“. . . 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.
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.
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
Quite right.
http://germanywatch.blogspot.com/2011/08/is-germany-purposely-spooking-markets.html
[...] Rise of the Fourth Reich [...]
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)
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.
The date is August 22, 2011 for the GFP article.
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.