EU

Iceland: Economy Exits Recession

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Even better off is Greenland:

– Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU!

At least Iceland didn’t bailout the banksters:

– Max Keiser: The IMF Is Bankrupt – The Fed And The Banksters – Iceland Report – And More

Whereas Ireland is completely doomed:

– And Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

The Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world and the bailout is an unprecedented looting of the Irish taxpayer.

Decision to force bondholders to pay for banking system’s collapse appears to pay off as economy grows 1.2% in third quarter


Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman has repeatedly called on Ireland, Greece and Portugal to consider leaving the euro area and defaulting on debts. Photograph: Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images

Iceland’s decision two years ago to force bondholders to pay for the banking system’s collapse appeared to pay off after official figures showed the country exited recession in the third quarter.

The Icelandic economy, which contracted for seven consecutive quarters until the summer, grew by 1.2% in the three months to the end of September.

Iceland famously agreed in a referendum to reject a scheme to repay most of its debts that were once worth 11 times its total national income.

In contrast to Ireland, Iceland’s taxpayers refused to foot the bill for the debts accumulated by the banking sector. Bondholders were told to accept dramatic reductions in the value of repayments on bank debt after the sector borrowed beyond its means to fund ambitious investments abroad.

The return to growth is likely to put pressure on Irish politicians to explain why Dublin rejected a more radical restructuring of its debts and a departure from the eurozone.

Iceland’s currency has fallen by around a quarter, helping its exports.

Read moreIceland: Economy Exits Recession

Max Keiser: The IMF Is Bankrupt – The Fed And The Banksters – Iceland Report – And More

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Must-see!


Added: 7. December 2010

This time, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, challenge French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, to play football against Manchester United if she can’t keep French banks from running to the U.S. Federal Reserve for emergency cash.

– Meet The 35 Foreign Banks That Got Bailed Out By The Fed (And This Is Just The CPFF Banks) (ZeroHedge):

One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging the equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the Brian Sack-led team of traders will allow stocks to drop ever… Until such time nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without GETCO or the PPT being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.


(Click on image to enlarge.)

The 35 companies in question:

UBS
Dexia SA
BNP Paribas
Barclays PLC
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Commerzbank AG
Danske Bank A/S
ING Groep NV
WestLB
Handelsbanken
Deutsche Post AG
Erste Group Bank AG
NordLB
Free State of Bavaria
KBC
HSH Nordbank AG
Unicredit
HSBC Holdings PLC
DZ Bank AG
Republic of Korea
Rabobank
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Banco Espirito Santo SA
Bank of Nova Scotia
Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd.
Syngenta AG
Mitsui & Co Ltd
Bank of Montreal
Caixa Geral de Depósitos
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Shinhan Financial Group Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Corp
Aegon NV
Royal Bank of Canada
Sumitomo Corp

Angela Merkel: ‘If this is the sort of club the euro is becoming, perhaps Germany should leave’

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Germany should have left the euro a long time ago.

Flashback:

Max Keiser: Teutonic Genie out of bottle, America punches itself in face

Financial analyst Max Keiser predicts the rise of Germany competing with China as global super power.

“We are in a currency war”, says Max Keiser.

Listen Germany, listen and leave the euro (… and stop the fascist New World Order)!

60 Percent of Germans Want The Mighty Deutschmark Back


Nearly 60 per cent of Germans want the mighty Deutschmark back

The German chancellor warned her country could pull out of the euro as nations wrangled over the future of the single currency, it has emerged.

Angela Merkel had a row with the Greek prime minister George Papandreou at a summit in October, according to reports.

The Greek leader is said to have branded the German plans to re-open the Lisbon Treaty and establish a permanent bailout fund for debt crises ‘undemocratic’ at the October 28 meeting.

Ms Merkel retorted: ‘If this is the sort of club the euro is becoming, perhaps Germany should leave,’ according to government figures at the dinner.

Her spokesman Steffen Seibert refused to comment on the claims yesterday when contacted by The Guardian but said the threat was ‘not plausible’.

‘The chancellor sees the euro as the central European project, wants to secure and defend it and the government,’ he said. ‘Germany is unconditionally and resolutely committed to the euro.’

Read moreAngela Merkel: ‘If this is the sort of club the euro is becoming, perhaps Germany should leave’

ECB Bows To German Veto On Mass Bond Purchases

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Now the ECB wants to resort to the ‘nuclear option’ like the Federal Reserve banksters and only Germany objects to the  QE (quantitative easing) madness?

The fallout from the ‘nuclear option’ is called inflation!

All those bankster bailouts and deficit spending have bankrupted Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy etc.

On deficit spending and the ‘nuclear option’ (= QE =  printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft):

“By a continuing process of inflation , governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
– John Maynard Keynes

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan

“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.”
–  Ron Paul

The  real intend behind those policies is to destroy the middle class and the poor, making the rich even richer.

Germany just doesn’t want to burn in the hell of Weimar again.

See also:

– Angela Merkel: ‘If this is the sort of club the euro is becoming, perhaps Germany should leave’

The European Central Bank has rebuffed calls for mass purchases of southern European bonds, despite growing pressure from Spain and Italy for dramatic action to buttress monetary union.


Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB’s president, said emergency lending support for eurozone banks would be extended until at least April next year

Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB’s president, said emergency lending support for eurozone banks would be extended until at least April next year, citing “acute tensions” in the market.

The delay removes the risk that Frankurt might soon pull away the prop holding up the Irish and Greek banking systems, as well as the Spanish cajas – or savings banks – and the sovereign states behind them. Traders say the ECB intervened directly in the weakest bond markets on Thursday to drive down yields and calm nerves.

However, Mr Trichet said there had been no decision to step up purchases of peripheral bonds to a whole new level – the so-called “nuclear option” – despite the potentially dangerous rise in Spanish, Italian, Belgian and even French yields over the past three weeks.

Some credit market analysts had speculated that the ECB might launch a blitz of €1 trillion to €2 trillion of debt purchases, but this was never likely at this stage. Such action is anathema to Germany.

Rainer Bruderle, the German economy minister, spelled out Berlin’s objections on Thursday just hours before the ECB meeting, insisting that “the permanent printing of money is not a solution”.

A chorus of influential voices in Germany has warned that any attempt by the ECB to prop up Club Med with loose money would be a grave error, undermining German political support for monetary union.

“It would be fatal if the ECB was to squander its credibility,” said Klaus Zimmerman, head of the DIW German Economic Research Institute. He said the bank is the last bastion of credibility after the serial breach of EU fiscal and debt rules.

“Broader purchases of the distressed eurozone debt would calm speculation for a short time, but would just invite risk-taking by investors in general,” he said.

Read moreECB Bows To German Veto On Mass Bond Purchases

EU: Contagion May Force Euro Leaders to Expand Arsenal to Counter Debt Crisis

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See also:

– Ireland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

Dec 1 (Bloomberg) — Investors’ no-confidence vote in the aid package for Ireland may force European policy makers to expand their arsenal to fight the debt crisis threatening to tear the euro apart.

Options outlined by economists at Societe Generale SA and Barclays Capital include: Boosting the 750 billion-euro ($975 billion) temporary rescue fund or turning it into an asset- buying program; cutting interest rates on bailout loans; issuing joint bonds for the 16 euro nations or flooding the economy with cash from the European Central Bank.

All would be unprecedented, and none of Europe’s political leaders — dominated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — has indicated the steps are being considered. Earlier this year, they struggled to cobble together the measures that investors and economists now say are proving inadequate to safeguard the euro and keep speculators at bay.

“You’ve had repeated interventions, but the markets are still selling in response,” said Andrew Balls, London-based head of European portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund. “Policy makers have to move beyond a country-by-country approach and think about the system-wide challenges.”

Read moreEU: Contagion May Force Euro Leaders to Expand Arsenal to Counter Debt Crisis

Hungary Nationalizes Private Pension Funds

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“It’s unprecedented in Europe that a government is threatening to kick its own citizens out of the state pension system,” Zoltan Torok, a Budapest-based economist at Raiffeisen Bank International AG.

“This is open blackmail,” Julianna Baba, president of the Stabilitas Penztarszovetseg, which groups private pension funds, said in a phone interview today. “It’s a rigged deal.”

George Carlin would say: “They are coming for your f$$$ing retirement money!”

WTF!

Hungary Follows Argentina in Pension-Fund Ultimatum, `Nightmare’ for Some

Hungary is giving its citizens an ultimatum: move your private-pension fund assets to the state or lose your state pension.

Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy announced the policy yesterday, escalating a government drive to bring 3 trillion forint ($14.6 billion) of privately managed pension assets under state control to reduce the budget deficit and public debt. Workers who opt against returning to the state system stand to lose 70 percent of their pension claim.

“This is effectively a nationalization of private pension funds,” David Nemeth, an economist at ING Groep NV in Budapest, said in a phone interview. “It’s the nightmare scenario.”

Hungary is rolling back pension changes implemented more than a decade ago as countries from Poland to Lithuania find themselves squeezed by policies designed to limit long-term liabilities by shifting workers into private funds. Now the cost is swelling debt and deficit levels at a time when the European Union is demanding greater fiscal discipline.

Hungary, the most indebted eastern member of the EU, is following the example of Argentina, which in 2001 confiscated about $3.2 billion of pension savings before the country stopped servicing its debt. The government in Buenos Aires nationalized the $24 billion industry two years ago to compensate for falling tax revenue after a 2005 debt restructuring.

Read moreHungary Nationalizes Private Pension Funds

Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU!

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Britain used to have 80 per cent of European fish stocks (Photo: PA)

If you think that leaving the EU would be catastrophic, take a look at Greenland. By rights its people ought to be poor. Their island is isolated, suffers from freezing weather, has a workforce of only 28,000 and relies on fish for 82 per cent of its exports. But it turns out that since leaving the EU, Greenland has been so freed of EU red tape and of the destruction of the Common Fisheries Policy, that the average income of the islanders today is higher than those living in Britain, Germany and France.

Greenland’s politicians realised that the fisheries policy was ruining their fishing industry. They had the guts to stand up against the all the prophets of doom and let their people vote in a referendum on leaving the European Community, as the EU was then called. On January 1, 1985, it became independent of Brussels – the only country ever to do so.

Greenland was, with Britain, one of only two EU countries to be heavily dependent on fishing. In fact, Britain had, in some estimates, 80 per cent of Europe’s fish stocks when it entered the EU, because our fishermen had carefully managed them, while the fisherman of Spain, France and Italy had destroyed most of the Mediterranean stocks.

Read moreWhy is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU!

Ireland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

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– Roubini tells Portugal to seek bailout as markets slide (Telegraph):

Nouriel Roubini, the US economist, said Portugal should consider asking for a bailout before its financial plight worsens as the euro fell after the €85bn Ireland bailout failed to ease eurozone debt fears.

Mr Roubini, the economist who predicted the financial crisis, told daily paper Diario Economico it is “increasingly likely” Portugal will require international assistance.

He said the country is approaching “a critical point” due to it high debt load and weak growth and there were ample funds to shore up Portugal, one of the eurozone’s smaller countries which contributes less than 2pc to the 16-nation bloc’s gross domestic product.

However, he said neighboring Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, is “too big to bail out.”

• FTSE 100 down 2%; Dow loses 1%
• Euro slides to two-month low against US dollar
• Cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese debt hits record high


Irish prime minister Brian Cowen speaking to the media in Dublin yesterday after the EU approved the €85bn bailout. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Stocks fell on both sides of the Atlantic, the euro tumbled, and the cost of borrowing for Ireland, Spain and Portugal jumped today, as details of the republic’s €85bn (£72bn) bailout failed to quell anxiety that the crisis in the eurozone was deepening.

Amid speculation that the European authorities may be left with little option but to embark on large-scale quantitative easing to try to bolster sentiment, Ireland’s borrowing costs shot as high as 9.6% as the terms of its bailout by the International Monetary Fund and European Union were digested by investors.

“The bottom line is that the financial markets are unimpressed, and that’s the most generous description,” Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital told Associated Press. “The crisis rumbles on.”

Read moreIreland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

Ireland: 100,000 Protest on Dublin’s Streets

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Your money is now with the banksters, or better with their elite masters, that also control all governments involved in the financial crisis.

Now the people will be footed with the unpayable bill .

This is not a financial crisis. This is a controlled demolition, total intentional destruction.

Now Ireland has been bankrupted and destroyed. Your country is next.

Major rally against cutbacks by government


Protesters in Dublin

Over 100,000 took to the streets in Ireland protesting the government’s economic policies and their cutbacks on the poor and the elderly.

Organizers claimed over 100,000 but police said only that the crowd exceeded 50,000 and a major rally was held in O’Connell Street.

The protest was organised by the Irish Congress of Trades Unions, who have said the austerity measures are too harsh that are being adopted following the IMF bailout.

The ICTU leadership said: ‘If they go ahead with their plans, they will do irreparable damage and turn this country into a social and economic wasteland.’

Read moreIreland: 100,000 Protest on Dublin’s Streets

Nigel Farage Anti-EU Rants Become Internet Sensation

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“EVEN GERMANS LOVE EU ATTACK” (???)

Message to the Daily Express:

There is not one German with a brain left that would not immediately want to go back to the German Mark and give the euro the finger!

In fact the German  people knew from the beginning that if you put the strongest currency, the German Mark, into a pot with weaker and junk currencies, that they can only lose.

And of course Germans love Nigel Farage.

And of course Infinite Unknown supports your campaign:

– THE Daily Express is the first national newspaper to call for Britain to leave the European Union

– THE DAILY EXPRESS: JOIN OUR CRUSADE TO PULL BRITAIN OUT OF THE EU

In case you’ve missed the video:

– Nigel Farage: ‘Who the Hell do You Think You Are. The Euro Game Is Up!’

Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the EFD group

European Parliament, Strasbourg – 24 November 2010

EVEN GERMANS LOVE EU ATTACK


Nigel Farage (pictured) EU President Herman van Rompuy: “You should be the pin-up boy of the eurosceptic movement.”

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has become a Europe-wide internet sensation again with his latest attack on Brussels bureaucrats.

His speech to the European Parliament last week has been viewed 200,000 times on YouTube and has been translated into German.

Addressing EU President Herman van Rompuy Mr Farage said: “You’ve been in office for one year and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there’s chaos and the money’s running out. I should thank you. You should be the pin-up boy of the eurosceptic movement.

“Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talked about the fact that it was a lie to say the nation state could exist in the 21st century globalised world.

“Well, that may well be true in the case of Belgium, which hasn’t had a government for six months, but for the rest of us, people are saying we don’t want that flag, we don’t want the anthem, we don’t want this political class – we want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history.”

The Ukip leader then turned on Economic Commissioner Olli Rehn for suggesting that Ireland delay any general election until its budget had approved.

“Who the hell do you think you people are?” he said. “You are very, very dangerous people. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means you are happy to destroy democracy.”

Mr Farage’s previous outburst last February attracted almost 600,000 views on YouTube and resulted in an official reprimand.

Sunday November 28,2010
By Ted Jeory

Source: The Daily Express

And Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

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Unbelievable!

Wake up Ireland and watch this:

– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Wall Street

UP to €15 billion from the National Pensions Reserve Fund, set aside when the Celtic Tiger was still roaring, is likely to be used to recapitalise three of the country’s banks.

Amid speculation last night that the rate of interest to be charged on the EU/IMF bailout could be as much as 6.7%, Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Michael Noonan said that kind of rate was “far too high” and unaffordable on any reasonable projection of growth.

The Department of Finance said the interest rate had still not been finalised, but given that much of the loan would be repayable over nine years the rate could be higher than the 5.2% charged to Greece but would not be as high as the 6.7% being quoted by some brokers.

Meanwhile, Anglo Irish Bank, which was downgraded to junk status yesterday evening, is expected to be closed swiftly, together with the Irish Nationwide Building Society, under the EU/IMF loan plan.

Officials hope to finalise the details of the €85bn package later today and have EU finance ministers approve it tomorrow.

The emphasis in the plan is to avoid drawing down money from the bailout and rely in the first place on money from the Pension Reserve Fund for the banks, and on the €20bn the state borrowed earlier this year to part-fund next year’s national budget.

Economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute, John FitzGerald, said he believed it would be a good idea to use the money in the pensions fund to recapitalise the banks, and keep the EU/IMF funds in reserve in case they needed further money later.

Read moreAnd Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

Germany Rejects EU Call To Double $588 Billion Bailout Fund

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See also:

– Germany Rejects EU Call To Double $588 Billion Bailout Fund

Europeans Clash on Bailout

BERLIN—European leaders sparred over whether to commit more funds to rescue struggling euro-zone countries, as financial-market pressure on the region’s weakest economies intensified.

The European Union’s executive arm, the Brussels-based EU Commission, floated a proposal on Wednesday to double the size of Europe’s €440 billion ($588 billion) bailout fund for euro-zone governments, but the idea was dismissed by Germany, according to people familiar with the situation.

The disagreement between Brussels and Berlin comes amid growing fears that the crisis of investor confidence in euro-zone governments, which has already forced Greece and Ireland to seek international bailouts, could expand sooner or later to Portugal and Spain.

Many investors and analysts doubt whether the EU has agreed to supply enough financing to rescue Spain if the country were to lose access to bond markets. Support from Germany, Europe’s largest economy and biggest contributor to the EU’s main bailout fund, would be essential for any funding increase.

Following Greece’s €110 billion bailout in May, the EU set up a €750 billion rescue program together with the International Monetary Fund. The centerpiece of that effort is the European Financial Stability Facility, or EFSF, which euro-zone countries agreed to support with up to €440 billion in credit guarantees. The remaining contributions would come from the IMF and the EU Commission.

Read moreGermany Rejects EU Call To Double $588 Billion Bailout Fund

EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

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Criminal elite puppet governments all over the world are bankrupting their countries, funneling billions and trillions of  euros and dollars to their elite puppet bankster friends.

That money ends up into the hands of just a view elite criminals that planned all of this.

The perfect elitist government-bank robbery and the people are footed with an unpayable bill that completely destroys their financial future.

See also:

– EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

The escalating debt crisis on the eurozone periphery is starting to contaminate the creditworthiness of Germany and the core states of monetary union.


Chancellor Angela Merkel would risk popular fury if she had to raise fresh funds for eurozone debtors at a time of welfare cuts in Germany.

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.

“Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself,” said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. “This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings.”

The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. “We’re not swimming in money, we’re drowning in debts,” he told the Bundestag.

While Germany’s public and private debt is not extreme, it is very high for a country on the cusp of an acute ageing crisis. Adjusted for demographics, Germany is already one of the most indebted nations in the world.

Reports that EU officials are hatching plans to double the size of EU’s €440bn (£373bn) rescue mechanism have inevitably caused outrage in Germany. Brussels has denied the claims, but the story has refused to die precisely because markets know the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) cannot cope with the all too possible event of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

Read moreEU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

THE DAILY EXPRESS: JOIN OUR CRUSADE TO PULL BRITAIN OUT OF THE EU

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Must-see:

– Nigel Farage: ‘Who the Hell do You Think You Are. The Euro Game Is Up!’

A HUGE groundswell of support was last night gathering behind the Daily Express crusade for Britain to quit the European Union.

Senior MPs, peers and campaign groups acclaimed this newspaper’s stand against the sprawling Brussels super-state as a turning point in the battle to win back Britain’s independence.

And Eurosceptic critics of UK membership said the growing financial crisis among the euro nations this week – threatening to cost British taxpayers billions of pounds – has overwhelmingly confirmed the case for British withdrawal.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley and a founding member of the Better Off Out group of MPs and peers, led the praise for our crusade last night.

He said: “I think it’s fantastic that the Daily Express sees such a positive future for our country. Britain should be developing trade with China, India, South American and emerging countries in Africa rather than being part of an inward-looking, backward-looking protection racket designed to prop up inefficient European businesses and French farmers.

*** CLICK HERE NOW TO SIGN OUR ONLINE PETITION TO QUIT THE EU ***

“As a nation built on trade, we should be ashamed to be members of the EU. It is a major breakthrough for a national newspaper to support the case for British withdrawal.

“The Daily Express and the rest of public opinion are way ahead of a lot of politicians.”

The spiralling cost of Britain’s EU membership – expected to exceed £6billion in net contributions alone next year – was last night being cited as a clear-cut reason for Britain to walk away from the discredited European club.

Read moreTHE DAILY EXPRESS: JOIN OUR CRUSADE TO PULL BRITAIN OUT OF THE EU

THE Daily Express is the first national newspaper to call for Britain to leave the European Union

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Must-see:

– Nigel Farage: ‘Who the Hell do You Think You Are. The Euro Game Is Up!’

THE Daily Express is the first national newspaper to call for Britain to leave the European Union.

From now on, our energies will be directed to furthering the cause of those who believe Britain is Better Off Out.

The famous and symbolic Crusader who adorns our masthead will become the figurehead of the struggle to repatriate British sovereignty from a political project that has comprehensively failed people right across Europe.

After far too many years as the victims of Brussels larceny, bullying, over-regulation and all-round interference, the time has come for the British people to win back their country and restore legitimacy and accountability to their political process.

Following the debacle of the Lisbon Treaty – disgracefully imposed upon the public without the referendum they were promised by the three main political parties – many had expected matters European to take a lower profile in British politics.

But the opposite has been true as those on board the European gravy train have mounted one power grab after another. At a time of austerity throughout Europe they have expanded their already bloated budgets, pushing Britain’s disproportionate contributions even higher.

And despite not being part of the failing eurozone, British taxpayers have learned that under Brussels rules agreed to by Labour after it had lost the election they are liable to help bail out economies wrecked by the single currency. A payment of up to £10billion for Ireland is apparently just the start with speculators now starting to target the embattled economy of Portugal.

Despite unemployment across Europe averaging more than 10 per cent, Brussels continues to propose new job-destroying regulations and conspire to turn the whole EU into a zone of high taxation.

Read moreTHE Daily Express is the first national newspaper to call for Britain to leave the European Union

A Spanish Bailout Would Represent A Systemic Risk For The Euro

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MADRID — Europe so far has survived the bailout of Greece. The financial rescue of Ireland also is manageable. Even if Portugal becomes the third country to succumb and seek aid, as many people widely predict, it is unlikely to push Europe to the financial brink.

But any bailout of Spain — with an economy twice the size of the other three combined — could severely stress the ability of Europe’s stronger countries to help the financially weaker ones, and spell deep trouble for the euro, Europe’s common currency. Even though Spain, like Ireland, has adopted an austerity plan to help it avoid the need for a bailout, it still could need aid if its banking system proves frailer than the government thinks it is, as was the case in Ireland.

This troubling possibility has unnerved lenders, with Spain’s borrowing costs rising even though Madrid has cut its deficit and the country’s banks maintain they have sufficient strength to absorb their bad real estate loans. “Europe can afford the collapse of Ireland, even perhaps that of Portugal, but not that of Spain, so Spain’s ultimate line of defense is in fact this knowledge that it’s too big to fail and that it represents a systemic risk for the euro,” said Pablo Vázquez, an economist at the Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada, a research institute here.

Reflecting the worries of investors, the yield spread between Spanish 10-year government bonds and those of Germany continued to widen on Wednesday — to as high as 2.59 percentage points, the biggest gap since the introduction of the euro. Spreads typically widen when investors perceive greater risk of not being repaid.

Read moreA Spanish Bailout Would Represent A Systemic Risk For The Euro

China, Russia, Iran are Dumping the Dollar, Buy Gold And Silver

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Don’t miss:

–  George Soros’ and John Paulson’s Biggest Holding Is GOLD

–  Russia, China pledge bigger role for yuan, ruble

Something is going on that your government does not want you to know about. Very few journalists have written about it and little or nothing has appeared in the mainstream media. The story could be one of major stories of our time.

Western powers have tried to destroy gold as a backing for currencies for many years. Presently the major media won’t touch the story and that is understandable.

Something we have been writing about for years is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization known as SCO. Few have been listening and few have been interested in what their mission is and what they have been up to.

Some of the members are large oil producers and some, like China, are large oil users. Some have very large US dollar surpluses. As well, some are large commodity and gold and silver buyers. In fact, members are in a great part responsible for driving these prices higher. It is debatable, but we believe there is a conscious effort to accumulate gold and silver, dump dollars and to back their currencies with gold.

China and Russia are both large gold producers and for a number of years have been buying up domestic gold and silver production, so that it never reaches the market and does not affect prices. If anything the absence of sales tends to push the markets higher. As a matter of fact Russia and India are visible buyers. Even Iran with its oil surplus recently announced that they had purchased 340 tons of gold. Their recent gold purchases are very significant as affiliate members, which have access to the present and ultimate direction of the group. You might say buying gold has been a protective effort to shield members and close observers from the problems generated by dollar policies. They are accumulating gold, as many have been worldwide, for the past ten years, but particularly over the past few years.

This buying, for protection, has served to thwart the efforts of US policymakers, the Treasury, other central banks in Europe and the Fed, from being able to continue the blatant suppression of both gold and silver prices. The malefactors, except for forays into derivatives and futures, which are transitory, have lost control and suppression of gold and silver prices, and it is only a matter of time before all visages of any control will be visible. Since 1988, in August when Present Reagan signed the Executive Order creating, “the President’s Group on Financial Markets” and the subsidiaries that have grown out of that policy, that the Treasury won many if not most of the battles. The SCO in part changed that and now they and the public are winning the war for a fair and free gold and silver market. The current class action lawsuits, including RICO, are a testament to the market manipulation in silver, which is finally coming to an end. HSBC and JPMorgan Chase, the latter that is the major owner of the Fed, are going to be finally prohibited from rigging these markets. Their officers all belong in jail, but elitists never go to jail; they pay fines, and keep right on robbing the public.

Read moreChina, Russia, Iran are Dumping the Dollar, Buy Gold And Silver

Ireland Seeks Bailout From EU And IMF

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Before:

– Ireland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

– Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

The banksters got just a little more for Christmas:

– Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

Now that is called THE state of the art bank robbery!

Now that the banksters and the government have bankrupted Ireland, the IMF will rape what is left:

– Max Keiser on Greece: ‘The IMF is a Financial Mafia’:

The International Monetary Fund is that last thing you need. You will lose your sovereignty. It exercises terrorism. You will be raped in such a way, that it will be the worst pain you have ever felt.

The banksters got billions for Christmas and the people will get cheese:

– Ireland: Government to let them eat cheese

Merry Christmas!


Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen.

Ireland applied for a bailout to help fund itself and save its banks, becoming the second euro member to seek a rescue from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he expects talks on the package to be completed in the “next few weeks.” Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the loan will be less than 100 billion euros ($137 billion), though he refused to give any further details at a press conference in Dublin today.

“A small sovereign like Ireland faced with an outsized problem that we have in our banking sector, cannot on its own address all those problems,” Lenihan said. Ireland may not draw down on the entire loan, he said.

The bailout follows two years of budget cuts that failed to restore market confidence as the cost of shoring up the financial industry climbed. After Irish bond yields soared in the past month, European authorities pushed Ireland to seek aid to prevent the crisis that began in Greece this year from spreading to other euro-area countries such as Portugal.

“It was inevitable. Ireland had no choice but to get financial help,” said Nicholas Stamenkovic, a fixed-income strategist in Edinburgh at RIA Capital Markets Ltd., a broker for money managers. “The market will still be waiting for the details of the assistance and the conditionality, but there should be a relief rally tomorrow.”

Read moreIreland Seeks Bailout From EU And IMF

(Unelected) EU President Herman van Rompuy: The Man Who Wants Your Money

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The European president Herman van Rompuy offers a tempting target for jokers. But his call for for the imposition of a common economic policy, backed up with surveillance and punishments, has a decidedly sinister ring .


European president Herman van Rompuy: effective in Belgium, equally determined in Europe

Herman van Rompuy, the president of Europe, hasn’t enjoyed the kindest press. In Britain at least, the “richly comic” “blustering Belgian”, a “garden gnome” and “dwarf” “straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan” has been treated as a sort of joke created largely for the benefit of tabloid headline writers.

Mr van Rompuy may never come to match, say, Vince Cable in the glamour stakes – but people who knew him in his previous job always warned that the “Mr Nobody” gibes were misplaced. As Belgian prime minister, Mr van Rompuy helped to bring together his notoriously divided country, and sharply reduced its budget deficit. Now, he has similar steely ambitions to unite and discipline Europe.

Last week, in Berlin, Mr van Rompuy proclaimed an EU leader’s strongest message of federalism yet. He said that after the financial crisis, “the national and the European interest can no longer be separated: they coincide… today, we have to act on [that] fact… in every [EU] member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world. It is more than an illusion – it is a lie.”

Read more(Unelected) EU President Herman van Rompuy: The Man Who Wants Your Money

Ireland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

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The Irish Government has been forced to make a second denial in two days that it is preparing to go to the EU for a multi-billion euro bail-out.


IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn played down fears that Ireland needs a bail-out

On Saturday night reports suggested that Irish officials had already held talks with the European Financial Stability Fund about a rescue package of between €60bn (£51bn) and €80bn.

European Central Bank officials were also reported to have urged the country to take emergency aid in order to stop concerns about the Irish economy spreading to neighbouring countries.

Germany is said to be pressing Ireland to seek aid before a November 16 meeting of European finance ministers to calm market volatility and win agreement on making investors help pay for future bailouts, according to Bloomberg, citing a German government official.

However, a spokesman for the Irish government told The Sunday Telegraph: “There are no talks on an application for emergency funding from the European Union.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), tried to play down fears that Ireland could require rescue funding.

Read moreIreland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

EU Data Retention Directive: Sweden proposes bill to store telephone calls, text messages, email and other internet traffic for six months

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Emails and mobile phone text messages would be stored for six months by internet service providers (ISPs), according to a bill presented by the Swedish government on Thursday to bring the country in line with EU data retention rules.

Critics have come down hard on the proposal, which would compel telephone and broadband providers to retain electronic data for six months, the shortest possible time in accordance with EU directives.

Justice Minister Beatrice Ask explained that the bill is concerned about privacy when she presented the legislative proposal on Thursday.

“The proposal means that the information can only be disclosed for crime-fighting purposes,” Ask said a news conference.

The government has proposed that the law come into force on July 1st, 2011. It is part of the introduction of the disputed EU Data Retention Directive.

The directive would force member states to legislate the storage of telephone calls, text messages, email and other internet traffic. The aim is to prevent and solve crimes.

The Data Retention Directive has been severely criticised by those who believe that such rules restrict privacy protection and create a surveillance society.

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EU Disciplinary Code: Keep A Brothel And Be Demoted, Criticise The Euro And Be Dismissed

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Marta Andreasen

What does a Eurocrat need to do to get fired? Simon McGee answers the question in an astonishing report for The Sunday Times. Since that paper is now secured behind the fastness of its paywall, let me cite some of the examples he discovered in the EU’s official disciplinary record.

Cause an accident by driving one of the European Commission’s cars while drunk and you can expect to be reprimanded. Get into a brawl in a Commission building and your promotion will be delayed. Fiddle your expenses and you might actually be moved to a different post. Be found guilty by a criminal court of “living off immoral earnings and keeping a brothel” and you will be downgraded. Get yourself convicted for paedophile offences and you will have your pension cut.

But write a book attacking the euro (as Bernard Connolly did) or go public with your concerns about fraud in the budget (as Marta Andreasen did) and you will be dismissed.

Now it’s true that I don’t know the details of all these cases, though I’m pretty familiar with the last two. Perhaps, in some instances, there were mitigating circumstances. Still, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the EU regards criticism of itself as the one unpardonable offence.

Read moreEU Disciplinary Code: Keep A Brothel And Be Demoted, Criticise The Euro And Be Dismissed

Ireland: Government to let them eat cheese

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See also:

– Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

The banksters got just a little more for Christmas:

– Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world


The Government is to distribute some 53 tonnes of free cheese to people in need in the run up to Christmas.

Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith announced the EU-funded scheme today following talks with a number of charitable organisations.

He said the cheese will be available free of charge for distribution to those most in need. It will be available from November 15th “in time for Christmas”.

The State has been given more than €818,000 from the EU budget to purchase the cheese and the Irish Dairy Board has been awarded the tender to supply it. More than €750,000 will be spent on the Christmas scheme.

The Minister said the scheme was “an important means of contributing towards the well-being of the most deprived citizens in the community”.

“I am very conscious that many people find themselves in difficult circumstances at present and I want to commend the work of the many charitable organisations who are working on the frontline to bring what comfort and relief they can,” he said. “I am glad to be able to help their work in such a practical way.”

Read moreIreland: Government to let them eat cheese

ECB Rejects Request for Disclosure of Greek Swap Files, Citing This ‘Would Undermine The Public Confidence’

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What confidence?

The reason for this secrecy is very simple. The elite puppet ECB shields the elite puppet banksters and the elite puppet governments, so that the people may not understand that they have just been robbed by an elite criminal operation, that  intentionally caused the entire financial crisis worldwide. The truth is not bad for you, but for them! The people may start thinking like financial analyst Max Keiser:

– Max Keiser on the Middle Class And Revolution

Max is already well known in Greece for exposing the bankster, government and IMF agenda:

– Max Keiser on Greece: ‘The IMF is a Financial Mafia’


ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet wrote, “The information contained in the two documents would undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy.” Photographer: Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg

The European Central Bank refused to disclose internal documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its government debt because of the “acute” risk of roiling markets, President Jean-Claude Trichet said.

The ECB turned down a request and an appeal by Bloomberg News to release two briefing documents officials drafted for the central bank’s six-member Executive Board in Frankfurt this year. The notes outline how Greece used the swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News.

“The information contained in the two documents would undermine the public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy,” Trichet wrote in an Oct. 21 letter in which he rejected the appeal. Disclosure “bears, in the current very vulnerable market environment, the substantial and acute risk of adding to volatility and instability.”

The ECB is withholding the information six months after the European Union and International Monetary Fund led a 110 billion-euro bailout ($154 billion) for Greece. The government didn’t originally disclose the swaps, which were designed to help it comply with the deficit and debt rules it agreed to meet when it joined the euro in 2001. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, is still trying to work out how Greece hid the deficit.

The Greek swaps fueled a financial crisis that threatened the breakup of the region’s currency. The government now says the swaps, some of which were arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., may have caused “long-term damage” for taxpayers.

‘Full Disclosure’

Read moreECB Rejects Request for Disclosure of Greek Swap Files, Citing This ‘Would Undermine The Public Confidence’