The Euro is to the EU as Christianity was to Charlemagne!

Western Europe (now unhappily including its offshore British Isles), stands on the brink of its worst catastrophe over centuries of history! Over the coming Easter weekend, while our corrupt rulers vacation at huge expense in their luxurious homes or in outrageously priced hotels (leaving little to report on our progress towards calamity) I will take a look back through history to see what if anything we can learn from similar, although affecting far fewer people, periods in our past. These reviews begin today with the Emperor Charlemagne.

The fall of the Carolingian Empire brought to an end a period of peace and prosperity across a large part of Western Europe.

As my wife writes in her the first chapter of a forthcoming book to be published later this year and provisionally entitled, "Romanesque Revealed":

Charlemagne’s vast empire engendered the ideal of a unified Christian community under one government. After the death of Charlemagne in 814, the Carolingian empire began to crumble, as its strength rested more on Charlemagne’s personal qualities than on any strong economic or political governance. The empire was too large to administer and consisted of too many diverse people, who were only unified by their Christianity. As central governance waned, lords and noblemen exercised authority in their own regions. Simultaneous invasions came from all directions. Many towns and cities were devastated by Northmen (Vikings), Muslims and Magyar raids. 

Charlemagne's rule depended, therefore, upon faith, it had, merely, the illusion of power, which disappeared as the early church became corrupt and simple people consequently lost their strong beliefs.

The driving force behind the Euro was former EU Commission  President, Jaques Delors, fanatical socialist on the French model and close confidant of the former Vichy Government member François Mitterand. President Sarkozy's strident defence of the Euro Currency at Davos this year, and his pledge that with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, he would fight for the money to the end, rings hollow already, as the reality of the True Finns victory in Finland forces President Sarkozy to face the prospect of defeat before Marine Le Pen with her potent promise of an In/Out referendum for the French, not just on the €, but on EU membership itself. Nor can Merkel herself now feel secure in the face of a string of local election losses and growing voter discontent over the increasing costs of the ever more numerous bail outs and their self-evident pointlessness.

Some view the lessons of the fall of Charlemagne's empire as being due to the lack of a common tax regime. Eurosceptics should beware and prepare to thwart any attempt  to impose such a common tax system across the EU, which will almost certainly become the last ditch attempt by the federalists to preserve their corrupt rule and their thoroughly rotten self-serving project!

Eurofederalists on the other hand could, this Easter, surely reflect on the reality of what the EU has now become. It would be incredible if moral human beings of either principle and/or conscience could continue to give their support to the dreadful institution that the EU has been deliberately shaped to become!

The stinking swamp that is the Euro currency.

This blog wrote off the single euro currency as presently constructed, long, long ago, before last Christmas if I recall correctly. It is worth reminding ourselves of the present state of play however and this report from Canada provides a useful update, from which I have selected a few choice quotes:

On Greek bonds -

Ten-year bonds yielding in the neighbourhood of 12 per cent are nothing if not the stuff of junk collectors’ dreams.

 In fact, the 10-year Greek bonds now trade at a yield nearly twice as high as Lebanese debt (6.25 per cent); Sri Lanka (9.25 per cent); Egypt (6.85 per cent for nine-year bond) and even Iraq (7 per cent for bond maturing in 2028) are regarded as safer bets in the bond world. If you’re looking for an almost equivalent risk, try barely functioning Pakistan (14.3 per cent).

While the comment concludes as follows:

In the meantime, we have the following unfolding in Europe:

 * The new Irish government wants the EU to reduce its average interest charge of 5.8 per cent on €45-billion worth of loans. And it is resisting pressure from higher-tax France and Germany to boost its corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent.

*They can deny it all they like, but Portugal and Belgium are almost certainly going to join the bailout queue. And Austria and Spain aren’t out of the woods either. But the problems Belgium and Portugal face are more imminent – namely a raft of maturing debt. Portugal will have to fork out the equivalent of 1.9 per cent, 2.7 per cent and 2.9 per cent of GDP to meet obligations maturing on March 18, April 15 and June 15, respectively. For Belgium, the totals it will have to pay out or roll over between mid-March and mid-April amount to a whopping 5.3 per cent of GDP.

And European leaders wonder why investors are demanding record compensation for the risk of owning these and other struggling members’ bonds?

In all this it is absolutely essential to remember that everything that is unfolding has been deliberately contrived, to allow the complete takeover of Europe by the corporatist nightmare that is the present EU. Democracy was the first sacrifice, now any pretence of self-governance for the victimised ex-nations is being stripped away.

English speakers living outside the EU, must watch in horror if they remember the sacrifices made by their forefathers to restore liberty to Europe, twice in fact in only the first half of the last century.  Britons must stand condemned at their own stupidity and shamed at the deceit and decadence of their rulers!

Sarkozy at Davos - Euro break-up UNTHINKABLE!

Euro on the skids!

The Pound Sterling has broken through the 1.20 to the Euro level, while in the US the crisis torn currency has fallen below $1.30.

Next week sees Portugal seeking 10 year funds and no doubt Spain, Belgium and Italy back in the firing line.

How Germany's Euro economic angst could disturb strategic considerations.

There is a very interesting report on EurActiv, linked here, titled Central European fears and the German 'question mark' which concludes with the following paragraphs:

The lack of guarantees extends beyond the American obsession with the Middle East. Central Europeans are having difficulty finding another Western European power, outside of Sweden, with an ear for their security concerns. They feel they need to counter Russia on their own, with limited backup.

There is always Germany, which Central Europeans should theoretically be able to turn to for support. At least on paper, Berlin is an EU and NATO ally. However, specific to the Central European fears — and a reality that is rarely spoken publicly in Central Europe — is the fact that Germany is becoming unhinged from the Cold War-era institutions.

Russia may be the obvious security threat, but it is Germany's evolving role — and, crucially, its warming relations with Moscow — that troubles Warsaw and other Central European capitals, most precisely because it is unclear which way Berlin is heading. Or, as Araud put it in 2007, Germany may have been 'America's model ally' during the Cold War, but it is quickly becoming a 'question mark'.

The mis-governance in the economic sphere now evident on both sides of the Atlantic will become ever more dangerous when such stunning incompetence is seen to spread to more critical areas of concern!

This blog called the Euro's demise correctly - Now for fragmentation

At this time one week ago this blog correctly predicted that last week would prove the final crunch point for the Euro, read here.

It was perhaps fitting that it was this blogger who stood almost entirely alone in discerning the exact moment of the euro's demise, after all I have been blogging almost daily on the certainty of its collapse since its creation, first on the Financial Times Forums and over the past several years on Ironies and Ironies Too.

In the latter years, as I have been forced to try to adapt to an azerty keyboard, the punctuation of my posts has not always been as I intended and I appreciate my regular readers' forbearance.

Chaos will be the rule over the coming period of change. Pay no attention to the predictions of those now in power who have ever asserted that this supposed unthinkable catastrophe could ever occur. Democracy must somehow eventually emerge, perhaps in smaller units at first, the "Fragmentation" previously predicted on this blog, see my New Year's posting for 2010 linked here.

As a parting post, however, that is not the particular one I have chosen to quote in full regarding all the always perfectly foreseeable dangers that now lie before us. Instead I have chosen one from last March on Britain's election campaign, for it highlights the real difficulty the EU 27 former nations now face. Our corrupt and lying politicians and the political parties which they thoughtlessly and unconscionably serve are the real villains, we would be best if they could be deprived of any role in preparing a way ahead. All my other posts serve as evidence of this dreadful, albeit sometimes well-intentioned, EU project, the archives remain available at present, unlike all my predictions as NM on the FT Forums!.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010

The poison from Political Parties.

Any rational person, watching the proceedings during Prime Minister Questions and the Budget Statement that immediately followed in the chamber of the House of Commons in Westminster yesterday afternoon, who was aware of the realities regarding the governance of the former nation of Great Britain and the true state of its economy, could only conclude that the only proper place for those participating in such a farcical scam would be jail.

Party politics, as developed in the Constitutional Democracy that governed the independent sovereign state which was Great Britain and Northern Ireland, up until the enactment of the European Communities Act in 1972, delivered a form of alternating party democracy to the nation which served it well and thus compensated for the non-democratic features essential in a whipped parliamentary system.

In the "post-democratic" era (a phrase tellingly now in frequent usage within the EU) the party system sends only corrupt individuals to Government or other positions of power, as no person with honour or integrity would demean themselves by joining the thoroughly rotten political parties who control all access to such positions of power, whether within Westminster or the EU.

Only the electorate can address this problem by refusing to vote for any candidate from the three main parties in the forthcoming election.

A system of direct democracy along Swiss lines might give hope that the deep sickness in Britain's system might eventually be turned around. Fragmentation or worldwide totalitarianism will be the alternative non-democratic outcomes.

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Thanks for bearing with my ramblings. When points need making or confusion reigns, check back to this site, I may have points to make but the saga of the euro at present seems to be at an end, for once the MSM can be relied upon to provide the detail if not pinpoint the underlying realities!

Irish trade union calls for civil unrest if no General Election is called

The report of the motion carried at the conference of the TEEU is in the Irish Times, linked here. The following is an extract from that report:

The emergency motion, which was put forward by the union’s executive, “condemns the Government for its criminal negligence in the management of the economy and for colluding with the banks in misleading the Irish people as to the seriousness of the crisis we face”.

It says that “this policy of economic sabotage has led to the betrayal of our country and to the loss of the last shreds of our economic sovereignty.

“We now call on the Government to resign, hold a general election and face the verdict of the electorate.

Elsewhere across the Irish Sea in Britain one newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, carries a report of the threat by major US companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Intel, among other stories on the Irish tragedy, to quit Ireland if the country is forced by EU heavyweights to raise the rate of corporation tax in the country.

Another Sunday paper, The Observer has a hard-hitting editorial in which it blames Ireland's politicians for the mess and also calls for an early election, apparently failing to recognise that Britain's politicians are equally rotten and culpable in bankrupting their nation whose own complete sacrifice of sovereignty presently seems merely somewhat delayed. In signing up to the Lisbon Treaty all countries accepted the single currency of the union as being the presently structured euro (albeit some with highfalutin sounding opt outs), economic governance of the eurogroup will in future it is proposed be enforced by a special agency of the ECB described in the ECB document I linked yesterday morning, which for convenience is linked again here.

Britain tried to remain outside the centralising non-democratic clutches of the putative EU in the fifties and sixties by forming EFTA, a free-trade zone beyond the borders of the freedom sapping Common Market. Predatory and protectionist trade practises were imposed by the six founding members of the EU to destroy EFTA and its concept of free trading democratic sovereign states. Regardless of the opt out supposedly contained within the Lisbon Treaty, similar blackmailing economic practises will almost certainly be brought to bear on the UK and other non-eurogroup EU member states if anything like the proposal outlined in the linked ECB paper, now backed by Dominique Strauus-Kahn, head of the IMF, are ever put into effect.

Seventy years on a new battle for Britain is taking place, our politicians and media are either unaware of that fact or endeavouring to keep the British public in ignorance of the facts by pretending the disaster taking place in the former sovereign state of Ireland is something of little other than financial concern to the other peoples of the archipelago of Britain. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth!

ECB has 130 billion exposure to Ireland's banks.

A good report on the present status of Ireland's subjugation is here, from which comes this: 

The ECB is worried they can lose the money they have given to the banks — that would be a nightmare," said a source close to the negotiations. The ECB has lent €130bn to the banks, a quarter of its book, while AIB admitted it lost €13bn in deposits this year and Bank of Ireland €10bn.

 The article claims Ireland has retained the right to continue with its12.5 % corporation tax rate, for how long that will be the case remains to be seen! Note this ominous sentence emphasised by the blog editor in the paragraphs below:

An EU source said: "We have realised the corporation tax issue is a casus belli [incident of war] for the Irish. We had something similar with the Greeks who did not want to touch their military spend, among the highest in the EU, so it was not touched."

However, he added that while the rate, at 12.5% the second lowest in the EU, would stay, there were other ways to address the loopholes that anger Berlin in particular because they see companies using them to avoid paying tax in Germany.

How will an Irish bailout help Portugal or Spain?

It is a good question contained in this posting's headline "How will an Irish bailout help Portugal or Spain?"..... the answer of course is that it will not, nor of course is it intended that it would. The name of the game from now on is consolidation of the suppression of sovereignty of an entire continent.

Such conquests can never be achieved without pain if not downright widespread misery. For what is coming read the ECB proposals for its new Enforcement Agency from the pdf file, linked here, (especially page 7 onwards of the 14 in total).

Dominique Strauss-Kahn urges centralising EU economic governance outside EU Council!

Now we can discern the end game of this deliberately contrived EU economic crisis emerging from the mists of idealistic daydreams which have befogged the minds of Europe's national leaders down recent decades. (Read Mary Ellen Synon's blog here and here for more on what Germany and France might have been scheming. The end result, however, is now perfectly clear as always predicted on this blog, its forerunner "Ironies" and my novel written last century!)

The head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (possible contender in the next French Presidential elections should President Sarkozy continue to falter and drift downwards in the opinion polls) is reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning to be calling for huge handovers of sovereignty in taxation and economic governance to a centralised EU body beyond national or even EU Council control, read here.

The article ends by quoting his claim that the only option is "more cooperation, and greater integration.” Absolutely incorrect and a certain recipe for ever greater resentment and chaos, the only option now is a halt to the EU as presently structured and a considered appraisal of alternatives to achieve a democratic alternative.

ECB already owns Allied Irish?

Interesting report from The Guardian, this evening linked here. A quote:

During a day of feverish speculation over the size of the bailout being negotiated by the Irish government with the EU and International Monetary Fund, Allied Irish Bank reported that its dependence on "monetary authorities" had risen to €27bn (£23bn) from below €10bn in June.

The Tyranny Question that will not go away!

French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, was interviewed on the BBC Today programme this morning and repeatedly asked whether Ireland would be 'permitted' to retain its 12.5% Corporation Tax rate. She repeatedly refused to offer an answer. The interview may be heard from here.

The entire four and a half minute interview is worth listening to but the crucial portion on economic sovereignty comes at the three minute point. The 'shrewd' question that was refused to be answered was the following as paraphrased by the blog editor:

"But can you see the possibility of a bailout being agreed that did not include a change in Iraland's corporation tax rate?"

British aid for Ireland's banks

The Irish Finance Minister, quoted by Reuters, linked here, makes quite clear that any British help for Ireland's banks will be an entirely British matter and nothing whatever to do with the EU, giving George Osborne even greater negotiating flexibility in the Ecofin meeting today where he is not bound by previous illegitimate undertakings made by Alistair Darling as mentioned in the posting immediately below. A quote from Reuters:

POSSIBILITY OF UK ASSISTANCE? If Britain wishes to participate, that's a matter for Britain in the event that a package is needed. That's a matter in the first instance for the United Kingdom. I know they see Ireland as one of their best customers and the United Kingdom is anxious to help in every possible way but I don't want to pre-empt their right to make their own decision in a matter of this type.

In general, the UK has not participated in European Union wide assistance, but I know that the British authorities are anxious to ensure that any help that Ireland needs will be given, so again it's a matter for the United Kingdom authorities, it's not a matter for the Irish matters.

But let's be clear, Britain is not in the eurozone , it's in the sterling area, but the eurozone is determined to protect its own financial system and that's very important.

(Blog editor's added emphasis).

Cameron and Darling be warned, what you offer to Ireland has to be justified by you yourselves, any amounts offered cannot be blamed on the previous administration.

Black hole or the wide, free universe?

"I want to call on every responsible European to resist the centrifugal tendencies and existential alarmism." Olli Rehn, the Finnish EU Commissioner is reported in the press this morning as making this plea in respect of the present crisis facing the inevitable and long predicted demise of the euro currency.

The EU is a black hole, sucking the wealth, democracy, independence and future aspirations of Europe's citizens towards its centre where all is crushed under the massive strains of its corruption and incompetence.

These coming days will prove a test of whether any of its surviving satellite democracies still have the will to break free. George Osborne carries a great weight on his youthful shoulders today in Ecofin - this blog offers him luck and fortitude and the hint that what Alistair Darling signed last May had no legal substance as Darling had by then lost the authority to sign, it having already been removed by the British electorate at the ballot box!

EU heavies head to Dublin to Slash last Shred of Sovereignty

The following are the concluding paragraphs to the statement issued last night by the Ecofin Eurogroup:

We welcome the determination of the Irish government to engage in a short and focused consultation with the commission, the ECB and the IMF in order to determine the best way to provide any necessary support to address market risks, especially as regard the banking sector, in the context of the four-year budgetary plan and the upcoming budget.

We confirm that we will take determined and co-ordinated action to safeguard the financial stability of the euro area, if needed, and that we have the means available to do so.

Treasures from the threads - Number fifty-one

The following comment which deals with all the many flaws of the EU almost at a stroke, comes as a comment to an item on the Euro's demise by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (who ends by sympathising with old friends in the EU about to lose their pensions):

anthonyhaverstock

4 minutes ago

Recommended by
13 people

It is an entirely good thing that the EU is going to break up. Not only is it good for all the countries of this region, but it will serve as an example to all countries all over the world that these sorts of union are undoable. The African Union with its fiat 'Afro' is doomed; after all, if the 'white' people cannot do it, they will claim that it should not be even tried. The same goes for the NAU and all the other nascent unions.

This will not be tried again for two hundred years, at least

Herman Van Rompuy is a globalist, anti liberty bureaucrat of the worst kind, in charge of an entirely unrepresentative, morally and financially bankrupt institution. These people should not be left in charge of box of cereal, much less the money and lawmaking for of hundreds of millions of people.

The EU was a fundamentally flawed idea that had its foul origins in Germany. That it has gotten this far with its outrageous rules and regulations is a testament to the weakness of the people living in the sovereign states that make it up. That being said, the Irish voted against expansion, only to be told to go back and vote again until they get it right. This is the most clear example of the vulgar totalitarianism of the EU.

The European Union, for the sake of the liberty of all the people who live on that continent, must be broken up and abandoned permanently. It is the only way that each country can insulate itself from economic and cultural shocks. Nation states, for all their ills, serve a purpose that mimics the biological function of a skin; they act as a membrane keeping out diseases like bad money and bad people. When that membrane is taken away, you get contagion flowing freely, as well as totalitarianism, unwelcome immigration and cultural erosion.

None of these things profit the people who live in a country. If they did, no one would mind them. The fact of the matter is that the EU is entirely harmful to the people who live in the nations of it. They know it now, not only through their gut feelings, but in their pockets as the Greeks, Irish, Portuguese steal their money.

The launch of the Euro was not premature what exactly are you saying? Are you saying that if it had been launched at an auspicious time, that it would be legitimate? The Euro is illegitimate and inherently flawed, and its nature would not change no matter when it was launched. It is a worthless, immoral fiat currency, controlled by a foreign central bank that is unaccountable, remote and destructive of value. The economies, legal systems, wage bargaining practices, productivity growth, and interest rate sensitivity, of North and South Europe are all irrelevant to the nature of the euro, and you should already understand this having conceded that the dollar is fundamentally flawed, printing money is immoral, and that the Federal Reserve should be abolished.


Delors told colleagues that any crisis would be a “beneficial crisis” Hmmm. This sounds just like a 'conspiracy theory' doesn't it? And what would the benefit of a dollar crisis be, are the two crises being engineered deliberately to benefit the creation of a world currency and world government in a New World Order, the sovereign nations of the world being forced to give up national sovereignty?

Anyone should be able to extrapolate that scenario from your words.

Greece has been effectively colonised by the ECG and the Germans. Ireland and Portugal are next. The populations of these countries have not got a clue about what is happening to them; they just want their 'benefits' to flow uninterrupted.

None of this could be done without central banks and fraudulent fiat currencies. Keynesians and their witchcraft economics are what has made this power grab possible. Shame on you all for peddling and for continuing to peddle this nonsense.

As for political ownership of these policies, this might be the undoing of the EU. If the truth about all of this should spread, and the blame placed correctly, the EU will take the fall instead of the national governments. I cannot see Silvio taking the fall for Van Rompuy.

The EU was illegitimate long before the rejection of the EU Constitution. It is illegitimate for one generation of people to give up the birthrights of future generations. The people today should no more be able to go into debt for future people to pay back than they should be able to vote to cede sovereignly to a foreign power.

As for Ireland, they spent generations spilling their blood to be free. Now they are giving it all up for pieces of worthless paper. With any luck, they will find their spines and cut themselves off from this bankrupt, corrupting and purely destructive EU monster once and for all.

Austria withholding Greek funding!

News for the Euro currency just goes from bad to terrible with this report from Forex Crunch, linked here, which begins as follows:

Austria refuses to transfer its portion in the bailout package to Greece. Why? Greece didn’t meet the conditions it made to the EU about cutting its deficit. No austerity – no payment. As simple as that. Add a refusal from Finland to aid Ireland, and you have a very vulnerable Euro.

Ireland in talks to surrender sovereignty to EU

So farewell to Eire, if Bloomberg TV is to be believed, Ireland is to enter talks removing its need to obtain market financing over the next year or so.

RIP Eire 1922 - 2011?

Watch statements on the Irish 12.5% Corporation Tax Rate to guage the extent of the defeat!

This will not save the Euro currency, read my first posting on this blog of this morning regarding the one sane way forward.

Fannie Mae 30 year bond yield soars skywards!

Is QEII in the USA about to crash and burn?

The jump in yield of the mortgage rate setting Fannie Mae 30 year bond seems to indicate things are going badly awry. Read the LA Times item from here.

It is the mortgage debt in Ireland that now is the greatest threat to that nation's survival, officially not even being discussed at the Eurozone Ecofin meeting, read what I blogged and linked on that topic last week, from here.

The UK is in the same boat as both Ireland and the USA yet the Coalition Government pretends no such worries or even concerns really exist. Oh Really!

The human cost of the euro-currency conspiracy.

The decades long conspiracy to steal the sovereignty of Europe's nation states (long chronicled on this blog) is now beginning to reveal the devestating costs of this terrible tragedy in human terms, read here from the Irish Times.