The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in
America has nearly succeeded in Europe - a
permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout
for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.
In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former
CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a US$700
billion bank bailout from the US Congress. To pull
it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten
the collapse of the entire global financial system
and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout
was a one-time affair.
Paulson's plea for
a permanent bailout fund - the Troubled Asset
Relief Program or TARP - was opposed by congress
and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011,
European Central Bank (ECB) president
Mario Draghi, former vice
president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to
approve a 500 billion euro (US$657 billion)
bailout for European banks without asking anyone's
permission.
And in January 2012, a
permanent rescue funding program called the
European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in
the dead of night with barely even a mention in
the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on
EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the
hook for whatever the ESM's eurocrat overseers
demand.
The bankers' coup has triumphed in
Europe seemingly without a fight. The ESM is
cheered by eurozone governments, their creditors,
and "the market" alike because it means investors
will keep buying sovereign debt. All is sacrificed
to the demands of the creditors, because where
else can the money be had to float the crippling
debts of the Eurozone governments?
There
is another alternative to debt slavery to the
banks. But first, a closer look at the nefarious
underbelly of the ESM and Goldman's silent
takeover of the ECB ...
The dark side
of the ESM The ESM is a permanent rescue
facility slated to replace the temporary European
Financial Stability Facility and European
Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as
member states representing 90% of the capital
commitments have ratified it, something that is
expected to happen in July 2012.
A
December 2011 YouTube video titled "The shocking
truth of the pending EU collapse!", originally
posted in German, gives such a revealing look at
the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length.
It states:
The EU is planning a new treaty
called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM:
a treaty of debt. ... The authorized capital
stock shall be 700 billion euros. Question: why
700 billion? [Probable answer: it simply
mimicked the $700 billion the US Congress bought
into in 2008.] ... .
[Article 9]: "...
ESM Members hereby irrevocably and
unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any
capital call made on them ... within seven days
of receipt of such demand." ... If the ESM needs
money, we have seven days to pay... . But what
does "irrevocably and unconditionally" mean?
What if we have a new parliament, one that does
not want to transfer money to the ESM? ... .
[Article 10]: "The Board of Governors
may decide to change the authorized capital and
amend Article 8 ... accordingly." Question: ...
700 billion is just the beginning? The ESM can
stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any
time it wants to? And we would then be required
under Article 9 to irrevocably and
unconditionally pay up?
[Article 27,
lines 2-3]: "The ESM, its property, funding, and
assets ... shall enjoy immunity from every form
of judicial process ... ." Question: So the ESM
program can sue us, but we can't challenge it in
court?
[Article 27, line 4]: "The
property, funding and assets of the ESM shall
... be immune from search, requisition,
confiscation, expropriation, or any other form
of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive,
judicial, administrative or legislative action."
Question: ... [T]his means that neither our
governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of
our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM
organization? That's a pretty powerful treaty!
[Article 30]: "Governors, alternate
Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the
Managing Director and staff members shall be
immune from legal process with respect to acts
performed by them ... and shall enjoy
inviolability in respect of their official
papers and documents." Question: So anyone
involved in the ESM is off the hook? They can't
be held accountable for anything? ...
The treaty establishes a new
intergovernmental organization to which we are
required to transfer unlimited assets within
seven days if it so requests, an organization
that can sue us but is immune from all forms of
prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same
immunity. There are no independent reviewers and
no existing laws apply? Governments cannot take
action against it? Europe's national budgets in
the hands of one single unelected
intergovernmental organization? Is that the
future of Europe? Is that the new EU - a Europe
devoid of sovereign democracies?
The Goldman squid captures the
ECB Last November, without fanfare and
barely noticed in the press, former Goldman exec
Mario Draghi replaced Jean-Claude Trichet as head
of the ECB. Draghi wasted no time doing for the
banks what the ECB has refused to do for its
member governments - lavish money on them at very
cheap rates. French blogger Simon Thorpe reports:
On the 21st of December, the ECB
"lent" 489 billion euros to European Banks at
the extremely generous rate of just 1% over 3
years. I say "lent", but in reality, they just
ran the printing presses. The ECB doesn't have
the money to lend. It's Quantitative Easing
again.
The money was gobbled up
virtually instantaneously by a total of 523
banks. It's complete madness. The ECB hopes that
the banks will do something useful with it -
like lending the money to the Greeks, who are
currently paying 18% to the bond markets to get
money. But there are absolutely no strings
attached. If the banks decide to pay bonuses
with the money, that's fine. Or they might just
shift all the money to tax havens.
At
18% interest, debt doubles in just four years. It
is this onerous interest burden, not the debt
itself, that is crippling Greece and other debtor
nations. Thorpe proposes the obvious solution:
Why not lend the money to the Greek
government directly? Or to the Portuguese
government, currently having to borrow money at
11.9%? Or the Hungarian government, currently
paying 8.53%. Or the Irish government, currently
paying 8.51%? Or the Italian government, who are
having to pay 7.06%?
The stock
objection to that alternative is that Article 123
of the Lisbon Treaty prevents the ECB from lending
to governments. But Thorpe reasons:
My understanding is that Article 123
is there to prevent elected governments from
abusing Central Banks by ordering them to print
money to finance excessive spending. That, we
are told, is why the ECB has to be independent
from governments. OK.
But what we have
now is a million times worse. The ECB is now
completely in the hands of the banking sector.
"We want half a billion of really cheap money!!"
they say. OK, no problem. Mario is here to fix
that. And no need to consult anyone. By the time
the ECB makes the announcement, the money has
already disappeared.
At least if the ECB
was working under the supervision of elected
governments, we would have some influence when
we elect those governments. But the bunch that
now has their grubby hands on the instruments of
power are now totally out of control.
Goldman Sachs and the financial
technocrats have taken over the European ship.
Democracy has gone out the window, all in the name
of keeping the central bank independent from the
"abuses" of government.
Yet the government
is the people - or it should be. A democratically
elected government represents the people.
Europeans are being hoodwinked into relinquishing
their cherished democracy to a rogue band of
financial pirates, and the rest of the world is
not far behind.
Rather than ratifying the
draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better
advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon
treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly
to its member governments.
Alternatively,
eurozone governments could re-establish their
economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly
owned central banks and using them to issue the
credit of the nation for the benefit of the
nation, effectively interest-free.
This is
not a new idea but has been used historically to
very good effect, eg in Australia through the
Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada
through the Bank of Canada.
Today the
issuance of money and credit has become the
private right of vampire rentiers, who are using
it to squeeze the lifeblood out of economies. This
right needs to be returned to sovereign
governments. Credit should be a public utility,
dispensed and managed for the benefit of the
people.
To add your signature to a letter
to parliamentarians blocking ratification of the
ESM, click here.
Ellen Brown is an attorney and
president of the Public Banking Institute, PublicBankingInstitute.org.
In Web of Debt, her latest of 12 books, she
shows how a private cartel has usurped the power
to create money from the people themselves, and
how we the people can get it back. Her websites
are webofdebt.com and
ellenbrown.com.
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