Memo to Ireland

Again, is it down to save the nation or save the banks while it looks like the answer is the save as it ever was? - Ilene

"Tell the EU and IMF to Shove It!"

By MIKE WHITNEY, originally published at CounterPunch

Imagine that Yasser Arafat had succeeded in ending Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Now imagine that 10 or 15 years later, new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to hand over control of his country's budget to the IMF so his people's future would be controlled by outsiders. Do you think Palestinians would praise Abbas as a patriot or denounce him as a traitor?

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is Mahmoud Abbas. He's caved in to the demands of foreign capital and transferred control over the nation's budget to the EU and the IMF. Here's an excerpt from a November 24, article in Reuters:

"Ireland's teetering government will announce plans on Wednesday to cut welfare spending sharply and raise taxes to help pay for the country's catastrophic banking crisis and meet the terms of an international bailout.

The four-year plan to save 15 billion euros is a condition for an EU/IMF rescue under negotiation for a country long feted as a model of economic development that has become the latest casualty in the euro zone's emergency ward.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen told parliament no final figure had been agreed for financial assistance, "but an amount of the order of 85 billion (euros) has been discussed.

The finance ministry said the austerity plan would be published at 1400 GMT and posted on the official government website." (Reuters)

This is a black day for Ireland. The Irish people will now face a decade or more of grinding poverty and depression thanks to their venal leaders. As soon as the ink dries on the IMF loans, the second occupation of Ireland will begin, only this time there won't be armored cars and Paramilitaries in fatigues, but nerdy-looking bureaucrats trained in the art of spreading misery. In fact, the loans haven't even been signed yet, and already IMF officials are urging the government to cut jobless benefits and the minimum wage. They're literally champing at the bit. They just can't wait to get their hands on the budget and start slashing away.

And don't believe the hype about European unity or saving Ireland. My ass. This is about bailing out the banks. The bondholders get a free ride while workers get kicked to the curb. Here's a clip from the Financial Times that spells it out in black and white:

"According to data compiled by the Bank of International Settlements, the three largest creditors to the Irish economy at the end of June...were Germany to the tune of €109bn, the UK at €100bn and France at €40bn. These sums amount to 2 per cent of France’s gross domestic product, 4.5 per cent of Germany’s GDP, and 7 per cent of British GDP."

See? Another bank bailout. Ireland is being asked to cut to social services, slash wages, renegotiate contracts, and dismantle the welfare state so that undercapitalized banks in France and Germany can get their pound of flesh. But, why? They're the ones who bought the bonds. No one put a gun to their head. They knew they could lose money if Irish banks went south. That's the risk they took. "You pays your money, and you takes your chances." Right? That's how capitalism works.

Not any more, it doesn't. Not while Cowen's in charge, at least. The Irish PM has decided to bail them out; make all the bondholders "whole again." But who made Cowen God? Who gave Cowen the right to hand over his country to the IMF?

No one. Cowen is a rogue agent kowtowing to international capital. After he finishes his work in Ireland, he'll probably join globalist Tony Blair on the French Riviera for a little hobnobbing with the tuxedo crowd.

It's revealing to watch the way Cowen works, as though the interests of foreign bankers mean more to him than those of his own people. For example, the Green Party withdrew from the government last night calling for new elections, but even though the government is in a shambles, the slippery Taoiseach wants to stay in power long enough to push through a new 4-year budget that will leave Irish workers on the brink of destitution. Who is Cowen working for anyway?

This is from the Irish Times:

"Opposition parties have today stepped up pressure on the Government as it seeks to push ahead with passing next month's budget.

Fine Gael again called for an immediate general election and said the four-year budgetary plan should only be implemented by a Government which has a proper mandate....

"What is best for the country is that the negotiation about a programme for four years be done by a government which has four years to serve, that has a mandate from the public so that it has the authority and the credibility to not only develop and negotiate it but to implement it. I think that is in Ireland's best interest," he said. ("Opposition steps up pressure", Charlie Taylor, Irish Times)

The prospective belt-tightening measures will include the firing of 28,000 public employees, a boost in property taxes, a 10 percent cut in welfare benefits, and higher taxes on low-wage workers. Cowen believes that taxing low income families is preferable to making billionaire bondholders eat their losses. The whole thing stinks to high-heaven.

Is there a way out for Ireland? Economist Mark Weisbrot thinks so. Here's what he thinks should happen:

"The European authorities and IMF can loan Ireland any funds needed in the next year or two at very low interest rates....Once these borrowing needs are guaranteed, Ireland would not have to worry about spikes in its borrowing costs like the one that provoked the current crisis....The European authorities could scrap their pro-cyclical conditions and, instead, allow for Ireland to undertake a temporary fiscal stimulus to get their economy growing again. That is the most feasible, practical alternative to continued recession.

Instead, the European authorities are trying what the IMF... calls an "internal devaluation". This is a process of shrinking the economy and creating so much unemployment that wages fall dramatically, and the Irish economy becomes more competitive internationally on the basis of lower unit labour costs."

It's all de rigeur for the IMF. It wouldn't be an IMF program unless someone was starving. That's the benchmark for success.

Ireland doesn't need structural adjustment programs that shrink GDP, dismantle popular social programs and strip wealth from workers when low interest funding and fiscal stimulus can bring the economy back to life. This is politics not economics. The EU and IMF are using the crisis to push through their own agenda. Their real goal is to crush the unions, shred the social safety net, and roll back the gains of the Progressive Era.

The Irish people are left with no choice but to resist. Presently the Cowen government is collapsing. Bravo. Now it's off to the barricades to see if the damage can be undone. Ireland needs to withdraw from the EU and start fresh. It'll be a bumpy road at first, but there's no other way. Economist Dean Baker sums it up like this in an article in The Guardian. Here's what he said:

"Even a relatively small country like Ireland has options. Specifically, they could drop out of the euro and default on their debt....Like Ireland, Argentina had also been a poster child of the neoliberal crew before it ran into difficulties.

But the IMF can turn quickly. Its austerity programme lowered GDP by almost 10% and pushed the unemployment rate well into the double digits. By the end of the 2001, it was politically impossible for the Argentine government to agree to more austerity. As a result, it broke the supposedly unbreakable link between its currency and the dollar and defaulted on its debt.

The immediate effect was to make the economy worse, but by the second half of 2002, the economy was again growing. This was the start of five and a half years of solid growth, until the world economic crisis eventually took its toll in 2009."

The Irish people didn't struggle through centuries of famine and foreign occupation so they could be debt-peons in the EU's corporate Uberstate. Like Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said, "We don't need anyone coming in to run the place for us. We can run it ourselves." Right. Tell the EU plutocrats to take their Utopian Bankstate and shove it.

French G20 agenda to push bigger yuan role

Weaning the global monetary system off its reliance on the dollar has eluded policy makers for decades, but the wind may now be blowing in France's favour as it seeks to build a consensus for change.

Finding ways to diversify countries' international reserves away from the US currency is a key part of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to sketch out a blueprint for a more stable monetary system during France's year-long presidency of the Group of 20 nations, which began this month.

In the wake of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, France, which has long argued dollar volatility damages European economies, is finding common cause with emerging powers such as China and Brazil.

"The time may have finally come because it's not just France thinking about this: the dollar is becoming destabilising for a lot of countries," said DeAnne Julius, chairman of London's Chatham House institute of international affairs. "France has a good chance of making significant progress."

French officials say their agenda hinges on convincing the Chinese, whom Sarkozy has assiduously courted, to agree to a greater role for the yuan as a reserve currency. This would initially be done by having the yuan enter the Special Drawing Right, an International Monetary Fund accounting tool currently based on the values of the dollar, euro, yen and sterling.

China's central bank chief proposed last year that the SDR be turned into an international currency based on John Maynard Keynes' 1944 idea of a "Bancor". The idea won backing from Brazil at a G20 summit meeting last month.

No one expects a "big bang" move to a supranational currency; the shift away from the dollar would take many years, possibly decades. But France wants to revive the debate on the role of the SDR as part of a gradual move toward a multipolar currency system.

"There are some concrete things we can do," said a senior French official. "For example, what timeframe do we set for the renminbi to enter the SDR? Next year? In 10-years? This is something we can decide. The Chinese are ready to discuss this."

Anxiety in Beijing

The US Federal Reserve's decision this month to conduct more quantitative easing, effectively printing money to buy government debt, was strongly criticised as destabilising by many governments and may well have strengthened France's case.

In particular, the US decision fanned anxiety in Beijing which has some two-thirds of its USD 2.65 trillion foreign reserves in the US currency that the dollar is no longer a stable store of value.

Wading into the debate on how to improve the global monetary order, Chinese President Hu Jintao called at a Seoul G20 summit this month for "an international reserve currency system with stable value, rule-based issuance and manageable supply".

Amid fears that tensions between Washington and Beijing might provoke a "currency war", in which governments would battle each other to influence exchange rates to their advantage, the Seoul summit asked France's presidency to develop "indicative guidelines" to measure if countries had excessive current account surpluses or deficits.

"This is more useful politically than economically, because it helps take the pressure off the currency issue," Julius said.

China, with its attention gripped by domestic inflation, has allowed its currency to appreciate modestly in the last few months while angrily rejecting pressure from Washington to quicken the pace.

Beijing has already taken steps to internationalise the yuan, allowing trade to be settled in yuan and permitting this money to be reinvested in its domestic bond market, as well as establishing renmimbi swap lines with several central banks.

It says it aims to build Shanghai into an international financial centre by 2020, implying the yuan will be fully convertible by then. But including the yuan in the SDR could encourage Beijing to accelerate its capital account liberalisation, as Washington demands.

"The smart thing for the IMF to do would be to put the yuan in the SDR basket today," said Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. "Then the SDR would also have some obvious appeal to the private sector: this could quite rapidly open the door to less dependence on the dollar."

The SDR currently accounts for just 4 percent of global reserves, or USD 308 billion. The four currencies which make up the SDR account for only 46% of world trade, according to ING bank. As the world's largest exporter, China wants to be admitted.

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Winning the Class War

The class war that no one wants to talk about continues unabated.

Even as millions of out-of-work and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nation’s elite are lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.

Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.

The ranks of the poor may be swelling and families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever. As The Times reported this week, U.S. firms earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter — the highest total since the government began keeping track more than six decades ago.

The corporate fat cats are becoming alarmingly rotund. Their profits have surged over the past seven quarters at a pace that is among the fastest ever seen, and they can barely contain their glee. On the same day that The Times ran its article about the third-quarter surge in profits, it ran a piece on the front page that carried the headline: “With a Swagger, Wallets Out, Wall Street Dares to Celebrate.”

Anyone who thinks there is something beneficial in this vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American elite and those of the struggling masses is just silly. It’s not even good for the elite.

There is no way to bring America’s consumer economy back to robust health if unemployment is chronically high, wages remain stagnant and the jobs that are created are poor ones. Without ordinary Americans spending their earnings from good jobs, any hope of a meaningful, long-term recovery is doomed.

Beyond that, extreme economic inequality is a recipe for social instability. Families on the wrong side of the divide find themselves under increasing pressure to just hold things together: to find the money to pay rent or the mortgage, to fend off bill collectors, to cope with illness and emergencies, and deal with the daily doses of extreme anxiety.

Societal conflicts metastasize as resentments fester and scapegoats are sought. Demagogues inevitably emerge to feast on the poisonous stew of such an environment. The rich may think that the public won’t ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the turbulent history of the 1930s.

A stark example of the potential for real conflict is being played out in New York City, where the multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has selected a glittering example of the American aristocracy to be the city’s schools chancellor. Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has a reputation as a crackerjack corporate executive but absolutely no background in education.

Ms. Black travels in the rarefied environs of the very rich. Her own children went to private boarding schools. She owns a penthouse on Park Avenue and a $4 million home in Southampton. She was able to loan a $47,600 Bulgari bracelet to a museum for an exhibit showing off the baubles of the city’s most successful women.

Ms. Black will be peering across an almost unbridgeable gap between her and the largely poor and working-class parents and students she will be expected to serve. Worse, Mr. Bloomberg, heralding Ms. Black as a “superstar manager,” has made it clear that because of budget shortfalls she will be focused on managing cutbacks to the school system.

So here we have the billionaire and the millionaire telling the poor and the struggling — the little people — that they will just have to make do with less. You can almost feel the bitterness rising.

Extreme inequality is already contributing mightily to political and other forms of polarization in the U.S. And it is a major force undermining the idea that as citizens we should try to face the nation’s problems, economic and otherwise, in a reasonably united fashion. When so many people are tumbling toward the bottom, the tendency is to fight among each other for increasingly scarce resources.

What’s really needed is for working Americans to form alliances and try, in a spirit of good will, to work out equitable solutions to the myriad problems facing so many ordinary individuals and families. Strong leaders are needed to develop such alliances and fight back against the forces that nearly destroyed the economy and have left working Americans in the lurch.

Aristocrats were supposed to be anathema to Americans. Now, while much of the rest of the nation is suffering, they are the only ones who can afford to smile.

The Fed: Defending the Indefensible

In defending the Federal Reserve against what CNBC considered to be “an unprecedented level of attacks,” former Fed governor Frederic Mishkin said it was because of the Fed’s inability to “articulate a clear message regarding its trillion-dollar monetary policies”:

Monetary policy is never easy. You’re always the whipping boy. The question [now] is the degree. Now you’re getting whipped with a little bit harder lash than usual. But you’ve got to make the tough calls….

The Fed can recover from this. It’s not over yet. But, boy, they’ve got a lot of digging [to do to get] out of the hole [they’re in] right now.

Although the credibility of the Fed has been questioned for years in some quarters, the first major crack in the wall took place in May, 2009, when Elizabeth Coleman, inspector general of the Federal Reserve, was directly and repeatedly questioned about the Fed’s actions by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). Coleman’s inability to articulate any kind of explanation to Grayson’s persistent probing has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube and ended with Grayson’s acid conclusion: “I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track of anything!”

As reported by the Daily Bell at the time, “There is no substantive, regularized way for the Fed to recover from the battering [it took and] is taking in hearings, in blogs, and on YouTube every day … the confrontation between Grayson and Coleman will come to be seen (in our humble opinion) as a watershed moment.”

The Daily Bell rejoiced that “there comes a time when the power of the leaders begins to be questioned by the masses of the led.” And that time is now.

The gathering momentum of Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-Texas) bill to audit the Fed, which garnered more than 300 supporters in a Democratic-controlled House was temporarily sidetracked courtesy of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), but is certain to be raised after the first of the year when Paul assumes chairmanship of the House’s Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology subcommittee. Paul said that that committee in the past just dithered and concerned itself primarily with collectible coins and such but never had the fortitude to push the Fed for more disclosure. Even that initial ripple in the waters of discontent resulted in the “Open Letter to Congress and the Executive Branch,” signed by a host of Keynesian economists and other supporters of the Fed, defending the Fed and declaring that “the independence of U.S. monetary policy is at risk,” and that the Fed was the “foundation of U.S. economic stability.” This letter was apparently published in good faith and with a straight face.

And just a year ago Time magazine named current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as “Man of the Year” with a long-winded congratulatory piece about the chairman’s response to the challenges of the Great Recession. The article failed to mention, of course, that the prime cause of the Great Recession was the same cause of the Great Depression — expansion of the money supply by the Fed — and also failed to mention that Bernanke, for all of his touted knowledge about the failings of the Fed during the 1930s, failed to see the Great Recession coming. In summarizing that article, Charles Scaliger said, “The most that can be said of the Federal Reserve … is that it has presided … over the orderly debasement of the U.S. dollar and the gradual destruction of the U.S. economy.”

Mishkin’s surprise at the harshness of the Fed’s critics reflected a disconnect from reality. With the growth of the Internet and increased numbers of bloggers and websites (such as this one), knowledge and understanding of the Fed’s pervasive role in undermining the greatest economic system in world history is in full view, and there is little that the Fed itself or its defenders can do about it. The elites themselves are in a quandary. For instance, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) referred to the Internet as a “fearsome, awesome problem,” while insider Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed that “For the first time in all of human history, mankind is politically awakened. That’s a total new reality [for us].”

The last defense of a desperate man, or cabal, is the argument ad hominem, for which the best instant example is Jacob Heilbrunn’s vitriolic attack on those working to expose the machinations of the Fed. Calling those attempts to expose the Fed a “backlash from the right,” he refers to Ron Paul as “isolationist,” leading a “cult of bashers who … see [the Fed] as working against American self-reliance and the free market, and destroying economic growth as it leads to the rise of socialism and eventually, to tyranny a la Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.” He derides Paul’s book, End the Fed, as an “unlikely bestseller” calling for a private banking system. He belittles Paul’s push for such a system, that with it “all our economic woes will be miraculously cured.” And he warns that with Paul's ascension to the chair of the House subcommittee that oversees the Fed, Paul could “impede the central bank’s ability to fulfill its crucial work of balancing interest rates, unemployment and inflation.”

The edifice is breaking apart in slow motion. The cracks, invisible to so many for so long, are finally beginning to appear. As the Daily Bell so aptly put it:

The Fed is suddenly, inconceivably, an institution fighting for its political life. This financial behemoth, the most powerful single entity in the world, has likely already begun to topple. But as it is with any figure of titanic proportions, the fall is … silent to begin with, for contact with the ground has not yet been made.

Photo of Frederic Mishkin: AP Images

The Great Lie That Britain Would Suffer Outside the EU

BRITAIN would flourish as an international trading nation outside the economic shackles of the European Union, a leading business expert said last night.

Disputing the key argument of Euro-enthusiasts that quitting the EU would wreck the UK’s trade prospects, economist Ruth Lea said that independence from Brussels meddling would boost the country’s import and export markets.

And she pointed to the success of affluent nations such as Switzerland and Norway that have successfully negotiated free-trade deals with dozens of other countries while staying outside the EU.

“We have to kill the myth that British trade would be damaged by leaving the EU. It is piffle,” said Ms Lea, who is economic adviser at the Arbuthnot Banking Group.

She said a Britain freed from Brussels control could continue to trade with European countries while forging into new markets in Asia, America and beyond.

“If we left the EU, we could negotiate our own special trade deals with countries such as China, India, the US, Canada and New Zealand. We would be able to negotiate our own trade deals, which is something we haven’t been able to do since 1973. At that time, few people understood quite how much we were giving up.”

Ms Lea’s experience as an economist in the City of London told her that much of Britain’s ­business was already done outside the EU.

“The City of London is a global business,” she said. “And our manufacturers, too, have got to think more in the world outside the European Union.”

And she dismissed the argument put forward by many EU supporters that Britain’s exit would lead to trade with Europe collapsing.

“The idea that if we left Europe, then Mercedes Benz would suddenly stop selling cars to us is absurd.

“Trade will happen. Britain is still an affluent nation with a large population, and Europeans will still want to trade with us.

“Of course, we would need to be able to trade with Europe,” she said. “Even though Europe is an increasingly less important part of the world, Europe is important to us for trade.”

Ms Lea pointed out that Switzerland and Norway had flourished in the European Free Trade Association, a free-market enterprise zone with far less regulation than the EU.

While the Swiss faced higher duty costs as a result of being outside the EU, the overall financial impact was far less than the multi-billion annual cost of EU membership.

Ms Lea said the widespread claim that the EU represented an inter­national free-trade zone was a misunderstanding.

“The single market means heavy regulation,” she said. “People think the single market is a free-trade area, but it isn’t.

“It’s all about harmonisation of regulation.”

Trade figures suggest that EU nations consistently buy more British exports than British consumers buy from the EU. That has led some critics to conclude that EU states “need us more than we need them”.

In 2007, the UK had a £40billion trade deficit with the other 27 member states, including £19billion with Germany.

Critics have also disputed the claim that Britain quitting the EU would lead to millions of job losses in the UK.

The think tank Global Vision has estimated that while three million British jobs are dependent on trade with EU nations, nearly four million jobs in other EU states are dependent on trade with Britain.

It means EU exporters – and Governments – are unlikely to want any cuts in trade with Britain, suggesting the country can leave the union without losing trading partners.

Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein all benefit from the EU single market despite not being members of the union.

As members of the European Economic Area, they are able to benefit from a lack of trade tariffs without having to sign up to a welter of EU regulation.

Some commentators believe that Britain could negotiate a similar status, remaining in the EEA while quitting the EU.

As an EU outsider Switzerland has negotiated trade deals with EU member states. And evidence is growing that businesses are frustrated with ever-increasing levels of Brussels red tape.

A recent survey of 1,000 company chief executives by the Open Europe think tank found that 54 per cent thought EU regulation “outweighed” the benefits of the single market.

And 60 per cent thought the Government should renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership to include free trade only. Meanwhile, in a show of arrogance towards the British taxpayer, president of the European Council Herman von Rompuy last night failed to respond to telephone calls because he was preparing for a back-slapping event.

The Belgian was being awarded the “Collar of Merit” by the Foundation of European Merit, headed by disgraced former European Commission head Jacques Santer.

In a show of self-congratulation, the Collar was also awarded to Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, Jerzy Buzek, Polish president of the Euro Parliament and Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister.


EURO MADNESS

- £350,000 for a dog fitness and rehabilitation centre that was never built. Plans included developing a hydrotherapy system to “improve dogs’ wellbeing”


- £4.5m for a fleet of limousines for Euro-MPs in Strasbourg. Green Party estimates already show that travelling between and maintaining the European Parliament’s two buildings in Strasbourg and Brussels already costs European taxpayers £170m


- £13,500 to Tyrolean farmers to boost their “emotional connection with the landscape.” They were expected to become “more aware of their emotional reactions to it compared to their prevailing rational economic ones.”


- £4,300 on a “Europe Horse” to promote the EU to German children. A booklet was produced chronicling the cartoon animal’s trip from Germany to Brussels, meeting various EU figures along the way


- £763,000 for a golf course, hotel and spa whose guests include German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The platinum membership fee for the club is 1,100 euros per year

Debt turmoil, contagion fears sweep Europe

LISBON, Portugal – Europe struggled mightily Friday to keep the debt crisis from engulfing country after country. Portugal passed austerity measures to fend off the speculative trades pushing it toward a bailout and Ireland rushed to negotiate its own imminent rescue.

As Portugal and Spain insisted they will not seek outside help, creating an eery sense of deja-vu for investors, Europe braced for what seems inevitable — more expensive bailouts.

The Portuguese Parliament approved an unpopular debt-reducing package, including tax hikes and cuts in pay and welfare benefits. But while that helped to avoid a sharper deterioration in bond markets, the sense among analysts was that the move had only bought a little time.
Adding to the pressure, Ireland's major banks were hit with credit downgrades — one to junk bond status — as speculation mounted that the EU-IMF bailout of Ireland, to be revealed within days, would require investors to take losses, a possibility earlier denied by officials.

"This confusing `pea-soup' of indecision, vacillation and disunity by the EU is beginning to create unnecessarily seismic waves of fear in international bond and money markets," said David Buik, markets analyst at BGC Partners.

Yields in fiscally weak eurozone countries remained near record highs Friday, stocks slumped across the board and the 16-nation euro lost another 0.8 percent on the day to trade at $1.3241, just off two-month lows.

Portugal's high debt and low growth have alarmed investors, but the government insists it doesn't require an international rescue — a line ominously reminiscent of claims by Greece and Ireland before their massive rescues.

Analysts say markets need more reassurance from EU leaders that the rot can be stopped in Portugal before spreading to Spain, the continent's fourth-largest economy — a scenario that would threaten the 16-nation euro currency itself.

The financial crisis took a step in that direction this week, as it increasingly becomes apparent that bond investors will not be pacified by austerity measures but want weak countries' public finances to be plugged once and for all. Greece, which accepted a bailout six months ago, and Ireland are still far from being able to return to international debt markets.

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pt 2/2 Gerald Celente on KSFO with Brian Sussman 22 November 2010

Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5XsXIIldb0