COMMENT: The German word for power is “macht”–derived from “Machiavellian.” One of the relatively few Internet entities covering the behavior of the supposedly “new” Germany is the GermanyWatch blogspot.
They feature a post highlighting the aggressive, skillfully cynical maneuvering of German financial institutions with regard to the Eurozone crisis. Far from being the ideal role model for the rest of the continent’s financial entities, German banks in fact pumped capital into the bubble economies of the peripheral countries, thus setting those countries up for the collapse that threatens the global economy.
(In that context, one should not lose sight of the fact that the major German banks operate under the stewardship of the Bormann capital network, as discussed in FTR #232.)
Not only did they “do everything right” while everyone else “did everything wrong,” but German banks had enormous exposure to the bursting bubble of the peripheral European economies.
Citing an article from The Independent, this post takes stock of that fact.
With Germany pushing for the afflicted nations to surrender political sovereignty as a condition for German financial assistance (fulfilling the goal enunciated by Friedrich List in the 19th century and put into action by the Third Reich in its above-ground phase), we see that German banks have been accessories or enablers for the looming disaster.
A 2012 article by Mr. Chu in The Independent details how the German bailouts have actually helped to assist German banks, illustrating “macht” or “Machiavellianism” in action.
In this context, we should not lose sight of two considerations we’ve discussed in the past.
One is the role of the mysterious Roland Arnall (“the Johnny Appleseed of subprime”) in helping to precipitate the global financial collapse that burst the European bubbles, setting the stage for the current German power play.
A refugee from Nazi occupied Europe, Arnall was altogether mysterious, masking everything but his avowed Jewishness and support for the Simon Weisenthal Center. When analyzing an individual who goes to great lengths to hide information about himself, those details he goes to great lengths to emphasize are significant–not for what they tell us about what he is, but for what they tell us about what he isn’t.
In FTR #690, we examined the very real possibility that Arnall was a “Bormann Jew.” What better cover for a Nazi financial gambit than to have a Jew fronting for the operation?
We should also remember that the Underground Reich and its SS foot soldiers had designed to execute conspiracies on behalf of German cartels in foreign countries.
Are Arnall and the German banks that set up the Eurozone crisis, thus jeopradizing the global economy representative of those conspiracies?
(Newer listeners should make a point of downloading, printing and reading Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile. Increasingly, the programs and posts will be incomprehensible without doing so.
“German Banking Superiority Is a Lie”; Germany Watch; 9/2/2011.
EXCERPT: . . . . And of course, the very claims of economic superiority are a complete fabrication. German leaders defined the problem as an Anglo-Saxon one, and blamed America and Britain (all they have done is drop the claim that Anglo-American Capitalism is run by Jews. They still want to bring down Anglo-American capitalism).
As we have mentioned before, according to the Bank for International Settlements, Germany lent almost $1.5 trillion to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy. Add to that heavy German involvement in the credit binge in American real estate, and it is clear that wherever parties were taking place, German banks were supplying the drinks.
German banks are two and a half times more leveraged than their US banking peers, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Some of them have pulled out of the banking stress-tests that the rest of Europe has had to undertake, because they did not want the results to go public.
The article [by Ben Chu of the London Independent] also says; “A poll of Germans last month indicated that 71 per cent of the population are either partially or completely in the dark about the technical reasons behind the single currency crisis.” . . . .
EXCERPT: Poor Germany, forced to provide massive guarantees for its profligate European neighbours.
The Federal Republic did everything right – pushing its domestic labour costs down, keeping public borrowing low. And its neighbours did everything wrong – letting wages spiral and running up big public debt piles. But now prudent Germany is being forced to foot the entire bill.
And even without the additional costs of bailing out Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus, Berlin is facing a catastrophic bill thanks to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) provision of liquidity life support for the eurozone’s banking system. The Bundesbank has racked up vast claims against other central banks through the monetary clearing system known as “Target 2”.
That’s the standard narrative from Germany. And it’s largely false. The guarantees that Germany has extended – and the huge liquidity operations of the ECB – have indeed been used to assist the struggling nations of the eurozone periphery. But they have also, as new research from Goldman Sachs show, been used to bail out German banks. . . .
. . . . German banks have been steadily extricating themselves from their exposure to southern Europe since 2007, as Chart 3 shows. German banks’ gross credit claims against the nations of the eurozone periphery have fallen by 50 per cent, down to €300bn. They have been busily off-loading eurozone assets to reduce the risks to their balance sheets.
And that has been taking place as the ECB has been extending its own balance sheet by providing cheap lending for banks across the continent to prevent them from running out of money. Here’s how that works:German banks have stopped lending to eurozone periphery banks. And those banks have been forced to fund themselves, instead, by tapping the ECB for cash.
But the risks return. Eurozone periphery nations are still running trade deficits with Germany. Those deficits that were previously financed by private German banks are now financed by the ECB. And thanks to the mechanics of the European monetary system that has resulted in the ballooning of the Bundesbank’s claims against other eurozone central banks.
“It is no coincidence that the increase in net foreign assets on the Bundesbank’s balance sheet roughly matches the decline seen on banks’ balance sheets,” said Dirk Schumacher of Goldman. “The Target 2 imbalances … have mainly replaced financial risk that was previously sitting on private-sector balance sheets.”
What this means is that the ECB and eurozone governments, as well as bailing out other members states, have quietly been rescuing German banks and, by extension, German savers. Without these emergency operations, the eurozone would have broken up, German banks would have gone bust and the savings of many ordinary Germans might have been wiped out. More likely the German taxpayer would have had been forced to bail out those banks.
So, as the German people distribute blame for the situation in which they find themselves, they should not ignore their own bankers. If those institutions had not made these investments and financed the current account deficits of Germany’s neighbours for so many years, their country would not be on the hook for hundreds of billions of euros of bad debts.
Yet this is something German politicians refuse to acknowledge. . . .
Thanks for the mention Dave.
Something we suggest all of your site visitors read, is Sara Moore’s new book.
Combined with your work on the Bormann network, her exposure of historical German economic movements ties everything together.
Sara is an economic historian, and very nice person too.
http://www.howhitlercametopower.com
We believe our only chance of solving the German domination issue before they wreak more war havoc on the world, is concentrating on their main power. BERTELSMANN.
We have a big post coming soon on Bertelsmann, and its pretty shocking.
Bertelsmann is the number1 driver of German imperial foreign policy.
Their control and influence of publishing and media is preventing democratic nations from learning the truth of the last century. By preventing large scale publishing of books like Sara Moore’s, they are pulling the blindfold over entire nations.
One thing we will be talking about is the Lisbon Constitution/Treaty.
When the Lisbon Constitution failed to gain YES votes around Europe, it was the BERTELSMANN FOUNDATION which re-wrote and suggested the lie of the Lisbon Treaty. Bertelsmann has a HUGE influence in the politics of the EU. In fact they even have their own MEP, Elmar Brok. He is an employee of Bertelsmann, and is Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs!!
Bertelsmann, by having built a large printer in Liverpool, have undercut other printers in the UK. By doing this, they have picked up 10 year printing contracts for major British newspapers and magazines, inc The Times and the FT! You can be pretty sure nothing will be printed in Brit media against Bertelsmann.
Their huge influence over European media allows their propaganda press releases to be printed unchallenged — even by the BBC. Backward reporting over islamists empowered by the ‘spring’? Bertelsmann.
Propaganda about German fiscal superiority and the need for German leadership in Europe? Bertelsmann.
Rewriting of history in Polish school books? Bertelsmann.
EU/German propaganda in major European TV shows? Bertelsmann.
Anti-American sentiment in EUropean media, inc the spreading of propaganda about lack of WMD in the Gulf? Bertelsmann.
Running of 5 British CITY/DISTRICT COUNCILS, WITH RESPONSIBILITY TO ENFORCE LAWS, AND THE RIGHT UNDER THE R.I.P.A ACT TO SPY ON AND INVESTIGATE BRITISH CITIZENS, USING BRITISH CRIMINAL RECORDS, CCTV, BRITISH COURTS, etc? BERTELSMANN!
If we don’t expose that Octopus, it will be impossible to prevent Germany from having complete administrative control over Britain.
Get Bertelsmann out of the way, and then remove Siemens’ influence, and we might stand a chance.
@GW–Do a search for Bertelsmann on this site. I did a massive series on German corporate control over American media in the late ’90’s and early part of the new century.
The publisher for the SS during the war, Bertelsmann is realizing the goal of the Underground Reich as set forth in “Serpent’s Walk.”
It is indeed important.
Thanks for your work.
Dave Emory
What a surprise: In response to the growing consensus within the eurozone that the ECB needs to engage in emergency bond buying, Berlin politicians are calling for an overhaul of the ECB’s governing board the shrinks to board from 23 to 9 members and gives the largest countries permanent status on the 9‑person council. The rest of the rabble get to share the remaining non-permanent seats. Vassal state technocracy here we come!
Proverbs 22:7
“The rich ruleth over the poor; And the borrower is slave to the lender.”
True to form, Rajoy gives the Spanish public another kick in the gut:
Great, on top of it all, there’s also inflation picking up, due, in part, to higher drug costs even though spending on prescription drugs fell 23% annually. I guess that means the Bundesbank gets to lecture Spain about the risk of debt addiction:
You have to love the method of central banking on display: we promise to do nothing to prevent a crisis in the bond sector unless bond yields “explode”, at which point we will do “something”, but only for a short period of time: The “just in time, just barely enough” method of central banking psychological warfare. I can’t say that’s it’s been an effective policy thus far but it’s certainly interesting to watch.
Hi, long time listener.
this is my first time posting a comment here.
I figured you all might be interested in this blog post. It essentially summarizes the general ill will between the German gov. and the Greek people. I took notice because it clearly is in line w/ Mr. Emory’s research. Excuse the imperfections. English is not the writer’s 1st language. I hope this is helpful:
http://farosradio.gr/el/faros-news/item/2320-germany-against-russia-in-greek-battlespace.html
In case we needed a timely reminder of the fact that Spain’s housing bubble banking crisis was facilitated with the full awareness of big German lenders, here we go:
How inspirational:
These are really just a minor quibbles with Angela regarding her philosophy of only offering help in exchange for something else: that might actually be closer to ‘barter’ than ‘help’. Of course, the ‘thing’ the helper might be asking for could simply be that the individual help themselves. But when this philosophy’s prescribed form of self-improvement comes in the form of the recipient actively destroying their future skills and economic capacity and there’s no serious reason to believe this kind of ‘help’ will actually be helpful, it’s also kind of a shitty philosophy.
In case you were ever curious about what a bad actor trying to emote reverse Stockholm Syndrome might look like, Angela just gave us an idea.
Moody’s just warned on the continued weakness in the German banking sector. It turns out that all those real estate loans to Spain and Italy are still threatening to decimate the German banking sector should those banks incur any major “unforeseen” losses. It’s not new news, but it’s still extremely relevant:
This report once again reminds us all that the eurozone crisis was NOT at all due to a housing bubble fueled by German banks that exploded in a highly foreseeable manner that lenders should have been fully aware of when making the loans. Instead, it was was primarily due to overly protective labor laws. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The Bundesbank called, it wants its gold back:
Note that Pimco’s Bill Gross is also pushing the idea that the central banks are losing trust with each other. And this doesn’t appear to be a potential division between, say, the Bundesbank an the Federal Reserve or Bank of Japan...it includes the Bank of France, Germany’s long-standing key partner in the eurozone! This is certainly a curious move given the recent PR push of the idea that the eurozone crisis is over.
Here is the understatement of the year:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013–06-09/shady-bank-funded-nazis-pushed-euro-has-no-oversight-books
Shady Bank Funded Nazis, Pushed Euro, Has No Oversight: Books
By Daniel Akst
If you think the Bank for International Settlements is just a colorless intermediary, Adam LeBor’s new book will disabuse you of that notion.
“Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World” is a full-blown attack on the institution, which is based in Switzerland but answers, in the author’s view, to practically no one.
LeBor details the appalling role of the BIS in funding the predations of Nazi Germany, a well-known blot on its record. Then he indicts the bank for its part in the rise of technocratic postwar Europe, in particular as midwife to the disastrous euro. LeBor wants the place shut down, or at least opened up.
He makes a decent case, but only decent. Founded in 1930 by two legendary central bankers — Britain’s Montagu Norman and Germany’s Hjalmar Schacht — the BIS was supposed to administer World War I reparations from Germany. But as Keynes and others had argued, the imposition of such crushing reparations was a terrible idea, and not long after the bank was established Germany wriggled out of them.
Yet the BIS lived on, sustained by a founding agreement that gives it an extraordinary degree of autonomy, a safe haven in Switzerland and a revenue stream from transaction fees. Besides, it was useful — as a facilitator of international transactions and a locus of cooperation among central bankers. It was especially useful to the Nazis.
Nazi Gold
Though headed by an American during World War II, the BIS adhered to a priestly neutrality, interpreting its mandate in the most technical possible fashion in order to continue dealing with all sides in the conflict. Unfortunately, this put the institution squarely in the position of abetting Nazi terror.
The BIS accepted plundered gold and made it possible for Germany to acquire desperately needed war materiel. It even permitted Germany, once it had invaded Czechoslovakia, to confiscate that nation’s gold reserves.
Tarred by its scandalous role in the war, the BIS was targeted afterward for dissolution by enemies in Washington and elsewhere. But it managed to beat back these efforts and eke out a role for itself in the postwar world — first as the financial mechanism for American efforts to rebuild Europe, and then for the accelerating project of European unification.
Modern Europe
The latter, culminating in the euro, is cause for further damnation by the author, for whom the trans-national vision of a modern Europe ruled by mandarins in Brussels and Basel isn’t so different from the Nazi vision of a unified continent equally unruffled by obstreperous voters.
Owned and operated by the world’s central banks, the BIS today is both their banker and their refuge, a place where central bankers meet every other month to dine really well and schmooze in confidence that no one will learn what was said. The BIS also performs valuable research on international finance.
Is this really so bad? LeBor thinks so, complaining that “BIS is an opaque, elitist and anti-democratic institution, out of step with the 21st century.”
Maybe. But his case against the BIS, whose role is wildly exaggerated in the book’s subtitle, would be a lot stronger if he spent any time at all explaining what it does. That would make it easier to judge whether these tasks are important, or could be taken on easily by others.
Unfortunately LeBor describes the bank’s functions in only the most cursory terms. The BIS is secretive, no argument there. But surely the general nature of its lending can be described, as well as the source of its capital and profits. The latter amounted to more than $1 billion tax-free in 2011-12 alone.
Resistant to eradication, the BIS can perhaps be reformed, and here the author has some sensible suggestions, including greater transparency and directing a significant chunk of profits toward philanthropy. After all that’s come before, you’d think the occupants of the tower of Basel (the bank’s groovy round headquarters) would be on their best behavior.
“Tower of Basel” is published by PublicAffairs (336 pages, $28.99). To buy this book in North America, click here.
(Daniel Akst writes for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Muse highlights include John Mariani on wine and Philip Boroff on theater.
To contact the writer on the story: Daniel Akst in New York at danielakst@gmail.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff in New York at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief/3953321-leading-exporter-running-out-steam
Leading exporter running out of steam
9 July 2013
Presseurop
Die Welt
“Exports are collapsing,” headlines Germany daily Die Welt commenting on the latest figures released by the Federal Office of Statistics showing that in May 2013 exports fell to their lowest level in three-and-a-half years, posting a 2.4 per cent drop compared with April 2013, and shrinking 4.8 per cent compared with May 2012.
This decline is explained by the “disarray of global markets,” says Die Welt –
[On the one hand,] the internal European market, the major outlet for German exports, remains weak and [on the other hand] countries such as China are not compensating for this trend.
Business with the Eurozone, hard hit by the debt crisis, is particularly bad. Exports to the Eurozone plummeted by 9.6 per cent between May 2012 and May 2013, the paper notes.
Given that legislative elections are scheduled for September, Die Welt urges political parties to keep in mind that –
For a long time, the German economy defied the shrinking international economic context. But now that the economy is reviving elsewhere, the economic situation is regressing in a worrisome manner in our country. [...] This does not mean that the German economy will inevitably go into crisis. [...] But the boom is over and it is high time for politicians to take note of this. [...] Income tax reform, as proposed by the opposition, comes at a bad time [...] and the re-establishment of a tax on wealth represents the greatest brake imaginable for small and medium-sized firms.
@Vanfield: Yes, exports are collapsing, but imports are collapsing even more so there’s a growing net trade surplus. All it took to achieve this was the destruction of domestic demand across the continent. So, according to eurozone logic, it’s all good:
Here’s an interesting article on some of the bailout packages that have helped keep Germany’s publicly-owned Landesbanks afloat during the crisis years:
While senior Landesank officials might be predicting that the Landesbanks will never become competitive in the European banking sector, it’s worth recalling that they actually were quite aggressive players from 2001–2008, especially in the “asset-backed commercial paper” (ABCP) market:
It’s important to recall that the asset-backed commercial paper market (i.e. short-term and medium term loans to business that are typically rolled-over indefinitely) was instrumental in fueling the globaly housing bubble. So if, as described above, the Landesbanks were behind 8.4% of the global supply of asset-backed commercial paper in 2008, it’s shouldn’t be surprising that a number of Landesbanks required such big bailouts in recent years because the asset-backed commercial paper market was pretty important in fueling the global credit-bubble. This was especially true in the US housing markets where the Landesbanks were very active.
It’s also important to recall that, bailouts aside, it could have been a lot worse for the Landesbanks. A LOT.