Euro Apocalypse: The Rape of Greece
Greece is fighting for her sovereignty against attacks from Germany, the EU and the IMF
Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi by Eugène Delacroix.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has signalled that Greece will have to give up autonomy over its budget if it is to receive the full backing of the international community for its second €130bn (£109bn) bail-out.
—IMF tells Greece it will lose control of budget in return for bail-out
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Euro Apocalypse: The Maximum Fails Again
The last third of the Edict, divided into 32 sections, imposed a price ceiling–a maxima–for over a thousand products. These products included various food items (beef, grain, wine, beer, sausages, etc), clothing (shoes, cloaks, etc), freight charges for sea travel, and weekly wages. The highest limit was on one pound of purple-dyed silk, which was set at 150,000 denarii (the price of a lion was set at the same price).
The Edict did not solve all of the problems in the economy. Diocletian’s mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low.
Merchants either stopped producing goods, sold their goods illegally, or used barter. The Edict tended to disrupt trade and commerce, especially among merchants. It is safe to assume that a gray market economy evolved out of the edict at least between merchants.
Sometimes entire towns could no longer afford to produce trade goods. Because the Edict also set limits on wages, those who had fixed salaries (especially soldiers) found that their money was increasingly worthless as the artificial prices did not reflect actual costs.
The long term impact for Western European economics has been that price decrees are viewed as only being effective for less than one generation. Most price decrees since AD 1000 have been issued with the understanding that the fixed prices would only last for 5 or 10 years. Since the 1930s (with the exception of WWII), price decrees have only been issued for durations of typically less than a year.
—Edict on Maximum Prices, Wikipedia
Whenever you hear ‘price controls’ or fixed prices of any kind remember the Maximum and remember that it always fails: it failed in Roman times, during the French Revolution, during the Russian Revolution, it failed in China:
Chinese power plants have plunged into the red since 2010 as they struggled with rising coal prices and capped power tariffs. Frustrated over heavy losses, some plants in Shanxi province which have the lowest grid feed-in prices, have cut generation rates by half.
it failed in the UAE:
Gulf News has learnt that UAE oil retailers are losing an estimated Dh16.5 million per day on petrol sales as the gap between state-set petrol prices and the cost of imports has widened in recent months, “The petrol grade which sells at Dh1.72 a litre in the UAE, needs to be sold at Dh3.16 a litre to reflect its true market price,” a well-placed source at one of the country’s oil retailing companies told Gulf News.
and it will fail wherever and whenever it is used.
As the three examples above clearly show, price control is a levy on wealth holders to finance consumption. A one-time war or emergency related levy is usually accepted by farmers, traders and manufactures, but a permanent price control is mathematically unsustainable. Most price controls are set by military men (Diocletian) or authoritarian governments (Communist Party of China), but what might work in a besieged city does not work on a country-wide scale.
Subsidised prices are another form of price controls and although different than the Maximum they too always end badly. Governments that let prices float face civil unrest (like in Nigeria), those that impose price controls jump from the frying-pan to the fire. Now when the semi-democratic government of Greece imposes price controls, to the expected result, then one wonders how long it will take for the government to turn authoritarian?
Pharmacists are struggling to stock their shelves as the Greek government, which sets the prices for drugs, keeps them artificially low. This means that firms are turning to sell the drugs outside of the country for a higher price—leading to stock depletion for Greeks.
Read: Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation (PDF format, 13.2 MB) or a short review of the book.
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Euro Apocalypse: Meet the Technocrats
Mario Monti
He served as a European Commissioner from 1995 to 2004, with responsibility for the Internal Market, Services, Customs and Taxation from 1995 to 1999 and then for Competition from 1999 to 2004. Monti has also been Rector and President of Bocconi University in Milan. On 12 November 2011, in the midst of a financial crisis, he was invited by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to form a new technocratic government in Italy following the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi. Monti was sworn in as Prime Minister on 16 November 2011, just a week after having been appointed a Senator for Life.
…
Monti actively participates in several major think tanks. He is a member of the Presiderium of the Friends of Europe. He was the founding chairman of Bruegel, another European think tank, which was formed in 2005. He is also the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a think tank founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller.
Monti is a leading member of the exclusive Bilderberg Group. He has also been an international advisor to Goldman Sachs and The Coca-Cola Company.
—Mario Monti, Wikipedia
- Age: 68 years.
- European Commissioner: unelected.
- Rector and President of an Italian University: unelected.
- Senator for life: unelected.
- Prime Minister: unelected.
- Major think tanks.
- Friends of Europe.
- Bruegel.
- Trilateral Commission.
- Bilderberg Group: “an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence” (from Wikipedia).
- International Advisor to multinational corporations.
Lucas Papademos
Previously, he was Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 to 2002 and Vice President of the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010. He was also a visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Financial Studies at the University of Frankfurt.
…
In 1975, he worked with Franco Modigliani on the NAIRU concept, introduced under the term NIRU (non-inflationary rate of unemployment). He taught economics at Columbia University from 1975 until 1984, and then at the University of Athens from 1988 to 1993.
He has served as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1980. He joined the Bank of Greece in 1985 as Chief Economist, rising to Deputy Governor in 1993 and Governor in 1994. During his time as Governor of the national bank, Papademos was involved in Greece’s transition from the drachma to the euro as its national currency.
After leaving the Bank of Greece in 2002, Papademos became the Vice President to Wim Duisenberg (and then Jean-Claude Trichet) at the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010. In 2010 he left that position to serve as an advisor to Prime Minister George Papandreou.
He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.
—Lucas Papademos, Wikipedia
- Age: 64 years.
- Professor of Economic: unelected.
- Senior economist at the Federal Reserve: unelected.
- Chief economist at the Bank of Greece: unelected.
- Involved in Greece’s transition from a national currency to a non-national currency.
- Vice president at the ECB: unelected.
- Advisor to a failed prime minister: unelected.
- Trilateral Commission.
Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View
I discovered on the exceedingly excellent website of Project Gutenberg a book, that although written 110 years ago, speaks to the heart of our modern economy problems. The book is called Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View by Calvin Elliott. I was surprised by how much my own writings about usury follows his arguments. Of course no book about usury could bypass Francis Bacon’s attempt at legitimizing it:
The dictum of Bacon that “Usury gathers the wealth of the realm into few hands” is readily proven and fully verified in the experience of these times. The tendency to centralization under a system of usury or interest-taking is so strong, and the modern result so apparent that the statement only is necessary.
Usury not only enslaves the borrower and oppresses the poor who are innocent of all debt, but it also affects the rich by gathering the wealth of the wealthy into fewer and fewer hands. There is a centralizing draft that threatens and then finally absorbs the smaller fortunes into one colossal financial power. It is as futile to resist this as to resist fate. Wealth cannot be so fortified and guarded as to successfully resist the attack of superior wealth when the practice of usury is permitted. The smaller and weaker fortune, using the same weapon as the larger and stronger, must inevitably be defeated and overcome, and ultimately absorbed.
Rates of interest do not affect the ultimate result. Under a high rate the gathering is rapid, under a low rate the accretions are slower, but the gathering into few hands is none the less sure. Rates of interest only place the convergent center at a nearer or more remote period.
I advise all readers to study this book (do not be put off by the religious chapters at the start and continue to the purely economic arguments in the later chapter).
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Euro Apocalypse: Demographic Genocide
From the start of the 1960′s to 1978 the population of Italy was growing at a rate of 0.65% per year. This is not a high rate of growth, but it was reasonable in a developed industrial country. As long as the GDP (as an indicator for the economy) grew by more than that rate then the GDP per capita would be positive.
Italy population 1961-2005—showing the difference between actual population and a 0.65% growth line
In 1978 something happened to drastically cut the population growth of Italy. It was neither war, famine nor plague; it was an energy crisis, i.e. a drastic increase in the price of oil (see Energy crisis at Wikipedia for historical perspective). The difference between the actual population in 2005 and the linear extrapolation of the 0.65% growth line is about nine million person, that is 18 times the number of Italians lost in the second world war, including civilian deaths due to military action. If the same analysis was done on the whole of Europe I would not be surprised if the number of missing population reached fifty million, almost the total casualties of the second world war.
Nowadays there is an insidious theory contradicting more than 10,000 years of human culture that unfortunately has overtaken the minds of the world’s scientists and politicians :
Roughly speaking, nations or subpopulations with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can support more children.
—Demographic-economic paradox, Wikipedia
Of course this innocent statistic is used by death-mongers to preach the falsehood of “fewer children” equals “better life”—Millions of dollars have been spent to prevent the poor from having children in the name of economic development. To understand the paradox one has to look at it dynamically and not statically, i.e. how did economic change effects population and how did population change effects economic.
Italy GDP, GDP-per-capita and population (percentage change from 1960 to 1999).
The above graph is from the increasingly excellent website of the St. Louis Federal Reserve website. Now let us carefully inspect the graph and see what happened over time, i.e. dynamically: in the mid seventies GDP and GDP-per-capita growth was above 5% percent. This was down from the fifties and sixties, but that was a post-war boom that was destined to end. We can see the effect of the dollar devaluation on Italy: in 1978 GDP and GDP-per-capita plunged to negative territories unseen since the end of the second world war. From that point of time onward the population practically stops growing and the line of GDP-per-capita growth starts to match that of GDP growth, nothing is ‘wasted’ on reproduction all resources are consumed.
The Italian GDP-per-capita was boosted by holding the population constant for a generation. Many other measures improve when the population is constant: people’s spending power improve when they do not have to feed and clothe several dependents for example. The static paradox only exist as the peak of a long-term economic cycle: as growth declines the last generation does not reproduce to maintain the living standards of their parents, or even fail to reproduce; many Italians in their twenties still live with their parents out of necessity. This false economic improvement is interpreted as increased prosperity by mad men of science and politics.
Let us keep moving and see what happens when a society stops having children: economic prosperity or terminal decline? The decline of population is a universal phenomenon in Europe, population growth in Western Europe is due mainly to immigration and their offspring. This map shows that from Germany eastward the population is declining (from Wikipedia):
Population Growth in Europe 2009.
Some mad people praise this decline as beneficial to humanity, but even if we should agree that less population is a positive fact, this decline in the face of economic prosperity is due to a plunge in birth rates below the replacement rate and not due to any kind of cleansing natural phenomenon that culls the weak and leaves the strong. The result of cutting off new supply of people is an ageing society as this map from Wikipedia shows:
Percentage of population over 65 in 2010
Europeans smile when they hear that Africans or Asians have many children to support them in old age and think they can have the benefit of both worlds: few children that do not put a pressure on them while they work and a pension system that supports them when they stop working. This logic is of course impeccable when argued by a single person, it is a pension time-bomb when followed by everyone, this graph (from ZeorHedge) shows the ratio of workers to pensioners in selected countries:
Workers per Retiree (with future projections)
No need for projections into the far future as the future of Europe has already happened in Russia and it goes like this: population decline, economic decline, capital flight, brain drain, collapse of the countryside, hyperinflation, crime, decline of research and development, loss of sovereignty and war. All these factors come with a nasty positive feedback mechanism.
Of course life is not a mechanical clock it is full of cross-currents and mighty winds; Russia for example enjoined eight years of boom (2000-2008) despite the capital flight and the depopulation of the countryside that was going on. When Georgia tried to play with Russia’s national security it was crushed in three days. Despite all that the main trend for Russia has been since 1914 and still is downwards.
The outlook for Europe is bleak, but the path is unknown and it might even go up at certain points. What I am sure of is that there must be a price paid for the benefits enjoyed from committing demographic genocide. I repeat what I once wrote: Societies that cannot reproduce themselves are dead.
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Euro Apocalypse: The Life and Times of Angela Merkel
Five hundred years ago the stone age world that existed in the Americas ended and a new age of European dominance started. Now after five hundred years of European dominance that world, in turn, is coming to an end. I will be charting the revelation of this ending in a series of posts. As I explained elsewhere this ending is not physical but rather historical.
Nothing strikes me as perplexing and at the same time expected as the leadership of Europe by Angela Merkel. I will start with expected: reading history one finds always the least suited leaders at the end when crises comes to a high point and the times require a venerable Cincinnatus. Perplexing for the same reason: she is the least suited person to be the leader of Europe at this time of acute crises.
I will not review, in this post, the historical law of unsuited leaders coinciding with historical decline. I will identify the odd points in the life of Merkel. In times of social strength and historical rise a person’s background is of the most importance; Meritocracy is based on the fallacy of Individualism. This of course either persist beyond historical usefulness resulting in unqualified people in the high ranks (Europe circa 1914) or weakens considerably resulting in people like Merkel coming to the forefront of society.
let us see what Wikipedia has to say about Merkel’s background:
Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg, West Germany, the daughter of Horst Kasner (1926–2011), a Lutheran pastor and a native of Berlin, and his wife, Herlind (born 1928 in Danzig, as Herlind Jentzsch), a teacher of English and Latin. Her mother was once a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Her grandparents on her mother’s side, one of them being Masurian, lived in Elbing/Elbląg in East Prussia. Merkel stated that she is one quarter Polish in an interview with Der Spiegel in 2000.
—Angela Merkel, Wikipedia.
- She was born in WEST Germany at the time when millions where emigrating from East to West Europe.
- Her parents grew under Nazi rule and witnessed very difficult times for Germany.
- Her mother was born in Danzig in 1928. The Free City of Danzig does not exist anymore, the majority German population driven out and replaced with Polish residents.
- It seems that her mother was once an SPD district councilor (the Google translate of the article cited in Wikipedia is unclear). The time frame of this is not stated; it could have been in West Germany after 1945 or after unification.
- Her grandparents were not only Polish but Masurians! Protestant Poles: probably seen as sub-human Slavs by Germans and heretic devils by Poles.
By 1954 Merkel’s parents were in Hamburg in West Germany, this is very important as we shall see next. Growing under Nazi rule is not a problem in itself, neither growing during the Depression or World War II; any leader’s parents would have lived in the same time as Merkel’s parents. The point is that most people who came out of those times abandoned all kinds of beliefs and concentrated on material life, unlike Merkel’s father who became a Pastor. Religion is fine by me—I even think it is a prerequiste of greatness—but joining a religious institution is point in need of an answer; as a native of Berlin it could not have been conservative rural upbringing for example. Any biography of Merkel that does not answer this question is a waste of time.
Merkel is one quarter dislocated; the Masurian connection is very important as they are half way between German and Polish and have been physically dislocated from their homeland after 1945. Merkel’s parentage is not similar to most Germans.
Merkel’s father studied theology in Heidelberg and, afterwards, in Hamburg. In 1954 her father received a pastorate at the church in Quitzow (near Perleberg in Brandenburg), which then was in East Germany, and the family moved to Templin. Thus Merkel grew up in the countryside 80 km (50 mi) north of Berlin. Gerd Langguth, a former senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, states in his book that the family’s ability to travel freely from East to West Germany during the following years, as well as their possession of two automobiles, leads to the conclusion that Merkel’s father had a “sympathetic” relationship with the communist regime, since such freedom and perquisites for a Christian pastor and his family would have been otherwise impossible in East Germany.
—Angela Merkel, Wikipedia.
- Her family moved to East Germany as millions were leaving (see above).
- Her parents are clearly from urban background but Merkel grew up in the countryside.
- I did not read Langguth’s book and whether he confirmed or denied the view of “sympathetic relationship”. The Wikipedia article does not resolve the point. The fact remains that Merkel’s family lived differently to most East Germans.
Like most pupils, Merkel was a member of the official, Socialist-led youth movement Free German Youth (FDJ). However, she did not take part in the secular coming of age ceremony Jugendweihe, which was common in East Germany, and was confirmed instead. Later, at the Academy of Sciences, she became a member of the FDJ district board and secretary for “Agitprop” (Agitation and Propaganda). Merkel herself claimed that she was secretary for culture. When Merkel’s onetime FDJ district chairman contradicted her, she insisted that: “According to my memory, I was secretary for culture. But what do I know? I believe I won’t know anything when I’m 80.” Merkel’s progress in the compulsory Marxism-Leninism course was graded only genügend (sufficient, passing grade) in 1983 and 1986.
Merkel was educated in Templin and at the University of Leipzig, where she studied physics from 1973 to 1978. While a student, she participated in the reconstruction of the ruin of the Moritzbastei, a project students initiated to create their own club and recreation facility on campus. Such an initiative was unprecedented in the GDR of that period, and initially resisted by the University of Leipzig. However, with backing of the local leadership of the SED party, the project was allowed to proceed. Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. She learned to speak Russian fluently, and earned a statewide prize for her proficiency. After being awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) for her thesis on quantum chemistry, she worked as a researcher and published several papers.
—Angela Merkel, Wikipedia.
- I am sure the Jugendweihe ceremony was nonsensical and at least confirmation was part of German cultural history, the point is that Merkel did not participate in the social event of her age.
- She did not study at the University of Leipzig, but at the Karl-Marx-University, Leipzig. The name change is not just superficial change, it is important to separate between a German university and an Eastern block university. Leningrad is not the same city as St. Petersburg and Apple Computer is not the same company as Apple Inc.
- At university she participated in an unprecedented initiative of that period, again Merkel’s life is different than most people.
- Backing by the local governing party is at best questionable.
- After university she worked in the most important research institution of East Germany, an institute founded by Soviet Military Administration. The academy was named ‘Academy of Sciences of the GDR’ at the time when Merkel worked there.
- She became a member of the FDJ district board, even though she did not participate in the Jugendweihe. Clearly she is the kind of person who might join an institution without really believing in its ideology.
Merkel’s youth is atypical of East Germans. Clearly her life differed from the lives of West and East Germans. Her political activity at university is questionable at best. Her 12 years working for the scientific arm of a totalitarian state is never mentioned. Her lame denial of her role (and not what she actually did) is a small note on the fact that she was a member of FDJ district board and was secretary (of a committee I presume) for either culture or propaganda.
Whether she was or was not secretary of propaganda is not as important as her denial. Is it plausible that a research scientist would not have documentation of her work in the FDJ district board that could definitely resolve this point without resorting to claims of early-age dementia? In 1990 the academy was disbanded due to its role in the GDR. Merkel, a former FDJ district board member, did not suffer from the association with the academy.
I am not sure about East Germany but scientists in the Soviet Union had a room of freedom more than the average citizen. The least we know is that the academy had two dozen West German members.
In 1989, Merkel got involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, joining the new party Democratic Awakening. Following the first (and only) democratic election of the East German state, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government under Lothar de Maizière.
At the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag from the constituency Stralsund – Nordvorpommern – Rügen, which is coextensive with the district of Vorpommern-Rügen. This has remained her electoral district until today. Her party merged with the west German CDU and she became Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl’s 3rd cabinet. In 1994, she was made Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her political career. As one of Kohl’s protégées and his youngest cabinet minister, she was referred to by Kohl as “mein Mädchen” (“my girl”).
—Angela Merkel, Wikipedia.
- Going from the ivory tower of research to politics is not so strange, giving Merkel’s history (membership in an FDJ district board) and the surge of public into politics since 1989. Becoming a member of the caretaker government is a big step, to say the least.
- Elected to parliament on the 2nd of December 1990, exactly two months after unification on the 3rd of October 1990. She has been a member of parliament for the last 19 years.
- On the 17th of January 1991 she entered the government as a minister.
- Kohl called her “mein Mädchen”, later she would be called “Mutti” a kind of an over-bearing mother.
Merkel was elected to represent Vorpommern-Rügen a district on the Baltic Sea. It is not clear whether she had any connection with this area before the elections. The Minister for Women and Youth actually has no children of her own.
When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 general election, Merkel was named Secretary-General of the CDU. In this position, Merkel oversaw a string of Christian Democrat election victories in six out of seven state elections in 1999 alone, breaking the SPD-Green coalition’s hold on the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the states. Following a party financing scandal, which compromised many leading figures of the CDU (most notably Kohl himself, who refused to reveal the donor of DM 2,000,000 claiming he had given his word of honour and the then party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, Kohl’s hand-picked successor, who wasn’t cooperative either), Merkel criticized her former mentor, Kohl, and advocated a fresh start for the party without him. She was elected to replace Schäuble, becoming the first female chair of her party, on 10 April 2000. Her election surprised many observers, as her personality offered a contrast to the party she had been chosen to lead; Merkel is a Protestant, originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU is a male-dominated, socially conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany, and the Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has deep Catholic roots.
—Angela Merkel, Wikipedia.
- Eight short years after joining the party—after joining the country for that matter—Merkel becomes the Secretary-General; two years later she became the leader.
- Merkel did not hesitate in criticizing her former mentor, leader, political father and a giant of the party and political class of Germany.
- Her personality might have been in contrast to the party, but her background was surely in contrast to the whole population: neither a typical West nor East German background.
From taking over the party Merkel was on fast path to ruling Germany.
I find it perplexing that the fate of Europe hinges on a woman who went from the ivory tower of scientific research to the bubble of federal government bypassing normal life altogether. The fate of Europe is in the hands if this childless Mutti who has never managed a business or worked in the private sector in any capacity, a woman who has never experienced the average life of a citizen in a liberal capitalistic society. The sovereignty of Germany is the hands of woman who gladly saw (and voted for) her country annexed by another to her direct benefit; would she surrender the sovereignty of Germany if she could be the president of Europe?
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2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Will Merkozy Succeed Where Charles V, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler Failed
After a couple of centuries of coma, Europe woke up and the last feudal lord of Europe–Charles V (1500–1558)–tried to unite it
As the heir of three of Europe’s leading dynasties—the House of Habsburg of the Habsburg Monarchy; the House of Valois-Burgundy of the Burgundian Netherlands; and the House of Trastámara of Crown of Castile-León & Aragon—he ruled over extensive domains in Central, Western, and Southern Europe; and the Spanish colonies in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia.
then after a bloody hundred years the absolute king of France–Louis XIV (1638–1715)–tried to unite Europe:
Ultimately, in often triumphant wars against several great European alliances, Louis gave France ten new provinces, an overseas empire and the pre-eminent position in Europe. His political and military victories, as well as numerous cultural achievements, earned France the admiration of Europe for its success, power and sophistication. Much of Europe began to emulate French manners, values, goods and way-of-life. The European elite even conversed increasingly in predominantly French. Louis himself became the model for many Enlightenment monarchs.
and just like clock work a hundred years later the enlightened king of France–Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)–tried to unite Europe:
In 1799, he staged a coup d’état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—involving every major European power. After a streak of victories, France secured a dominant position in continental Europe, and Napoleon maintained the French sphere of influence through the formation of extensive alliances and the appointment of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French client states.
and a hundred years later the dictator of Germany–Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)–was going to achieve what the French failed to do, and he did only to lose it all somewhere between Minsk and Stalingrad:
Hitler’s avowed aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe. His foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. He oversaw the rearmament of Germany and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, which led to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
Under Hitler’s direction, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army.
And what do you think is happening now, almost a hundred years since the Germans started their tragic attempt, the French and the Germans are attempting a joint unification of Europe, only this time they seem to have chosen the most ill-suited pair of clowns to do the job: the beast known as Merkozy!
Many Europeans realize that their futures are being increasingly dictated by Germany and France — in that order of importance — personified by a mashup of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy dubbed “Merkozy.” The two leaders are pressing financial remedies in lock-step with market forces and faceless officials from institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
—Europe crisis makes pecking order clear: ‘Merkozy,’ then the rest
These two are the worst kind of political animals; both have dubious family histories and a record of opportunism. Merkel who benefited from the union of the two Germanies, now want to unite all of Europe:
Standing before a backdrop with the slogan “For Europe. For Germany” – a reversal of the normal order of things in Germany politics – Dr Merkel reminded delegates that these are far but normal times in Europe.
“The task of our generation now is to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and, step by step, create a political union,” she said. “It’s time for a breakthrough to a new Europe and it’s time to think beyond day to day, towards a permanent solution.”
All past attempts ended in blood socked wars. The first three attempts were milestones marking the rise of Europe, the German attempt–lasting from 1914 to 1945–marked the decline of Europe. The latest attempt marks the death of Europe; the next attempt at unifying Europe will come from an outside power and it will probably be successful.
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Do Marines Dream of Police Brutality?
The former Marine, who spent a year living in Moline not long after returning from Iraq, was injured in a demonstration Tuesday in Oakland, Calif.
A projectile hit him in the head and fractured his skull, leaving him at first in critical condition in a hospital. His family holds officers responsible for what’s being considered Occupy Wall Street’s first major clash with police.
Thousands have viewed online videos of the incident, including one that shows an officer toss a flash grenade into a small crowd trying to help Olsen as he lay motionless in the street.
The US military is split 80/20: 80% support to 20% combat. Most of those who join the military—and they don’t volunteer, otherwise everyone who has a job is a ‘volunteer’—do so for economic reasons and try as best as they can to join the 80% support part of the military and avoid like the plague the fifth that does all the fighting.
When American soldiers were sent to Iraq and were exposed to some minor fighting they came back psyched out of their minds, because they never thought they would see, nor were really trained for, combat, they joined for economic reasons and were trained for support roles, fighting and all it entails were never really part of the equation—Combat troops were psyching-out because instead of the maximum 90 days of combat they were being deployed for 12 to 14 months.
In the US Army most infantry are support, there is no real infantry fighting force in the Army, the fighting forces are artillery, tanks and such heavy units; special forces are like bullies, they fight 10 to 1 or run away. The US Army does not utilise infantry, that would be foolish; they might as well deploy a phalanx to the battlefield. When, in the rare occasion, the military needs infantry they send in the Marines. The Marines are sent in because, simply put, they are the ones who joined to kill and were trained to do just that and don’t mind taking minor casualties to see combat.
I will not cite the long list of atrocities committed by Marine units in Iraq, because atrocities is the only outcome of deploying Marines to occupied cities in far away lands, the only result. You train soldiers to kill anything that moves and then deploy them to the most hostile areas in Iraq, the outcome will be mayhem.
War crimes will always be punished, just read the cautionary tale of Troy: Ajax drowned for raping Cassandra in the temple of Athena, too bad he didn’t respect places of worship. Odysseus was lost for 10 years before returning home a day for each day of the war, too bad he used his gifts for deceit and trickery. Agamemnon was killed by his wife, too bad he didn’t spare the babes of Troy. Achilles crimes being so heinous, his punishment came before the war ended: killed by an arrow, like a rabbit instead of a death befitting a great warrior, too bad he didn’t honour the dead. As for the Trojans, legends claim that they were the Roman’s ancestor, who later destroyed the Greek world
No crime goes unpunished in this world, it might take a while but the punishment will come at the end.
See Also:
How Sausage The Riot Dog Bankrupted Greece
Stray dogs in Athens don’t look like stray dogs in other big cities. Many, Sausage included, wear collars and tags.
Instead of rounding them up and destroying them, the municipal authorities of Athens pay to feed more than 2,000 of them. They are neutered, given vaccines, identified with microchips and released back onto the street, wearing a tag with a phone number to call if they are in – or causing – trouble.
You can see them snoozing in the sunshine by a statue, or loitering with intent in groups of two or three outside a cafe.
“In most European countries, they solve this problem with euthanasia. But Greek culture is against that. Our law is about rehabilitating the dogs,” said Makri. “People here take care of them and love them. They are like everyone’s dog.”
For a time there was talk that the financial crisis – the same crisis that has prompted the demonstrations that brought Sausage his fame – would force the city to halt the stray dog program, set up a year before the 2004 Olympics.
The program was indeed interrupted by a reorganization in recent months, but it has resumed, said Deputy Mayor Angelos Antonopoulos, himself a veterinarian. referring to the program’s most famous client, the mayor said, “The municipality takes especial care of him because he’s so lovable. And he’s also a symbol – a symbol of freedom.”
—Introducing Sausage, the Athens riot dog, The Daily Star [my emphasis]
One would think that Greece being so humane to stray dogs it would be even more humane to the multitude of migrants who land on its shores. The fact is that the conditions of migrants in Greece are so inhumane other countries (the heartless ones who destroy stray dogs) who are members of the Dublin Regulation have stopped returning migrants to Greece:
There is no functioning asylum system in Greece. Asylum seekers’ requests are regularly rejected by the dozen, with only minuscule numbers seeing their applications approved. In 2009, the appeal body in Greece where asylum seekers could seek redress was abolished. Those seeking protection are exposed to arbitrary detention in overcrowded camps with squalid conditions and inadequate food. Refugees living at large in Greece are refused help from government agencies. They are forced to beg for alms and live without shelter.
—German Supreme Court fails to defend right to asylum [my emphasis]
The state in Greece, like many other countries, have outgrown its natural size by five-folds and instead of being supported by the economy it now supports the economy in end-of-days kind of reversal. Half of Greece’s economic output is state outlaies based on receipts amounting to only two-fifths of the economy; that in a nutshell is the problem with Greece. If Greece defaulted on its debts tomorrow it would be cut-off from the debt market, resulting in an instant 10% economic decline at the same time the banks (being the creditors of the government) would fail and the government would not have any cash to nationalize them and protect the depositors the same way Iceland did.
The state in Greece have to find acceptable ways to spend money; to the benefit of employees and suppliers. Caring for stray dogs employ a number of people and benefit local suppliers without angering voters, caring for foreigners in tough economic times is unacceptable to Greek voters. German voters should take cue from their counterparts on the Aegean and stop caring for stray states.
See Also:
Will the Fed ever Get Paid Back: Operation Twist in Two Simple Graphs
The composition of the Federal Reserve’s treasuries’ holdings that I discussed ten months ago (see Fed Holdings: Short vs. Long Term Securties) is now at the center of the Fed’s monetary policy:
The Federal Open Market Committee concluded its September 21, 2011 Meeting at about 2:15PM EDT by announcing the implementation of Operation Twist. This is a plan to purchase $400 billion of bonds with maturities of 6 to 30 years and selling bonds with maturities less than 3 years, thereby extending the average maturity of the Fed’s own portfolio
—History of Federal Open Market Committee actions, Wikipedia
This how the Fed’s holdings were split in January 2007:
Federal Reserve treasuries holdings January 2007: short-term in blue, long-term in red
Four years, nine months and one financial crisis later it looks like this:
Federal Reserve treasuries holdings September 2011: short-term in blue, long-term in red
Operation Twist is the implementation of the Fed’s promise to keep interest rates low until 2013. Investors do not want stable low rates, they want declining rates. Short term rates are already at zero, so longer term rates have to decline to satisfy the financial world. Interest rates have been declining since their highs 30 years (see Liquidating the Debt of the United States) and as long as they keep declining the financial structure built after Nixon closed the gold window will survive; when they start rising that structure will die and so will the fiat dollar with it.
Twisting might have once worked, but that was back in 1961 when the dollar was linked to gold. Extending the average maturity of the treasuries today means that while investors roll over their bills at higher rates, as the dollar starts to lose the remaining one percent of value it still has, the Fed will be stuck with long dated treasuries. A positive feedback loop descending all the way to zero dollar value.
If you want to make your own graphs you can use this FRED graph to get you started.
