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Daily Mail [UK]: Rise of the Fourth Reich

 

“. . . Every spend­ing depart­ment in every gov­ern­ment in the Euro­zone would have its pol­i­cy made in the old cap­i­tal of Prus­sia. If the peo­ple did not like their gov­ern­ments being left with few­er pow­ers than a coun­ty coun­cil, that would be tough. The alter­na­tive is ruin. Where Hitler failed by mil­i­tary means to con­quer Europe, mod­ern Ger­mans are suc­ceed­ing through trade and finan­cial dis­ci­pline. Wel­come to the Fourth Reich.”

COMMENT: In numer­ous broad­casts we have exam­ined the bril­liant­ly exe­cut­ed Ger­man eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy for Euro­pean (and world) con­quest, uti­liz­ing the strat­e­gy envi­sioned by Friedrich List and exe­cut­ed by the Third Reich and the remark­able, dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

Looks like I’m not the only one see­ing this devel­op­ment.

Although Ger­man indus­try has per­formed very well in the post­war peri­od and Ger­man labor and envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies are, in my opin­ion, exem­plary, the real rea­son for the present Ger­man eco­nom­ic ascent lies in the real his­to­ry of fas­cism and glob­al­iza­tion.

A study of the Bor­mann net­work and its rela­tion­ship with the tides of 20th cen­tu­ry cap­i­tal flow dis­clos­es the true nature of the Ger­man vic­to­ry, real­ized in the clas­sic con­cept of  “the post­war,” as the­o­rized by Von Clause­witz.

“Rise of the Fourth Reich, how Ger­many Is Using the Finan­cial Cri­sis to Con­quer Europe” by Simon Hef­fer; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 8/17/2011.

EXCERPT: . . . Instead, there was force­ful talk of Euro­zone coun­tries being coerced into bal­anc­ing their bud­gets and reduc­ing their debt through what Merkel and Sarkozy called a ‘true Euro­pean eco­nom­ic gov­ern­ment move­ment’ made up of all the heads of state and led, ini­tial­ly, by the EU Pres­i­dent Her­man Van Rompuy.

Frau Merkel called for a ‘stronger coor­di­na­tion of pol­i­cy’ and ‘a new qual­i­ty of coop­er­a­tion’ with­in the Euro­zone.
Although she will not yet admit it, this all sug­gests the first step has been tak­en towards a fis­cal union that  will leave Ger­many dic­tat­ing the finan­cial terms for the rest of Europe.

Yesterday’s cri­sis meet­ing between Angela Merkel and Nico­las Sarkozy was arranged before the par­tic­i­pants knew of the dis­as­trous growth fig­ures in the Euro­zone that emerged in the morn­ing.

The back­ground to the meet­ing was last week’s tumult in the world finan­cial mar­kets. Shares had gone into freefall after the down­grad­ing of America’s cred­it rat­ing.

Worse than that, how­ev­er, were the tremors rat­tling some of Europe’s most impor­tant banks, notably in France, caused by fur­ther evi­dence of the utter fail­ure of even the more devel­oped Euro­pean economies to live any­thing like with­in their means.

Chan­cel­lor Merkel has man­aged to use the hard-earned mon­ey of Ger­man tax­pay­ers to bail out prof­li­gate Euro­zone coun­tries with­out suf­fer­ing any polit­i­cal fall-out. This is unlike­ly to remain the case and Mrs Merkel knows it.

That is why yes­ter­day she played down talk of the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank — fund­ed by Ger­man-backed Eurobonds — pay­ing off the debts of these all-but-bank­rupt nations.

Frau Merkel called for a ‘stronger coor­di­na­tion of pol­i­cy’ and ‘a new qual­i­ty of coop­er­a­tion’ with­in the Euro­zone.

Mr Sar­zoky and Mrs Merkel talked of a ‘true eco­nom­ic gov­ern­ment move­ment’ while the Ger­man leader called for ‘a stronger coor­di­na­tion of pol­i­cy’ dur­ing the meet­ing in Paris.

It is the one coun­try that is able to do so. Greece, Ire­land and Por­tu­gal are eco­nom­ic bas­ket cas­es. We have heard more and more about the trou­ble in Spain, where unem­ploy­ment is over 20 per cent.

Italy is tot­ter­ing — the fig­ures for 2010 show it has debts of 116 per cent of GDP, mak­ing the coun­try sec­ond only to Greece at around 143 per cent.

Mean­while, the recent addi­tion of France to the list of at-risk economies has caused real shock and pan­ic across the Chan­nel. Its banks hold about an eighth of Greek debt, or $57 bil­lion, its stock mar­ket has tum­bled and cred­it rat­ing agen­cies are talk­ing of remov­ing France’s triple A sta­tus.

So, after a sum­mer of increas­ing­ly shrill pan­ics around the Mediter­ranean, the con­ta­gion is mov­ing north. Indi­vid­ual bail-outs have been tried, but they obsti­nate­ly refuse to work. Only an idiot would think they would: they treat only the symp­toms of Europe’s eco­nom­ic decline, not its caus­es.

If only every­body could be like the Ger­mans, and spend just a mite more than they earn, then all would be well, the mar­kets seem to say.

Ger­many lay in ruins in 1945, but it then invest­ed in man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, devel­oped first-class edu­ca­tion, inno­vat­ed, raised its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­ed on qual­i­ty not price.

Over the next 60 years it won the peace as com­pre­hen­sive­ly as it lost the war. . . .

. . . If the euro is to sur­vive — and with it the Euro­pean project — the oth­er 16 Euro­zone coun­tries will have to be like the Ger­mans. Indeed, they must lose the free­dom not to be like the Ger­mans.

That means a com­plete fis­cal union in which Ger­many, as  the EU’s most pow­er­ful econ­o­my and prin­ci­pal pay­mas­ter, makes the rules and makes them unbreak­able.

George Osborne inter­rupt­ed his hol­i­day in aus­ter­i­ty-free Bev­er­ly Hills a fort­night ago to make this point by tele­phone to the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the ECB.

It is a high-risk strat­e­gy on his part, for if such a plan suc­ceed­ed it would make Europe effec­tive­ly a Ger­man empire, with non-Euro­zone coun­tries such as Britain on the side­lines. . . .

. . .   They may hope their sal­va­tion, apart from pulling out of the sin­gle cur­ren­cy and devalu­ing, would be to accept Ger­many prop­er­ly bol­ster­ing the euro and effec­tive­ly colonis­ing the Euro­zone.

This would entail a loss of sov­er­eign­ty not seen in those coun­tries since many were under the jack­boot of the Third Reich 70 years ago.

For be in no doubt what fis­cal union means: it is one eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, one tax­a­tion sys­tem, one social secu­ri­ty sys­tem, one debt, one econ­o­my, one finance min­is­ter. And all of the above would be Ger­man. . . .

. . .  If Ger­many is to con­tin­ue to pros­per, Europe must pros­per: but a ruth­less solu­tion may have to be imposed in order for that to hap­pen. If the Euro­pean project is to con­tin­ue, Ger­many will not mere­ly have to under­write it, but con­trol it.

The recent­ly-agreed Euro­pean Finan­cial Sta­bil­i­ty Facil­i­ty is not the answer. It is just anoth­er in a series of stick­ing-plas­ters that allows the ECB to buy the bonds of debtor nations to keep them sol­vent.

All these stick­ing-plas­ters are designed in the belief that the wound will not become yet more gap­ing: but it always does.

The alter­na­tive is the mas­sive sur­ren­der of sov­er­eign­ty to Ger­many by the rest of the Euro­zone that would allow the eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy of Greece, Ire­land and Por­tu­gal to be made in Berlin.

That would reas­sure the mar­kets, but it would also remove any pre­tence of democ­ra­cy in those 16 coun­tries: for once you have lost con­trol of your econ­o­my, you have lost your sov­er­eign­ty.

Every spend­ing depart­ment in every gov­ern­ment in the Euro­zone would have its pol­i­cy made in the old cap­i­tal of Prus­sia.

And if the peo­ple did not like their gov­ern­ments being left with few­er pow­ers than a coun­ty coun­cil, that would be tough. The alter­na­tive is ruin.

Where Hitler failed by mil­i­tary means to con­quer Europe, mod­ern Ger­mans are suc­ceed­ing through trade and finan­cial dis­ci­pline. Wel­come  to the Fourth Reich.

Discussion

7 comments for “Daily Mail [UK]: Rise of the Fourth Reich”

  1. Hef­fer is repeat­ing my infor­ma­tion and fore­casts many years ago: see my books “Ger­many’s Four Reichs” fol­lowed 2008 by “Geer­many’s FOURTH Reich” and DVDs

    Posted by harry Beckhough | August 20, 2011, 12:37 am
  2. Posted by GermanyWatch | August 23, 2011, 8:37 am
  3. [...] Rise of the Fourth Reich [...]

    Posted by The Standards and the Poors: Series of articles on how the « downgrade » has been a dog-and-pony show to hurt the U.S. economy and its citizens | lys-dor.com | August 25, 2011, 9:57 am
  4. From the web­site of J.P. Mor­gan:

    http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/am/ia/heard_in_the_hall_08-19–2011

    August 19, 2011
    A New Fis­cal World Order

    In many ways, recent macro events and risks—the U.S. down­grade, the debt-ceil­ing res­o­lu­tion and Europe’s fis­cal challenges—are mark­ing a turn­ing point for the glob­al econ­o­my and mar­kets and, in our view, a new fis­cal world order.

    http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/23/germany-eurozone-eurobonds/

    Ger­many’s his­toric dilem­ma and its glob­al con­se­quences

    Ger­many has a choice: Aban­don the euro­zone and face stalled growth, or prop up its ail­ing euro­zone part­ners. Nei­ther is good for Ger­many.
    Angela Merkel

    Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel

    FORTUNE — Ger­many is fac­ing a mad­den­ing­ly dif­fi­cult choice that could shape the future not just of the Euro­pean com­mu­ni­ty, but the world econ­o­my. Now that the Euro­pean debt cri­sis is spread­ing to nations far too big for tem­po­rary bailouts, Ger­many must decide between two extreme­ly unat­trac­tive options. It must either aban­don its stub­born resis­tance to guar­an­tee­ing the debts of ail­ing euro­zone part­ners, at great risk to its tax­pay­ers. Or, it can escape shel­ter­ing the weak by aban­don­ing the euro­zone. That would bring the Ger­man growth engine to a sud­den halt. The threat to one of the world’s lean­est and largest economies is a major rea­son world mar­kets are now in tur­moil.

    ( ... )

    Unless Ger­many changes course, the euro­zone will dis­solve. It’s not clear how the split would hap­pen. South­ern coun­tries might restore their own cur­ren­cies, leav­ing a north­ern group of Ger­many, Aus­tria, Fin­land, the Nether­lands and pos­si­bly France in a shrunk­en euro­zone. Or Ger­many could go its own way by replac­ing the euro with, say, the Neue Mark, and in the process free­ing itself from the shad­ow of wild­ly unpop­u­lar bailouts.

    For Ger­many, the costs of either sce­nario would be enor­mous. Ger­many has prof­it­ed might­i­ly from the euro. “It has shown far more rapid gains in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty than its neigh­bors,” says Robert Aliber, the dis­tin­guished inter­na­tion­al econ­o­mist. “So over time, its exports have become more and more com­pet­i­tive.”

    In effect, the euro made Ger­man prod­ucts arti­fi­cial­ly cheap on world mar­ket, and ren­dered those of weak­er economies such as Italy, Por­tu­gal and Greece exces­sive­ly expen­sive. The edge of a “weak” cur­ren­cy, com­pared to the old Deutsche Mark, also enabled Ger­many to gar­ner boom­ing sales in Chi­na and oth­er Asian coun­tries hun­gry for its cars and machine tools.

    In effect, the euro­zone helped bring big sur­plus­es to Ger­many, and large deficits to its south­ern part­ners. If it splin­ters, the exchange rates for Ital­ian, Span­ish and Greek cur­ren­cies would fall sharply, low­er­ing the prices, and rais­ing sales, of their exports, and doing the oppo­site with imports. Their deficits — and demand for Ger­man goods — would col­lapse. Ger­many would suf­fer from the reverse effect. Its Neue Mark would soar ver­sus its trad­ing part­ners’ cur­ren­cies, mak­ing its cars and machine tools far more expen­sive around the globe. Asia will have anoth­er rea­son to make its own machin­ery.

    Overnight, Ger­many will lose its sta­tus as a con­queror on world mar­kets. Its enor­mous trade sur­plus, the source of its pros­per­i­ty, would quick­ly van­ish.

    “Once the Ger­man sur­plus­es are gone, the coun­try would fall into a severe reces­sion,” says promi­nent Greek econ­o­mist Yanis Varo­ufakis. Ger­many has suc­ceed­ed in the past decade of becom­ing high­ly com­pet­i­tive not just by main­tain­ing a rel­a­tive­ly cheap cur­ren­cy, but by lim­it­ing the growth in wages. But that pol­i­cy cre­at­ed a large con­tin­gent of work­ing poor, peo­ple who have jobs but also qual­i­fy for wel­fare pay­ments because of their low salaries. “To restore com­pet­i­tive­ness after their cur­ren­cy appre­ci­ates, Ger­man com­pa­nies would need low­er costs by lay­ing off work­ers. So exit­ing the euro risks turn­ing the work­ing poor into the unem­ployed,” says Varo­ufakis.

    (more at link)

    Posted by R. Wilson | August 25, 2011, 7:32 pm
  5. Here is the last sec­tion of the most recent GFP.com entry April 22, 2011 titled Restrct­ed Democ­ra­cy.

    No Choice

    Because of Ger­many’s aus­ter­i­ty dic­tate, EU and IMF super­vi­sors are, in fact, now rul­ing Athens. Recent­ly a lead­ing Ger­man dai­ly colum­nist wrote, “for months now, elect­ed Greek rep­re­sen­ta­tives have been pre­vent­ed from mak­ing their own deci­sions on any ques­tions of sig­nif­i­cance.” A par­lia­men­tar­i­an pub­li­cal­ly posed the ques­tion, “what was he sup­posed to do now in Par­lia­ment, when, in any case, every deci­sion is going to be tak­en by the IMF, the EU and the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank.”[13] “As a mat­ter of fact,” con­clud­ed the com­men­ta­tor, “for the time being, Greece will be mere­ly a restrict­ed democ­ra­cy. The Greeks can vote for what­ev­er they want, but it will not real­ly change any­thing.” This sit­u­a­tion has been essen­tial­ly imposed by that coun­try, where anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ten­den­cies are also resur­fac­ing — Ger­many.

    Posted by Sandra | August 28, 2011, 3:09 pm
  6. The date is August 22, 2011 for the GFP arti­cle.

    Posted by Sandra | August 28, 2011, 3:11 pm
  7. This is why I sent $50 for Emory’s life work. Mine father killed Ger­mans; he did NOT destroy the Nazi par­ty.

    They’re still here.

    Posted by Kenneth Johnson | October 8, 2013, 11:48 pm

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