Courtesy of Jaime Falcon.
Max Keiser discusses the mess created by bankers and central bankers, and the abysmal performance of Barack Obama:
Europe is a distraction: Concern about Europe and the Euro are misplaced. The real trouble spots in the world are the UK and Japan. That’s what we will be talking about in 6 months.
What is happening in Europe: Policy makers are extorting us into accepting things like transforming the European Stability Mechanism – the new financing fund – into a bank, allowing them 10 to 100 times leverage, enabling them to recapitalize and refinance 5 to 10 trillion Euros in debt. That will make many bankers fabulously wealthy. There will be no change in terms of political power. But the Europe will probably not break up. There is a lot of leveraging potential left in Europe.
What has become of Greece: The Troika, including the IMF, the EU, and the ECB, got Greece to sign off on the memorandum which passed sovereignty from Greece to the IMF. George Papandreou, the leader of Greece at the time, was going to have a referendum on that until the Troika told him he was not going to have a referendum.
Iceland did much better: The president of Iceland did put the question to referendum. The people of Iceland voted it down. That country is now thriving because they got rid of their banker infestation problem.
The result of the Greek capitulation: Greece gave away their sovereignty to the Troika. Greece is not a sovereign state. Leaving the Eurozone is no longer up to them. The IMF is in Greece with hundreds of agents. The goal of the Troika is to acquire Greece’s income-producing assets for next to nothing – their ports, the lottery, the airports, the toll roads – for the benefit of the patrons of the IMF.
European Central Bank policy is producing a post-capitalism 2-tier economy that benefits central bankers and their friends: The European Central Bank is swapping toxic assets from banks all over Europe for fresh short-term treasury paper. They are expanding their balance sheet to accommodate toxic debts and they are suppressing interest rates. This is to keep the debt service manageable on the junk that they have acquired. It is causing a 2-tier global economy where the added liquidity is driving up asset prices of very high end items; rare paintings, yachts, and exotic islands are appreciating because of the money central banks are using to keep interest rates low. But those policies are also serving to keep incomes low and interest on savings even lower; no fresh capital is being earned. You cannot have capitalism without capital. What you end up with is a post-capitalism system. It is a system of command and control being run by central bankers for central bankers and their friends.
The example of Ireland: Look what happened to Ireland. Before the crisis, Ireland had very little public debt. After the crisis, the government agreed to transfer 10 times the country’s GDP in debt from Anglo Irish Bank – one bank – onto the government’s balance sheet. And then to pay for that debt the government imposed austerity on the people. If we were in the back alley of a ghetto somewhere and that happened, it would be called a lynching, a robbery, a gang rape.
How Franklin Delano Roosevelt handled a similar situation in the 1930’s: The Crisis today is an echo of the crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. When Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office, he declared a bank holiday, he revalued the dollar, he put together the Pecora Commission to investigate banker crimes. Hundreds of bankers went to jail. He set the stage for what became known as the American Century.
Barack Obama’s legacy: Contrast what FDR did after the crash, to what Barak Obama has done. He came into office after a similar crisis. What did Barack Obama do? He kept Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner in office – the three primary architects of the crisis. He embraced Wall Street. He did the exact opposite of FDR. Barack Obama will go down in history as the American president that killed America.
Obligatory election year note of caution: Mitt Romney may be as bad or worse.
