fahrenheit451:257

It's easy to get mad.Especially over the burning issues surrounding the European Union.So.let's get really mad.

Around 3 months ago ,the Italian General Election saw the ineluctable rise in democratic popularity of M5S and Lega. These two albeit apparently antithetical ideological formations sharing many common bonds; most notably an abrasive oppositional stance vis a vis the EU and the euro currency,unrestricted mass immigration and a desire to end EU/ECB/ IMF/Troika imposed Austerity.

The astounding electoral successes of M5S and Lega paralleled the broadly similar anti-EU,anti-globalist unrestricted freedom of movement driven national successes of what are now,supposedly pejoratively described as populist parties in a number of EU satrapies. Austria,Germany,France,Czechia,Netherlands,Hungary etc.

These aren't simply the a "movement" these are irreversible tectonic shifts in civil society and national polities all across Europe.

It's no longer a question as to whether or not the EU is in crisis or in decline; the European Union is a rotting corpse crying out for the last rites and burial in an unmarked grave.

The longer the process is drawn out,the greater the degree of resistance to historic evolutionary change that the presiding moribund institutions attempt to exert, the more brutal the response of the new progressive populist forces will inevitably have to be.
 The iconoclasts of the vile,despicable moloch driven ideals of the EU are not about to squirm at the visceral necessity of their historic task.

Epochal judgement isn't about to take place.it's already in progress and cannot be halted.

The EU/ECB/IMF Troika glove puppet President Mattarella and the former IMF pimp Cottarelli will be as the dust underneath the boots of the legions marching on into the future.

How we envy Italy,Hungary,the Front National in France,AfD in Germany,the new government of Austria. Only the UK seems stuck fast in the land of Mordor it's people still held hostage by the twin cancers of Conservative and Labour.

And we all know that sooner rather than later cancers get removed.

fahrenheit451:217

The lamentable farrago over the UK's impending departure from the EU - aka the brexit negotiations - continues unabated.

The UK domestic Remain campaign/Referendum verdict deniers are currently in the midst of throwing the kitchen sink at Brexit.

Having already deployed the mendacious blackmail demands of the so-called " Divorce settlement " alongside the bogus lamentations and woefully insincere pleading of EU Citizens against the sensitive heartstrings of the May minority regime; the globalist plutocratic denizens of domestic metropolitan elitism and their Controllers in Brussels have now opened up a third front- that of the largely fictitious "problem" surrounding hypothetical difficulties envisaged around the Irish Border post- Brexit.

Why is the failing minority Dublin regime stirring the proverbial merde at this time? The Irish Times lends an insight into the lickspittle grovelling demeanour of the bankrupt,inconsequential grubby little Irish state's pathetic posturing- all as it happens at the behest of their lords and masters - das Deutsche Reich.

German parliament votes to back Irish debt restructuring

Social Democratic Party opposes move which will save exchequer estimated €150m

Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 16:42

Derek Scally in Berlin

cting finance minister Peter Altmaier told the German parliament Ireland had fulfilled all conditions of its EU/IMF programme and was part of a rescue “success story” that included Spain and Portugal.

 

After a heated Bundestag debate, Germany voted yesterday to back Ireland’s request to restructure crisis-era loans and save the exchequer an estimated €150 million.

The request from Dublin turned into a proxy battle between Germany’s two leading parties, which are locked in a growing coalition battle.

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) backed Ireland’s request, along with the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), calling Ireland a model crisis country.

But the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) voted against, calling on Dublin to adopt a “fairer tax policy” that prioritised its EU partners over multinationals.

In turn, the SPD’s critical stance saw Bundestag rivals accuse it of “playing politics” over Ireland – and EU rescue policies the party had backed in the past.

Motion

The heated debate ended with disagreement over the show-of-hands vote, prompting a full lobby vote that saw the motion passed by 348 to 283.

Dublin has applied to refinance an IMF loan, as well as two bilateral loans from Denmark and Sweden, using funds borrowed at lower rates from financial markets.

As Ireland has also borrowed €40.2 billion from two EU bailout facilities, all European Union states must agree to waive the right to get early repayment at the same time.

The Bundestag is one of a handful of European parliaments whose permission is required to change Ireland’s crisis-loan terms and allow early repayment. Elsewhere, the decision is made by government.

Acting finance minister Peter Altmaier told the German parliament that Ireland had fulfilled all conditions of its EU/IMF programme and was part of a rescue “success story” that included Spain and Portugal.

Ireland had restructured its banks and welfare system, won back trust of financial markets and was back in growth, he said, proving EU crisis measures had been appropriate.

Poison

Backing Dublin’s request and reducing the Irish debt burden, he said, would increase further market trust in “this small but important country”, and was thus in the interest of Irish and German taxpayers.

“I welcome today that I spoke with the Irish finance minister and he is ready to continue the technical co-operation and oversight with the IMF,” added Mr Altmaier. “This is in the interest of Ireland and will increase credibility in Irish politics.”

SPD parliamentary secretary Carsten Schneider attacked Ireland’s request, given its refusal to collect from Apple €13 billion in tax the European Commission says is outstanding.

“If a liberally minded country relinquishes tax revenues … then, for us in the SPD, our solidarity is at an end,” he said. “Tax dumping cannot be a business model in a social and progressive EU … it is poison for democracy.”

Mr Schneider suggested that Ireland had failed to honour two crisis-era promises to revisit its tax model and had “run the stop sign twice”.

Not everyone in Dr Merkel’s CDU had warm words for Ireland, with MP Hans Michelbach conceding that Ireland was a “tax haven and accessory for tax tricks of transnational concerns”.

“This is not acceptable,” he said. But, turning to Mr Schneider, he added: “You cannot use a mallet against another European country … and mix loan repayments with tax policy.”

 Schadenfreude or what ? the Taigs sold out to the Huns.

 

fahrenheit451:073

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. That's what's so wonderful about capitalism. Especially the serious, grown-up institutions of Global finance and those who oversee them. When all the needless economic pain and hardship inflicted upon millions is over and done with, when all the attendant , negative-qualitative impacts on civil society have been duly inflicted as a sort of de-facto collective punishment on a nation's citizens; when ALL is done it turns out that it really was a complete and utter balls-up from the very beginning. Or as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily-We're lovin'Global Usurer-Capitalism-telegraph writes:-

IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro, apologises for the immolation of Greece

 

28 JULY 2016 • 8:38PM

The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory. 

This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the Fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions. 

Many documents were prepared outside the regular established channels; written documentation on some sensitive matters could not be locatedIEO report

It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis,  and traces a shocking break-down in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation. 

The report by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) goes above the head of the managing director, Christine Lagarde. It answers solely to the board of executive directors, and those from Asia and Latin America are clearly incensed at the way EU insiders used the Fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system.

The three main bail-outs for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland were unprecedented in scale and character. The trio were each allowed to borrow over 2,000 percent of their allocated quota – more than three times the normal limit – and accounted for 80pc of all lending by the Fund between 2011 and 2014.

...            
You can't make all that up. It belies the otherwise unimaginable bounds of speculative fiction. Paul Erdman, back in the '70's wrote a couple of international financial thrillers along similar lines. This mea culpa from the IMF is that preposterous. Even within the hegemonic dominant ideological constraints and norms of the IMF, what the hell were the Asian and Latin American executive directors doing? Minding their bankrolled exotic lifestyles?
On the other hand, taking a somewhat longer term view of this imbroglio and its ramifications, one might surmise that one helluva blow has been landed against the system.And that is to be welcomed.The only pity is that the bastards will, no doubt, be able to worm their way out of it,again.