Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the discredited International Monetary Fund, has been convicted of negligence related to fraudulent payments to a French businessman when she was French Finance Minister.
Lagarde failed to block fraudulent compensation payments of €404m to French businessman and former City Affairs Minister, Bernard Tapie, whilst serving as Finance Minister. This was judged to be an abuse of power by Lagarde and Tapie was ordered to return the money with interest. Tapie has a chequered past having been caught match fixing whilst president of Olympique de Marseille football club, convicted of corruption and subordination of witnesses and being banned from political office after being made personally bankrupt.
Although Lagarde has been convicted of negligently allowing hundreds of millions of €uro of fraudulent payments to be made to a former colleague she won't be punished after the court ruled that no criminal offence had been committed.
George Osbourne has said that he is willing to hand over £10bn more of our money, extorted from us on pain of imprisonment, to give to the IMF so it can bail out the €uro.
Unemployment is through the roof, companies are going under at a rate of knots, services are being cut to save money and the Chancellor thinks that a good use of our hard earned money is to give it to the IMF money laundering operation to prop up the failing €uro.
And this is from a Tory government that fought the last election claiming it was eurosceptic.
Lucas Papademos, the Greek Prime Minister, has gone on TV today calling for calm as about 4,000 protesters protested outside the Greek parliament (they're allowed to do that in more enlightened countries) and begging MPs to vote in favour of the EU's crippling austerity measures designed to try and keep the €uro going for a bit longer while they await divine intervention.
Just smile and nod Lucas, it always works for me
Appearing next to the EU ring of stars logo probably wasn't the cleverest move when Greeks are rioting about the EU's austerity measures (even burning German flags to protest at the fourth reich's interference in Greek affairs) but then if he was a clever man, Papademos would have told the EU to bugger off by now and defaulted. Iceland was in technical default a couple of years ago but are now predicting a 3% growth in the economy and a budget surplus next year. Iceland let its banks fail, looked after its own citizens, stuck two fingers up to foreign investors and devalued its currency. Greece isn't allowed to let its banks fail, it has to look after all EU citizens, it's not allowed to stick two fingers up to foreign investors and it can't devalue its currency.
Greece needs to find €14.5bn in 5 weeks time to make bond repayments and it doesn't have the money. The only plan the Greek government has is to borrow the money from the EU and IMF but in return, the EU wants devastating cuts in Greek spending, EU control of the Greek budget and their sockpuppet heading the government. Greece can't afford to pay back the loans it's already taken out, let alone billions more.
Back in November (before the EU effected a coup to remove Papandreou from office) we said that Greece needs to forget about the EU/IMF bailout plan, default on its debts, withdraw from the €uro and reintroduce the drachma at a cheap rate to stimulate the domestic market. There is no conceivable way out of the current economic mire that Greece finds itself in whilst remaining a member of the EU and the €urozone.
Protests in Athens turned violent again yesterday with ordinary Greeks protesting against their government's attempts to plunge Greece even further into debt to avoid the inevitable default on their national debt.
Greece has already been bailed out once and with the latest proposed bailout, will owe the EU and the IMF €110bn just from the bailouts. The current proposed EU bailout of €12bn (plus a few billion more from the IMF which the UK will be contributing to despite Cameron's Cast Iron Promise™ that we would not be part of another Greek bailout) is conditional on the Greek government implementing a €28bn EU-approved austerity plan which 70% of Greeks oppose.
The Greek government finds itself in a quite unique position in that the Greek people aren't asking their government to sort out their economy, they're demanding that they default on their debts and bankrupt the country. And why not? There is no way out of this for Greece, they will have to be bailed out over and over again until they default. They will be paying back the EU and the IMF for generations, if they can ever afford to pay them back at all. The British government has indebted our children and our grandchildren bailing out the Scottish banks but the Greeks are burying their grandchildren's children and grandchildren in debt.
The only way out for Greece is to default on its debt, reject the EU's austerity plan, refuse any more bailouts and leave the Euro. You can't grow an economy if people don't have money in their pockets and you can't deal with rampant inflation or crippling exchange rates if your currency is pegged at a rate that suits Germany.
Thanks to James Goldsmith, we were spared the financial death throes that Eurozone members such as Ireland are now experiencing. We can only hope that the Euro is shredded by the markets, forcing deadly fissures to appear in the EU façade and 'community'.
If Ireland takes IMF cash, it will largely be under the thumb of Britain - the country whose embrace it could not wait to escape as it rushed to the bosom of the EU.
If Ireland takes Merkel's (expropriation) of EU cash, then it can expect to lose its sovereignty to the EU and to be forced to raise its corporation tax, thereby reducing its competitiveness.
If Ireland does a deal with Britain, it will be even more firmly yoked to Britain than it ever was - this time, via the serfdom which accompanies unpayable debt.
What a a fine mess they've made. If only they'd listened to us and not signed that blasted treaty.
Ah. But the politicos were following a carefully crafted plan - and script. Just as Cameron and Hague are doing today, while they try to convince us of the opposite.
In 2008, before the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, Eric Deakins, MP for Walthamstow West 1970-74, MP for Walthamstow 1974-87, and junior minister for Trade (1974-76) and the DHSS (1976-79) in Labour governments under Wilson and Callaghan respectively, witnessed and have spoken out against the dishonesty exhibited by a succession of leaders in committing Britain to the European Project.
Described are the aims of the Treaty of Rome, and how in subsequent years the process of integration into a European political entity has gradually been forced through, against the wishes and without the knowledge of the majority of British people.
Little by little, we are being roped in by the EU, aided and abetted by their new best friends, Cameron and Hague, who know a thing or two about twisting language to sound like the truth, so to disguise a cleverly crafted lie.
If we do not make a stand, Britain will be in the Euro one day - or in an incarnation of it, the end game being complete political union under an unelected body of totalitarian technocrats, who will transform Britain into an ex-nation of serfs. Except for the politicos, of course, who will be rewarded handsomely.
Ex-Labour MPs Nigel Spearing and Eric Deakins tell of how the British people were duped. They were both Members of UK Parliament at the time of Britain's entry into the 'Common Market' and witnessed how it was pulled off.(7-video autoplay).
The Bank of England is loaning £100m to the UK arm of Landsbanki so that it can repay its UK customers.
Landisbanki was nationalised by the Icelandic government last week and its UK arm closed down leaving customers here unable to access their money.
The Icelandic foreign minister has responded to the economic problems there - national debt at 500% of GDP and their top 3 banks nationalised - by saying that their long term goal is now to join the EU and the Euro and get bailed out by the European Central Bank. No, that’s not a joke. He said:
In the short term, out defence is co-operation with the International Monetary Fund and in the long term EU membership, adoption of the euro and backup from the European Central Bank.
So what he is, in fact, saying is that the English taxpayer will be bailing out one of their now state-owned banks and then bailing out the entire country if it joins the EU and becomes a net recipient of EU funding. Not what I would call a good deal for the English taxpayer and if they do go down the route of joining the EU, not a good deal for Icelanders. Their economy is up shit creek now but if they join the EU their paddles will be confiscated and given to a French farmer to use as kindling to set fire to his fields. The Icelandic economy was, until recently, reliant on fishing, banking and services. Banking is a no-brainer from now on, services are looking a bit dubious but fishing will at least let them feed themselves. But not with an EU fishing quota though - they’ll end up throwing more back in the sea than they take home and that’s assuming the Spanish don’t get the quotas first like they did in our waters.
I wonder if the Icelanders have an equivalent phrase for “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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