Micheal D Higgins President of Ireland.

Let us hope that when Micheal D spoke at his inauguration of inclusion, equality etc. for all, he will include the hundreds of young people implicated in the drug trades from America and Europe who have long ago become so utterly bored and depressed with Irish life at the real level of Social Deprivation and have now wrecked their lives in the drugs game. Will he know how and who to install in peacemaking organisations for these people and the gangs that have developed? Is there any other reality available in Ireland to offer these people now that the structure of their self-confidence and pride is demolished within their communities? Who will alter prison sentences so that an opportunity for change, for acceptable work, and family responsibility is found therein?This is the major problem of Irish life that needs to be tackled during his time in office.

A short quote from one of John Pilger's essays would seem to be appropriate:

Mexico : The last election, in 2006, was won by Felipe Calderon, Washington's man, followed by persistent allegations that it was rigged. Calderon declared what he calls "a war on drug gangs" and 50,000 dead are the result. No one doubts the menace of the drug cartels, but the real "security issue" is more likely the resistance of ordinary Mexicans to an enduring inequity and a rotten elite.

For most of this year, thousands of los indignados have taken over the massive parade ground known as the Zocalo facing the National Palace. The occupations in Wall Street and around the world have their genesis in Latin America. The difference here is there is none of the angst about the protestors' "focus". As in all places where people live on the edge and the state and its cronyism cast lawless shadows, they know exactly what they want. Ask some of the 44,000 employees of the national power company, who prevented the fire sale of the national grid until Calderon sacked them all; and the striking copper miners of Cananea, whose owners funded Calderon's campaign; and the former pilots and stewards of the national airline, Mexicana, dissolved in a sham bankruptcy that was a gift to the private airline industry.

These angry, eloquent and often courageous people have long known something many in Europe and the United States are only beginning to realise: there is no choice but to fight the economic extremism unleashed in Washington and London a generation ago. Employment, trade unionism, public health, education, "life itself", says Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City who ran against Calderon, "has since been struck by a political and economic earthquake".

J.Braddell,editor

(Maybe it is even more appropriate to read this article on the EUrozone that has just come in to the Handstand.)

Europe’s Crash Landing

By Mike Whitney

“Italy is now mathematically beyond the point of no return.”

–Barclays Capital 

November 11, 2011 -- The situation in Europe gets more depressing by the day. Policymakers have waited too long and now events are beyond their control. The only way to avert a disorderly breakup and another Great Depression is by deploying the European Central Bank (ECB) to backstop the debt of the individual countries, and even that might not work. New ECB chief Mario Draghi must announce his intention to keep interest rates down regardless of the cost. Blanket guarantees are the only way to stop the bleeding. But acting as lender of last resort will not stop the contagion; it will merely minimize the damage. The dissolution of the eurozone is a foregone conclusion. It’s only a matter of time. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Edward Harrison over at Credit Writedowns:

“… it’s game over for the euro zone. The extend and pretend stuff ain’t gonna work…. if you are an investor, this is the moment of truth. Everything – every asset class – depends on how the euro zone performs in the Italian Job. There are only two outcomes, here. If Italy blows up, a Depression is upon us; banks would be insolvent, CDS triggers would implode the system, bank runs would begin, stock markets would crash, and you will would see sovereign debt yields go to unbelievable lows for nations with a lender of last resort.” (“Italy, Italy, Italy”, Edward Harrison, Credit Writedowns)

Yields on Italian debt are soaring while overall economic conditions continue to deteriorate. The eurozone is sliding fast into recession if it isn’t in one already. The EU’s ill-considered austerity measures have increased deflationary pressures and slowed growth. Credit is shrinking while bank balance sheets dip deeper into the red. This is why the ECB intervened in Thursday’s auction of Italian and Spanish debt and loaded up on both hoping to calm the markets and stop the panic. This is from Reuters:

“Traders said the European Central Bank increased its bond buying, but the ECB’s hard-line chief economist told regional governments not to expect the bank to rescue them with unlimited funds.

A sale on Italian debt went smoothly, but worries persisted that Italy’s borrowing costs were unsustainable. The pullback in yields helped support market sentiment.” (Reuters)

Stocks rose on the news that the ECB would announce more bond purchases in a press statement later on Thursday, but expectations are probably too high. Demand has dropped off sharply while the rout continues apace. This is from Der Spiegel:

“Run for your lives” is the new motto in Europe, and not just among banks and insurance companies, which are selling off southern European bonds as quickly as they can, but also among ordinary holders of savings accounts. Banks and regulatory agencies are noticing that anxious citizens throughout Europe are trying to bring their money to safety. The flight of capital from Italy, Spain and Greece is in full swing.

Aside from the ECB, there are no longer many buyers of Italian treasury bonds. It is clear that most investors are trying to reduce their inventories — if they can find someone to take the paper off their hands. It is almost as if buyers were boycotting Italian bonds. (‘Run For Your Lives’; Euro Zone Considers Solution of Last Resort, Der Spiegel)

The ECB has been playing cat-and-mouse with its bond purchases, waiting for the Italian parliament to signal it would pass economic reforms on pensions and labor. These punitive reforms will be pushed through by the man who will likely replace deposed PM Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, who was formerly the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a member of the Bilderberg Group.

Berlusconi’s abdication has had no noticeable effect on the markets nor has the so-called “breakthrough” agreement that was announced more than 2 weeks ago in Brussels. The plan called for the establishment of a $1 trillion eurozone financial emergency fund (EFSF) to address problems that flare up like the Italian bond crisis. As expected, there’s a good deal of disagreement about how the fund should be implemented or from where the resources will come. So far, the only country to purchase bonds from the EFSF has been Japan, and they’ve already lost money on the deal. That’s not an encouraging sign for a fund that is supposed to save the eurozone.

Imagine if Henry Paulson–instead of nationalizing Fannie and Freddie when they were about to blow–had decided to set up a structured investment vehicle funded by issuing bonds to China that would cover 20 per cent first-loss provision on Fannie mortgage-backed securities. Do you think investors still would have held on to their Fannie bonds? No way. There would have been a run on the bank. And yet, this absurd invention is the Eurocrats’ solution to the crisis.

The reason that investors are ditching Italian debt is not because of Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio (which is currently 120 percent.) No, it’s much simpler than that. Investors purchase government bonds because they believe they are risk-free. Now, however, they’ve discovered that Italian bonds are not risk free, in fact, a default could mean that they would retrieve very little of their original outlay. So, why buy them?

The problem is easy to fix. It’s just a matter of allowing the ECB to act as guarantor of the debt of the individual states. (which is what the Fed did for the entire financial system after Lehman collapsed) But the ECB doesn’t want this power because it would preclude the bank from imposing its austerity regime on the member-states while claiming it has no choice to act otherwise. As it stands, the ECB is the perfect tool for spreading neoliberalism throughout the eurozone, and that is precisely what it’s doing.

What’s remarkable about the “debt crisis” is that it was entirely predictable. Many economists warned from the very onset that the monetary union was structurally flawed and wouldn’t work without greater political and fiscal integration. Many critics, like Wynne Godley, focused on the eurozone’s absence of a lender of last resort. Here’s how he summed it up back in 1992:

“If a government does not have its own central bank on which it can draw cheques freely, its expenditures can be financed only by borrowing in the open market in competition with businesses, and this may prove excessively expensive or even impossible, particularly under conditions of extreme emergency….The danger then, is that the budgetary restraint to which governments are individually committed will impart a disinflationary bias that locks Europe as a whole into a depression it is powerless to lift.” (“The Greatest Prediction of the last 20 Years,” Pragmatic Capitalism)

Indeed. Italy and the other countries are in dire straits because they do not control their own currency and, thus, cannot control their own fate. They are entirely at the mercy of the ECB. Is it any wonder why restructuring is never seriously considered (because it would cost the banks and bondholders money) or why there’s been no attempt to create a stimulus program that will lift the struggling states in the south out of their slump and back into the black? The ECB refuses to use the tools that are available to it because its overall policy objectives are already being achieved. Internal devaluation and belt-tightening are the path to privatization, fewer social services, and cheaper labor, exactly what the bankers want.

So, where is all this headed?

I’ll let The Economist have the last word. This is from an article  by Ryan Avent in the current issue titled “Finito?”:

“I have been examining and re-examining the situation, trying to find the potential happy ending. It isn’t there. The euro zone is in a death spiral. Markets are abandoning the periphery, including Italy, which is the world’s eighth largest economy and third largest bond market. This is triggering margin calls and leading banks to pull credit from the European market. This, in turn, is damaging the European economy, which is already being squeezed by the austerity programmes adopted in every large euro-zone economy. A weakening economy will damage revenues, undermining efforts at fiscal consolidation, further driving away investors and potentially triggering more austerity. The cycle will continue until something breaks. Eventually, one economy or another will face a true bank run and severe capital flight and will be forced to adopt capital controls. At that point, it will effectively be out of the euro area. What happens next isn’t clear, but it’s unlikely to be pretty.” (“Finito?, The Economist)

The chances of the eurozone surviving in its present form are slim to none.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

This item was first published at counterpunch.org

                                                      From The Ramparts
                                                 Junious Ricardo Stanton
                                                 Bankerster Coup d’etat

    “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.” What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe   www.independent.co.uk/news/business

    With all the commotion as Greece and Italy teeter on the brink of financial default, its becoming obvious the bond holders and international banksters are attempting to impose a neo-feudal system of debt bondage and peonage on the world’s citizens. In the midst of this intrigue and manipulation little has been mentioned about the fact the leaders of Greece and Italy sold their people out to the vampire bankers then immediately stepped down only to be replaced by representatives from the international banks!
     With pressure building to save the bond holders and banks, George Papandreou the prime minister of Greece initially announced he would introduce the issue as a referendum to be voted on by the Greek people. His decision  meant the Greek people would vote whether or not they would shoulder and pay off (over several generations)  the massive debt their government created. No amount of election rigging by the bankers and their politicians flunkies would make that happen.  Papandreou’s announcement instigated a firestorm in elite international banker circles. Their puppets in the media immediately denounced him and his European political peers were so relentless in their chastisement of him, he reneged on the popular vote referendum idea then worked with the legislature to force passage of crippling austerity measures. Then to add insult to injury he stepped down so the banksters could get their man in. His replacement was  Lucas Papademos former vice president of the European Central Bank a privately owned banking cartel which functions just like the US Federal Reserve Bank which is also a privately owned cartel. Papandreou sold Greece to the bankers and skipped merrily on his way.
        This same scenario played out in Italy. Italy like Greece is in deep financial difficulty. The country is also looking down the barrel of a major economic collapse and default. The prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, no stranger to scandal and controversy resigned immediately after he and the Italian parliament passed a budget the bankers and bond holders needed to insure they would not be left holding the bag on billions of toxic loans and debt. The deal calls for the citizens to bare the brunt of the repayments via austerity and suffering. Like Greece’s Papandreou, Berlusconi was replaced by an international banking  insider, Mario Monti. Mario Monti is an international advisor to the global vampire investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs. That’s all you need to know to see the fix was in. Neither Papademos nor Monti were  elected by the citizens of Greece or Italy respectively !! So what we are witnessing is a global coup d’etat by the banksters.
    But this is nothing new, the banksters have done/are doing the same thing in Africa. For example the new president in Cote d’Ivoire is Alassane Ouattara a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). After a controversial election against the incumbent  Laurent Gbagbo, Alassane Ouattara who was backed by the US, France and the UN declared himself the victor despite the opposition of the Cote D’Ivoire Supreme Court. After being threatened with Western military intervention (like the West unleashed months later on Libya) Gbagbo withdrew his claim to the presidency. Now a former IMF functionary Ouattara runs the West African country of Cote d’Ivoire where (surprise, surprise) major reserves of oil have been discovered. 
     In Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is president. Like Ouattara in Cote d’Ivoire Sirleaf is a former global loan shark employee. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a former World Bank, Citibank and Equator Bank, a subsidiary of HSBC (Europe’s largest bank)  employee. She was recently reelected to a second term as president and will continue her role as a sock puppet for Western neoliberal interests. Oh by the way there is oil in Liberia too. It appears we are witnessing a global initiative by the elites to take over governments and central banks and replace the heads with their people.
    “Goldman Sachs' senior European economist Ben Broadbent is leaving the firm to become a member of the Bank of England's nine-member Monetary Policy Committee. Broadbent has been a senior European economist at Goldman Sachs since 2000. If Mario Draghi becomes head of the European Central Bank (He's the favorite to replace Jean-Claude Trichet after Trichet completes his term), Goldman Sachs will have former employees at the New York Fed (William Dudley), the Bank of England and the ECB.”  www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/03/goldman-sachs-influence-over-monetary.html
    “Goldman Sachs is a global bank that specializes in mergers and acquisitions, asset management and prime brokerage. It provides financial advice to corporations and governments around the world. Its executives can be found in all key levels of government - Mark Carney, head of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Friedman, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank and Henry Paulson, former Treasury Secretary (USA) and Otmar Issing, a one-time board member of the Bundesbank and ex-chief economist of the European Central Bank.  Goldman Sachs are the world's foremost experts on taking over large institutions and running them. Their people - current and former Goldman Sachs executives - have been quietly advising world leaders on economic policy for years. No one is in a better position to take over and manage the world, for their own profit. It was only a matter of time before they put their expertise into use.  Goldman Sach's plan is simple: run the economy into the ground and step in to save the day.  Look at the results so far. In two European countries, elected leaders have been removed and replaced with executives with sweeping powers. What's not apparent from news reports is that the new leaders of Italy and Greece are closely connected with Goldman Sachs.  Lucas Papademos, named new Greek Prime Minister was former head of Greece's Central Bank, where he worked closely with Goldman Sachs to help the Greek government mask the true extent of its deficit. Mario Monti was an international adviser to Goldman Sachs from 2005 until his nomination to lead the Italian government. He also worked closely with Goldman Sachs to reduce the apparent size of Italian government debt.” Op-Ed: The Goldman Sachs project — New world government www.digitaljournal.com/article/314642
    Of course this is not just happening in Europe and Africa, it is happening here in the US too. Goldman Sachs is the revolving door for the US Secretary of the Treasury and the firm seems immune to fraud prosecution by the SEC or the Justice Department.  We now see just how corrupt the US is. Congressional insider trading and investment deals where our congress critters profit from exclusive information and opportunities their status as lawmakers provide reveal how pervasive and endemic the corruption is. The US is as much a banana republic as any “third world” nation ever was. Recently I saw a cartoon on the Website www.whatreallyhappened.com  that showed a jail cell jammed with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators/protestors with a caption saying arrested for protesting financial crimes. Adjacent to that pane was the picture of an empty cell with the caption saying bankers arrested who created financial crisis. What’s wrong with that picture?