Europe and exploitation of conquered countries for the material benefit of Germany.[20] Partial realization of these plans was reflected in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where guarantees of economic and military domination over Ukraine by Germany were laid out.[21] . “
[11] A history of eastern Europe: crisis and change Robert Bideleux,Ian Jeffries, page 12,Routledge 1998
[12] The Challenge of Hegemony: Grand Strategy, Trade, and Domestic Politics Steven E. Lobell, page 52, University of Michigan Press
[13] “War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War” Hein Erich Goemans, Princeton University, page 116 Press 2000
[14\ The First World War, 1914–1918 Gerd Hardach, page 235 University of California Press 1981…
[18] Imanuel Geiss“Tzw. polski pas graniczny 1914–1918”. Warszawa 1964
[19 ] Barry Hayes, Bismarck and Mitteleuropa, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994, p. 16
[20] “War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War” Hein Erich Goemans, page 115, Princeton University Press 2000
[21]“Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord”.Roy Arnold Prete, Keith Neilson 1983 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
This plan was further developed by Dorothy Thompson in her May 31, 1940 article in the Herald Tribune. The article stated:
“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-Russia is another chapter-there unify of 400,000,000 persons, skilled, civilized, white men, with a high standard of living. To these will be addled 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.”…
“The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic business men and industrialists, and those who have been openly hostile will be punished by boycott. The German occupation armies.”…
“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 in order to force it to play ball with this system. They point out that there will be no other foreign market for the raw materials and agricultural products of the United States, since these can hardly be sold in the Western Hemisphere. 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. Certain conditions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by personalities unfavorably regarded by the Nazis. No advertising contracts will be placed with newspapers directed by or publishing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi editors or writers.”…
“The German planners predict a stampede of the South to collaborate with this system. This stampede will be fostered and directed by their agents.”…
“[T]he economic penetration has already been established in all South American countries and in Mexico, and will be accompanied by political ultimatums and propaganda activities.”…
“To accomplish all this it is necessary to complete a total war against Britain and France.”…
“The Nazis believe in the system of hostages. They tried it first with the Jews to see whether world-Jewry would buy out its co-religionists. They thus demonstrated that the humanitarian impulses of the world are one of their own most useful weapons”…
“They argue that the tendency in all democracies demonstrate that workers only want to eat and have work, and care nothing for national matters or for individual liberty. What remnants are left of the pre-Hitlerian epoch myths will be terrorized out of the workers by the Gestapo. “And,” they add, nothing that capitalists will not do, if profitable. Democracies have taught their people, workers or corporation chiefs to believe only money.”…
“And, finally, only the master the Germans, will be allowed to bear arms. If, however, the United States wants to concur, all armaments be radically reduced.”
Going to current events, it is interesting that Great Britain is challenging the power structure of the European Union and is requesting substantive reform — see the article “Cameron’s EU demands: Are they enough to appease europskeptics?”
http://m.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/1110/Cameron-s-EU-demands-Are-they-enough-to-appease-euroskeptics-video?cmpid=ema:nws:Daily%2520Newsletter%2520%2811–10-2015%29&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20151110_Newsletter:%20Daily&utm_term=Daily
The articles shows how British Prime Minister Cameron wanted more protection for EU members outside the Eurozone, more competition and less bureaucracy, more sovereignty for national parliaments from Brussels mandates, and exemption from the EU commitment to an “ever-closer union.” He also called for restrictions on migrants from other EU nations coming to Britain for work or welfare. The British Prime Minister’s efforts were greeted with some unfavorable commentary “front-page headline of Liberation, a leftist French daily, screamed “Cameron’s blackmail.” Not even an hour after he wrapped up his talk at the think tank Chatham House in central London, the EU was calling some of the measures “highly problematic” and even “illegal.”
This next article Guardian Article from October 8, 2020 by Daniel Trilling “Why did Golden Dawn’s neo-Nazi leaders get away with it for so long?” Addresses how the Greek far-right and Neo-Nazi Organization was able to get a cult like following by blaming their followers plight on immigrants, unconcerned politicians and global banking elites and political correctness. These followers became gang members and intimidated the local population with violence. The political party in power may have turned a blind eye because they found that they could use the Golden Dawn attack the more liberal opposition party Syriza, as they served the interest of the EU policy makers and supported the draconian austerity measures imposed on Greece.
Highlighted portions from the article include the following:
It chose familiar targets to blame for Greece’s predicament: immigrants and refugees, out-of-touch politicians and a global banking elite. But this far-right rhetoric was backed up by a paramilitary-style organisation that operated in parallel to the political party, and a cult-like devotion to Nazi beliefs. As Golden Dawn grew, assault squads of uniformed members, sometimes armed, sought to take over neighbourhoods in Greek towns and cities by attacking and intimidating parts of the local population. Much of the violence was carried out openly – yet for years it went unpunished.
Not all far-right nationalists secretly worship Hitler, and not all of them orchestrate street violence in the way that Golden Dawn did. But the far-right worldview is inherently violent: it offers a single explanation for social discontent, which is that the nation has become polluted by the wrong kind of people, and the solution lies in their removal. Some seek to use this violence as a route to power; others talk their way into power so they can make their violence legal.
Why, above all, was Golden Dawn allowed to operate unhindered for so long? The party is associated with a string of serious assaults going back to the 1990s, yet for years Greece’s political class seemed reluctant to enforce the law: as Kostis Papaioannou, a human rights activist involved in monitoring the trial, told me, “a long tradition of impunity for racist attacks” allowed Golden Dawn to “coexist” with Greece. There have been allegations that some police officers sympathised with Golden Dawn: wiretap evidence heard in court revealed direct contact between Golden Dawn members and several police officials. Will these connections now be fully examined?
There are broader political questions, too. Did New Democracy, the governing party at the time of Golden Dawn’s electoral success – and in government again today – find it useful to have a far-right party acting as a counterweight to its leftwing challenger Syriza, as it tried to force through unpopular austerity measures? Why did EU policymakers and international lenders persist with such rigid conditions attached to Greece’s bailout, when it was evident they were tearing apart the social fabric of the country? Greek society must surely face an uncomfortable question, too, namely why it took the murder of a Greek man – Pavlos Fyssas – to trigger a decisive backlash against Golden Dawn, when a well-documented string of attacks on immigrants failed to have the same effect.
All too often, there is a temptation to deny this threat of violence; to explain it away as an ordinary, even reasonable part of politics. Even in a case as extreme as Golden Dawn, people have tried it: in July 2013, two months before the murder of Fyssas, the Spectator columnist Taki Theodoracopulos wrote that the party’s members were “good old-fashioned patriotic Greeks” who were angry at immigration and political correctness.
Perhaps the most important story to be told about the trial is not what it revealed about the defendants, but about the people who fought back. Without the human rights activists and investigative journalists who painstakingly documented racist violence, the anti-fascist activists who organised mass protests, the volunteer legal teams who brought private prosecutions, and the victims and witnesses who gave evidence in court, this verdict would not have been reached. Racism, discrimination and far-right nationalism have not disappeared from Greece – and nor have they elsewhere – but a movement that sought to organise these into the most appalling violence has been shattered.
The entire article is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/08/golden-dawn-neo-nazi-violence-greece-political-class?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other