FTR #983 Fascism, 2017 World Tour, Part 2

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram exam­ines man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism around the world.

In Europe, we ana­lyze:

1.-The reca­pit­u­la­tion of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the cur­rent Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Boyko Borisov. (Bul­gar­ia was a Nazi ally in World War II.)
2.-The vital­i­ty of “regionalism”–a political/economic doc­trine that advo­cates the seces­sion of key pros­per­ous regions from nation states.
3.-Analysis of region­al­ism as an appli­ca­tion of glob­al­ist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry to Euorope.
4.-The his­to­ry of regionalism’s advoa­cy by Third Reich vet­er­an the­o­reti­cians.
5.-Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange’s sup­port for Cata­lan seces­sion from Spain.
6.-The suc­cess of the AfD in Ger­man elec­tions.
7.-AfD politi­cian Alexan­der Gauland’s state­ment that Ger­mans should be proud of what that country’s sol­diers accom­plished in World War II.
8.-The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Party’s pro­ject­ed suc­cess in upcom­ing elec­tions. The par­ty was formed in 1956 by Third Reich vet­er­ans as a vehi­cle for re-intro­duc­ing Aus­tri­an Nazis into the country’s polit­i­cal life.

In Latin Amer­i­ca, we exam­ine:

1.-The ver­dict that Argen­tine AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Alber­to Nisman’s death was a mur­der, not a sui­cide.
2.-Review of the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.
3.-The dis­cov­ery of a cache of Nazi arti­facts, includ­ing devices used for deter­min­ing racial puri­ty. Hitler appar­ent­ly posed with some of the arti­fi­cats.
4.-The role of Nisman’s wid­ow as the judge inves­ti­gat­ing the Nazi arti­fact case.
5.-Operational links between Amer­i­can Nazi Christo­pher Cantwell and the Koch Broth­ers-fund­ed Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute in Brazil.

In the Unit­ed States, we detail:

1.-How Bre­it­bart active­ly pro­mot­ed Neo-Nazism, while down­play­ing what it was actu­al­ly doing.
2.-How white suprema­cist and Nazi ele­ments are suc­cess­ful­ly using YouTube to main­stream fas­cist and racist views.

In the Mid­dle East, we high­light:

1.-Benjamin Netanyahu’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions with the Thyssen/Krupp firm, one of the lynch­pins of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.
2.-Yair Netanyahu’s attri­bu­tion of his father’s polit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties to sab­o­tage by an inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy.
3.-Ronald Regan’s 1981 cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun as a key advo­cate for sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.
4.-Review of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s embrace of the views of Ibn Khal­dun.

The New World Ordoliberalism, Part 7: To QE, or Not to QE, That is the Ominous Question

As the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank (ECB) con­tin­ues to wres­tle with the deci­sion of when and how quick­ly to wind down its quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing (QE) pro­gram while infla­tion remains stub­born­ly below the 2 per­cent tar­get and like­ly to stay well below 2 per­cent for the fore­see­able future, it’s worth not­ing that there’s a new night­mare to add to the equa­tion: The euro has surged in val­ue this year, a move that not only depress­es exports in recov­ery economies like Spain and Por­tu­gal but also depress­es infla­tion. And one of the things hold­ing down the val­ue of the euro is the ECB’s QE pro­gram. So if the ECB tapers off the QE too ear­ly and quick­ly it’s going to make an over­ly-strong euro even stronger while drag­ging infla­tion even low­er, poten­tial­ly derail­ing frag­ile recov­er­ies in the aus­ter­i­ty-inflict­ed mem­ber states. And that means not send­ing the wrong sig­nals is a key goal of the ECB is things are going to go smooth­ly. Guess which sig­nals are being sent.

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.