German Economic Colonization of Ukraine
With the U.S. and Germany respectively playing Bad Cop (military aid and sanctions) and Good Cop (economic aid and resistance to further sanctions at the behest of key German corporations invested in Russia), the follow-up to the covert operation resulting in the coup d’etat of early 2014 is proceeding apace. German industry–surprise, surprise–plans to modernize Ukrainian industries and establish subcontracting arrangements to build automobiles in that cheap labor market. This will be coupled by the austerity doctrine we have termed “Von Clausewitzian economics.”
Surprise! Merkel Just Vetoed the Presidential Vote. She Has Other Plans In Mind.
If you’ve been following the upcoming EU elections scheduled for later this month and the tight race for EU Commission President. And if you’ve been following that race closely, you’ve no doubt been bored out of your mind. But at least now, for the first time ever, EU voters will get to vote for their future collective president. Then again, maybe not. Either way, big changes could be coming. Soon. .
The New World Ordoliberalism Part 4: Meet the New Plan. Same as the Old Plan. Deregulated.
There have been quite a few developments in the eurozone recently with major possible policy changes announced in recent weeks. Things like buying bonds to shore up markets and stimulate the economy (“quantitative easing”) are now on the table. Quantitative easing is normal central bank stuff that has been effectively shoved off the table of ECB policy options by the Bundesbank’s unorthodox economic theories until now. Unfortunately, it’s looking like the quantitative easing is going to be unorthodox too. No ‘easing’ for the governments. Much ‘easing’ for the banks. And the austerity continues.
Surprise! It’s Not the EUrozone Crisis Anymore. Welcome to the EU, LLC. It’s Still a Crisis.
Well, it’s official. The ‘second pillar’ of the EU’s banking union — a 55 billion euro bail-out fund and a bunch of new rules — appears to be in place following recent negotiations. It was an all night compromise bender! Yes, lots of compromises were made, but the core principles that have emerged during the EU’s multi-year-long quest for a banking union are still intact. Uh oh.
Knock, Knock. Who’s there? The Clipper Chip and Four Horsemen.
Angela Merkel made an ominous announcement last week. She wants to move ahead with walling off the EU’s web traffic and begin a “massive” counter-espionage campaign against the US and its Five Eyes partners. Brazil is moving ahead with its plans to remake the internet, including local data storage requirements and state-encrypted web services similar to Germany’s new anti-NSA state-backed email services. So domestic spying could be on the rise, the internet itself is at risk, and state-encryption services are now being offered as an anti-NSA panacea. Mainstreamed unbreakable encryption is also coming without a debate. An old enemy of privacy, the Clipper Chip, has returned in a new form. And its own arch-nemeses, the Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse, are back too. And there are no obvious ways to uninvite these guests without a long talk
FTR #769 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 12: Blitzkrieg on American Internet and Electronics Business
The concerns expressed in a recent San Jose Mercury News editorial and echoed by Silicon Valley CEO’s at a recent high tech conference go to the thrust of the main part of what we feel is the primary goal of Snowden’s multi-layered psy-op: to do to the Silicon Valley and the U.S. electronic business what the German and Japanese automobile industry’s capture of much of the U.S. market did to the city of Detroit. German chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be holding U.S. high-tech companies hostage to the BND’s inclusion in the “Five Eyes club,” consisting of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The New World Ordoliberalism Part 3: About That Raise You Wanted...
Along with last week’s news of Germany’s record trade surplus, the opening of an EU investigation into Germany’s growing surpluses, and Europe’s other recent remarkable socioeconomic achievements, Angela Merkel urged the CDU to compromise on an across-the-board 8.50 euro German minimum wage. It’s great news because wage deflation is still part of the EU’s long-term agenda.
Too Much of a Good Thing? Part 2: A Secret Trilogue and Business as Usual
With last week’s blizzard of Snowden leaks on NSA spying in the EU hitting the news, the EU parliament overwhelmingly passed a draft set of new EU data privacy rules with a fast-tracked time frame of implementation by mid April 2014. But, in a surprising twist, the David Cameron just managed to do away with the fast tracking, arguing that the proposed rules would be an onerous burden on businesses. So the new EU data privacy rules are still coming, but not for at least another year and presumably with a lot of changes. Those aren’t the only changes that may be coming to the internet.
Too Much of a Good Thing? The New EU Data Privacy Rules Have a Transparency Problem
There are some big changes headed towards the internet but we don’t know what they are yet. And that probably won’t change any time soon. It’s a problem.
The Troika Knows That Confidence Fairies Don’t Want To Know. It Makes Them Uncomfortable
The eurozone troika recently eased market worries a bit by renegotiating part of Ireland’s massive bailout. But the public still wants answers on why the 2010 bailout happened in the first place and those answers could reignite the crisis. It isn’t easy being the ECB. Or the EU. Or the IMF.
ESSENTIAL BACKGROUND
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning. German corporate capital flight program in the waning years of WWII.Available for download. Read more about the Bormann Organizaton »
- Spitfire List is licensed under Creative Commons.
Recent Comments