The European Union - the New Soviet Union?

[George S.]

well the more they are wanting to bail out states the more trouble for the eu they won't sustain it too long i see a complete fall of the eu.

[Onur]

The french elections in 2012 and the next German elections are critical. These 2 elections will decide the fate of EU project. EU will surely die sooner or later but if pro-EU supporters loses elections in these two countries [it`s quite possible], then EU project will see an imminent death.

[Soldier of Macedon]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...?newsfeed=true

Nicolas Sarkozy tells David Cameron: shut up over the euro

David Cameron has begun a week of intense political infighting over Europe by becoming embroiled in a furious row with Nicolas Sarkozy over Britain's role in talks to solve the crisis enveloping the euro.

The bust-up between Cameron and Sarkozy held up the conclusion of the EU-27 summit for almost two hours, with the French president expressing rage at the constant criticism and lectures from UK ministers.

Sarkozy bluntly told Cameron: "You have lost a good opportunity to shut up." He added: "We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings."

The prime minister has torn up his travel plans this week – a move urged on him by Labour leader Ed Miliband in a Guardian interview on Saturday – to attend an emergency heads of state meeting on Wednesday, and has demanded that all 27 EU countries be given the final say over measures to prevent the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis spreading and Europe sliding into deep recession.

On Monday the prime minister is facing both the largest Commons revolt of his premiership and the largest rebellion of eurosceptics suffered by a Conservative prime minister when parliament votes on whether the UK should have a referendum on Europe.

Cameron will meet parliamentary aides in Downing Street before the vote in an attempt to dissuade as many as 10 members of the government minded to rebel against the prime minister, requiring them to resign their posts. The government is sticking to its decision to impose a three-line whip on MPs to vote against the motion despite criticism it has been too heavy-handed.

Officials who witnessed the angry exchanges between Cameron and Sarkozy said the prime minister insisted that the package to be adopted on Wednesday by the 17 eurozone countries had serious implications for non-euro countries in the EU and their interests must be safeguarded. Eventually, after what Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, who chaired the summit, called a "stormy" discussion, the French president secured an agreement that all 27 leaders will first debate the three-pronged package of measures to recapitalise banks, build up the bailout find and write down Greek debt, but then the eurosummit would have the final say at back-to-back summits on Wednesday.

Cameron, however, got his fellow leaders to insert into the final communique recognition that laws on the single market must be upheld and a level playing field safeguarded for countries not in the euro. He later brushed aside the divisions, saying that what mattered was that markets regain confidence that the eurozone is preventing contagion from the Greek debt crisis.

The vote in parliament on Monday will be a testy encounter with his own party on Britain's membership of the EU. The vote calls for a nationwide referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU, renegotiate its treaty with Brussels, or remain a member on current terms. The government will not suffer a defeat, since Labour and the Lib Dems will vote down the motion, but a voluble and sizeable group believe the prime minister should honour pledges once made to allow a national poll on Britain's relationship with Europe. They would like the repatriation of social and employment rights.

On Sunday in Brussels, Cameron used a press conference to appeal directly to potential rebels, talking up the chance of repatriating powers with the "possibility" of treaty change coming on to the agenda as early as December, as euro countries push towards fiscal integration.

He claimed he had proved his ability last year to "exact" a good price when he agreed an EU treaty change that created a new mechanism for bailing out troubled eurozone countries but exempted Britain from having to pay for bailouts from 2013.

It is not clear if this would trigger the government's stated commitment to a referendum because it is due to stage a vote only if new powers are transferred from Westminster to Brussels, and any change by Cameron would be likely to do the reverse.

"If there is a treaty change, that gives Britain an opportunity," Cameron said. "Treaty change can only happen if it is agreed by all the 27 member states of the European Union.

"Any treaty change – as the last treaty change did – is an opportunity for Britain to advance our national interest. The last limited treaty change which brought about the European stability mechanism gave us the opportunity to get out of the euro bailout fund that the last government opted into."

Cameron said: "I've also argued that this crisis means that greater fiscal and economic integration of the eurozone is inevitable. But this must not be at the expense of Britain's national interest. So I've secured a commitment today, which will be in the council's conclusions, that we must safeguard the interests of countries that want to stay outside of the euro, particularly with respect to the integrity of the single market for all 27 countries of the EU.

Academics at Nottingham University predict the number rebelling against the government is likely to top the 41 Conservative MPs who voted against John Major in May 1993 on the third reading of the Maastricht bill – the biggest backbench rebellion for a Tory PM on Europe on whipped business.

They also said 41 was the number who rebelled in October last year over an attempt to make using insulting language a criminal act, which was then the biggest rebellion of Cameron's premiership.

The two sides in the referendum battle fortified their positions, with government ministers defending the decision to impose a three-line whip on the vote brought to the Commons by a petition.

The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said the whip had been put in place because the motion was contrary to government policy and holding a referendum on the EU would be "just a distraction".

The former Conservative leader Lord Howard also weighed in, saying that an EU referendum would be a mistake in current conditions. The former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said he believed a vote for a referendum would make Britain a "laughing stock".

But Cameron faces the likely resignations of some parliamentary aides to ministers and rebellion by the chairman of the 1922 committee, Graham Brady. Lord Tebbit suggested that "not even Ted Heath faced the chairman of the 1922 voting against him".

The number rebelling could hit 90 if the 68 who signed up to the original amendment tabled by the MP for Bury North, David Nuttall combine with another 33 who have signed compromise amendments which ministers say also run counter to government policy. Nuttall would commit the government to holding a referendum by May 2013 but would give the public three options – keeping the status quo, leaving the EU or reforming the terms of the UK's membership.

An amendment from George Eustice, a new but influential MP who used to work for Cameron, calls on the coalition to publish a white paper in the next two years setting out which powers ministers would repatriate from Brussels. The government would then renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU and hold a referendum on the outcome.

Some names on Eustice's list may have signed up in the brief window when they thought Eustice's amendment would come to be adopted by the government as a way of the party high command giving backbenchers a compromise to vote through.The Commons speaker John Bercow may however choose not to call Eustice's amendment.

[Onur]

The European project is now sustained by coup
What we have witnessed is a coup d’état: bloodless and genteel, but a coup d’état none the less. In Athens and in Rome, elected prime ministers have been toppled in favour of Eurocrats – respectively a former Vice-President of the European Central Bank and a former European Commissioner. Both countries now have what are called ‘national governments’, though they have been put together for the sole purpose of implementing policies that would be rejected in a general election.

Italy and Greece are satrapies of Brussels, just as surely as Bosnia or Kosovo. In its Balkan protectorates, the EU overtly favours technocracy as the antidote to ‘populism’ (ie, democracy). Left to themselves, the locals have a tendency to vote for parties that want ethnographic frontiers. The EU's solution is to rule through a series of appointed governors – diplomats (and the odd retired politician) in Bosnia, generals in Kosovo.

Now, like many previous empires, the EU is applying lessons learned through colonial administration to its metropolitan core. Politicians who lean too closely to what their voters want are removed. I don’t mean, of course, that the EU sent in agents provocateurs on a secret mission to destabilise the Italian and Greek regimes. Nor am I suggesting that Brussels was the sole factor in their downfall. Like Margaret Thatcher in 1990, Silvio Berlusconi and George Papandreou already faced strong domestic opposition; in all three cases, the EU simply gave the final shove.

If this sounds like fanciful, read Fraser Nelson in the current Spectator. Fraser reveals the meetings between bankers and federalist leaders who identified the Italian premier as an obstacle to holding the euro together, and quotes oficials boasting that ‘we’re on our way to moving out Berlusconi’. If this is a conspiracy, it’s what HG Wells called an ‘open conspiracy’.

The putsch is the logical culmination of the European scheme – though many Euro-idealists remain blind to that logic. The EU has always been an anti-democratic project. Lacking popular support, rejected in referendum after referendum, it depends on a tight-knit group of functionaries in the Commission and in the member states. Now, in a crisis, the democratic appurtenances and fripperies are discarded. Technocrats in Brussels deal directly with technocrats in Rome and Athens. The people are cut out altogether.

What’s terrifying is that these ‘technocrats’ caused the disaster in the first place. They decided that the survival of the euro mattered more than the prosperity of its constituent members; they presided over the rise in spending and debt; they deliberately overlooked the debt criteria when the euro was launched so as to admit Italy and Greece. Indeed the new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was running his country’s central bank at the time.

In appointing these two Euro-apparatchiks, our masters are signalling in the clearest possible way that nothing will change. Closer integration matters more to them than freedom, more than prosperity, more than the rule of law, more than representative government itself.

November 14th, 2011

By Daniel Hannan

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...ained-by-coup/

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/al...it-squad.thtml

[Risto the Great]

What we have witnessed is a coup d’état: bloodless and genteel, but a coup d’état none the less. In Athens and in Rome, elected prime ministers have been toppled in favour of Eurocrats

There is no other way to interpret this.
I see no chance for social cohesion and suspect more trouble is yet to come for the EU and all financial markets. In fact, the sooner Europe becomes irrelevant in the financial markets, the better the rest of the world will be. It should be dismantled!

[George S.]

i saw this morning on channel 7 the ey total bailout could be as much as 16 trillion euros.
Unbeleivable with italy 1.9 trillion euros & greece 300 billion & more to come.They should put a stop to it before it gets any bigger.

[Onur]

What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe



The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman's interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says. "Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions."

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.

Mr Monti is one of Italy's most eminent economists, and he spent most of his career in academia and thinktankery, but it was when Mr Berlusconi appointed him to the European Commission in 1995 that Goldman Sachs started to get interested in him. First as commissioner for the internal market, and then especially as commissioner for competition, he has made decisions that could make or break the takeover and merger deals that Goldman's bankers were working on or providing the funding for. Mr Monti also later chaired the Italian Treasury's committee on the banking and financial system, which set the country's financial policies.

With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers. The bank's two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro.

Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman's UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalisation he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country's financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland's interest rate this summer.

Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank.

Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn't be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs.

The bank's traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece's unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time.

Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: "It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher."

When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn't involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman.

It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a "voluntary" haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent's big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus.

"My former colleagues at the IMF are running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?" says Simon Johnson. "It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same."

So certain is the financial elite that the banks will be bailed out, that some are placing bet-the-company wagers on just such an outcome. Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm's money that Italian government bonds will not default.

When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history.

The grave danger is that, if Italy stops paying its debts, creditor banks could be made insolvent. Goldman Sachs, which has written over $2trn of insurance, including an undisclosed amount on eurozone countries' debt, would not escape unharmed, especially if some of the $2trn of insurance it has purchased on that insurance turns out to be with a bank that has gone under. No bank – and especially not the Vampire Squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. This is the rationale for the bailouts and the austerity, the reason we are getting more Goldman, not less. The alternative is a second financial crisis, a second economic collapse.

Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it?

18 November 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...e-6264091.html

[makedonche]

OnurInteresting and somewhat frightening article! Still nothing has changed, the rich screwing over the poor, only the methodologies have changed!

[George S.]

What golden saxs & other european countries did to overborrow & knowing full well that trhey will never pay it back is nothing short of criminal,They expect bailouts at all times of difficulty .I regard what they did as criminal & is stealing a lot of hardworking people's money.

[Onur]

Maybe you didn't hear that but Turkish officials already announced that if EU lets Cyprus to become EU president in 2012, Turkey will completely freeze all the relations with EU.

Our current president A. Gul gone to England for an official visit and he was on fire in the most eurosceptic country in the Europe. In a joint press conference with David Cameron, A. Gul said that if EU lets this happen then a half-country would be the leader of a miserable union

‘Miserable EU to be led by half state’
Turkish President Abdullah Gül slammed the prospect of Greek Cyprus taking over the European Union presidency next year as “half a country” leading a “miserable union,”.

Gül said the failure to open new chapters in Turkey’s negotiation process was harming the 27-nation bloc’s reputation, possibly making it suffer its biggest loss of credibility in 2012 when Greek Cyprus takes over the rotating EU presidency in July.

“Now this half a country, this incomplete country will take over the EU presidency,” Gül was quoted as saying by daily Hürriyet newspaper. “There will be a half-presidency leading a miserable union…It is a miserable situation, [the EU] has to question itself. This is the most miserable situation that the EU could have been in.”

Gül also said almost all the chapters in Turkey’s EU accession process cannot be opened, calling this disreputability for the EU. Meanwhile, Turkish Cyprus President Derviş Eroğlu said the EU will have to face its mistake when Turkey freezes relations with the governing body after Greek Cyprus takes over the EU presidency.

November 23, 2011

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.p...217-2011-11-23