Few Americans understand the reasons for European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The "Troika" consisting of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monitary Fund (IMF) decide to make loans to economically failing EU member countries in the full knowledge that countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal cannot possibly pay them off. Why would they do that? Well you have to know how it works. The IMF immediately takes the promised loans and uses them to pay off the creditors. Then the IMF requires that the people of those countries pay the IMF back every red cent by taking additional cuts in their salaries and pensions and requiring their government to sell off services such as water and electricity to foreigners who will raise the prices. How to escape starvation? Why resign from the European Union and default on all current loans! Of course, they would still need loans. But they would need to be long term so that those loans can be paid back after they are first used to improve their economies. Who would grant them such loans? Why Russia, China, and the BRICS!

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Paul Craig Roberts – As Greece Pivots, Putin Unleashing Ultimate Move To Crush The EU And NATO

With people around the world worried about the escalating crisis in Greece and conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, today former U.S. Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, warned King World News that as Greece pivots, Putin is unleashing the ultimate move to crush the EU and NATO.

Eric King:  “Dr. Roberts, I find the foresight you have is fascinating.  You were the only person in the world who talked (on KWN in January) about Greece and the new Greek government getting close to (Putin and) the Russians.  And here we are in the month of April and we’ve got the Greek government officials meeting with Vladimir Putin.  How did you know that it would end up in this place?  What possibly made you dream up this scenario that’s (now) unfolding?”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  “The former (Greek) governments were all interested in being accepted in the West, (being) paid off, taken care of, having comfortable bank balances in Switzerland or wherever, and so they went along with this notion that we will drive the Greek people into starvation in order to pay the people who have speculated on Greek debt (the banksters)….

“This current (Greek) government isn’t willing to do that, or at least so far has not been willing to do that.  And they understand that the debt cannot be repaid.  The Greeks can’t pay the bailout and so the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who has been accepting indignity after indignity from the EU and Washington, lie after lie, sanction after sanction, he saw an opportunity.  He said, ‘Look, come do business with us Greece.'

So the possibility is there now that the Greeks will simply default on the entire debt.  If I was the Greek government that is exactly what I would do.  I would tell the West: 

"You’re trying to drive us into the ground — to force starvation on the Greek people.  You go to hell, we’re not paying you one nickel.  In fact, we’re not having anything else to do with you.  We’re out of NATO, we’re out of the EU, we’ve got our own currency back, and if we need any financing, our Russian friends are going to finance us."

That Would Set Off A Chain Reaction In The West

Now this would begin the breakup of NATO, which is necessary if there is to be peace in the world.  There can be no peace as long as NATO exists because NATO is a mercenary force for Washington’s aggressions.  And without NATO, Washington doesn’t have any cover.

Well, if they lose the cover of Europe, Washington is standing there alone in its aggression.  So the minute NATO were to breakup, the threat of war with Russia and China would be over because Washington alone wouldn’t be able to pursue this type of enterprise.

 

Greek And Russian Alliance Spells The End Of NATO

So Greece and Russia (together) is the beginning of the possibility of the breakup of NATO because if the Greeks were to default on the debt, that would leave Greece debt free.  It would have zero debt to GDP, and if they needed financing for some reason, the Russians could finance them.

Italy And Spain Would Be Next After Greece

Now, if this happens with Greece, it’s bound to happen with Italy and Spain because Italy and Spain are in the same situation — they’ve got more debt than they can service.  And the United States has been very active to make sure that the governments of Italy and Spain are governments that Washington controls — who will ruin their own people and their own country in order to pay off Washington and the New York hedge funds, Germany, Netherlands, and the European big banks (banksters).

Spain And Italy May Also Look To The Russians, Chinese Or The BRICs

But if Greece were to leave, then that shows the politicians in Spain and Italy that they can do the same thing — they could default and have a debt free balance sheet.  And if they needed to have any kind of financing, they can turn to Russia, or Russia and China, or the BRICS bank (AIIB), which is now funded with $100 billion.

Greedy Banksters May Cause The Fall Of The Empire

So what we see possibly happening here is that the greed of the West and the Western financial interests (banksters), the hedge funds, the EU, Washington, this greed to loot countries, even their own members like Greece, could end up breaking up the empire.

I think we need to be very hopeful that this does occur because the United States has kept the world at war and there have been millions of people killed, displaced, maimed, and wounded.  And now that they (the U.S.) are running out of easy enemies, they are seizing on Russia.  Well, Russia is not an easy enemy and the Russians keep telling Washington: 

"We’re not Gaddafi.  We’re not Saddam Hussein.  If you mess with us, it’s the end of the world.  What are you doing?  Don’t you have any sense?  Do you really want war with nuclear powers?  Why can’t you be intelligent and why don’t we work out these things diplomatically?"

But Washington doesn’t hear.  Washington just goes on about its business.  These people are committed to a war with Russia, but that’s not a war that anybody can win.

So I think that the Greeks are fortunate to have gotten a new government.  I think the Greeks were silly not to have given the new government a massive majority.  I think if they had given the new government a massive majority then the Europeans would have made an adjustment in their demands.

But since the Europeans are still determined to loot Greece for their own gain, the Greeks may turn away from Europe.  And if they do, it will be the beginning of the unraveling of the EU, the euro, and, thank goodness, of NATO.” KWN has now released the incredible audio interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, where he discusses one of the greatest periods of crisis that the world has ever seen as well as the dangerous events taking place around the globe and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE

Blogger's Remark: If clicking above fails, you may go to the original here:

http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-as-greece-pivots-putin-unleashing-ultimate-move-to-crush-the-eu-and-nato/

The photographed version below is not functional

Uber economist Michael Hudson tells us in plain words why European countries are rushing to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Hint: The World Bank presses everywhere for privatization of public utilities and basic infrastructure, and then makes loans to the governments to develop these infrastructures, after which they sell them cheap to American buyers, who will create monopolies and turn those infrastructures into a rent extraction machines squeezing out interest, dividends, and management fees, all of which are paid to the Americans.

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Europe Tilts East Towards China (1/2) 

Michael Hudson Report: Britain, Germany, France and Italy are among those who joined Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in an expression of their discontent over World Bank polices that force developing countries to depend on the US - March 20, 2015 

https://youtu.be/wuZ2MC00fVY

Bio                                                                                                                                      .

Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His two newest books are The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents. His upcoming book is titled Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.

Uber economist Bill Black, has been a great critic of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times's coverage of the Greek debt crisis, i.e., they've mentioning austerity very little, if at all. Bill, like Paul Craig Roberts, sees Greece as being victimized by the European Union, headed by Germany. At the end of WW2, more than half of Germany's debts were written off, not simply due to compassion for those suffering austerity, but also the fastest way to put people back to work and recover their economy. Ironically, it is Germany that is now resisting debt write-offs for Greece (as well as for Italy and Spain), thus damning their citizens to further austerity (while profiting the criminal banks that caused the problem). In this context, Bill mentions that "...what you have to remember is that most of the nations of Europe were occupied by Germany. And they do not have good memories of being occupied by Germany."

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Will the SYRIZA Victory Spark a Broad Anti-Austerity Struggle in Europe? 

Professor William Black says the mainstream media has failed to explain the ordinary Greek's experience of austerity policy - January 30, 2015

http://youtu.be/rWkKQvy-TMY

Bio                                                                                                                                           .

William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

"Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on 'suspicion' that it was carrying a political refugee to safety..." "Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the 'international community', as the governments of the west call themselves."

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Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy

Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world

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John Pilger

The Guardian, Thursday 4 July 2013 14.00 EDT
Original Here

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President Morales arrives back in La Paz, Bolivia. ‘Imagine the response from Paris if the French president's plane was forced down in Latin America.’ Photograph: Zuma/Rex Features

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request [for political asylum]," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official.

The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather's Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather's lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.

Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different, but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of Bolivia's president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.

Snowden's revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, "where many of the world's most dangerous militants live", said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world's most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.

In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel prize in literature, Harold Pinter referred to "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities" of the Soviet Union were well known in the west while America's crimes were "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant US and its agents. "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened."

This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Snowden's whistleblowing, like that of Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history's greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as "soft totalitarianism". If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home.

www.johnpilger.com

Latin America furious over U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal colluding to "kidnap" the Bolivian head of state, Evo Morales.

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Bolivians Indignant at European Treatment of President Morales

South American bloc UNASUR holds emergency meeting condemning European and U.S. actions - July 5, 13

According to Ellen Brown, who knows as much about banking as anyone in the world, what is now facing to the Cypriots can, and one day certainly will happen to Americans. The facts are that today's monster banks can loan much more money than their depositors deposit. However, in the event of a run on the banks, neither the banks nor those owning bank stocks will be liable. All losses will be borne by the depositors!!! You can look this up on Wikipedia. Advice: Move your savings account to a reliable credit union, STAT!

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A Safe and a Shotgun or Publicly-owned Banks? The Battle of Cyprus

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Ellen Brown

If these worries become really serious, . . . [s]mall savers will take their money out of banks and resort to household safes and a shotgun.

– Martin Hutchinson on the attempted EU raid on deposits in Cyprus banks

The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making.  US depositors could be next . . . .  
On Tuesday, March 19, the national legislature of Cyprus overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout.  Reuters called it “a stunning setback for the 17-nation currency bloc,” but it was a stunning victory for democracy. As Reuters quoted one 65-year-old pensioner, “The voice of the people was heard.”
 
The EU had warned that it would withhold €10 billion in bailout loans, and the European Central Bank (ECB) had threatened to end emergency lending assistance for distressed Cypriot banks, unless depositors – including small savers – shared the cost of the rescue. In the deal rejected by the legislature, a one-time levy on depositors would be required in return for a bailout of the banking system. Deposits below €100,000 would be subject to a 6.75% levy or “haircut”, while those over €100,000 would have been subject to a 9.99% “fine.”
 
The move was bold, but the battle isn’t over yet.  The EU has now given Cyprus until Monday to raise the billions of euros it needs to clinch an international bailout or face the threatened collapse of its financial system and likely exit from the euro currency zone.

The Long-planned Confiscation Scheme

 
The deal pushed by the “troika” – the EU, ECB and IMF – has been characterized as a one-off event devised as an emergency measure in this one extreme case. But the confiscation plan has long been in the making, and it isn’t limited to Cyprus.

In a September 2011 article in the Bulletin of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand titled “A Primer on Open Bank Resolution,” Kevin Hoskin and Ian Woolford discussed a very similar haircut plan that had been in the works, they said, since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.  The article referenced recommendations made in 2010 and 2011 by the Basel Committee of the Bank for International Settlements, the “central bankers’ central bank” in Switzerland.

The purpose of the plan, called the Open Bank Resolution (OBR) , is to deal with bank failures when they have become so expensive that governments are no longer willing to bail out the lenders. The authors wrote that the primary objectives of OBR are to:

• ensure that, as far as possible, any losses are ultimately borne by the bank’s shareholders and creditors . . . .

The spectrum of “creditors” is defined to include depositors:

At one end of the spectrum, there are large international financial institutions that invest in debt issued by the bank (commonly referred to as wholesale funding). At the other end of the spectrum, are customers with cheque and savings accounts and term deposits.

Most people would be surprised to learn that they are legally considered “creditors” of their banks rather than customers who have trusted the bank with their money for safekeeping, but that seems to be the case. According to Wikipedia:

In most legal systems, . . . the funds deposited are no longer the property of the customer. The funds become the property of the bank, and the customer in turn receives an asset called a deposit account (a checking or savings account). That deposit account is a liability of the bank on the bank’s books and on its balance sheet.  Because the bank is authorized by law to make loans up to a multiple of its reserves, the bank’s reserves on hand to satisfy payment of deposit liabilities amounts to only a fraction of the total which the bank is obligated to pay in satisfaction of its demand deposits.

The bank gets the money. The depositor becomes only a creditor with an IOU. The bank is not required to keep the deposits available for withdrawal but can lend them out, keeping only a “fraction” on reserve, following accepted fractional reserve banking principles. When too many creditors come for their money at once, the result can be a run on the banks and bank failure.

The New Zealand OBR said the creditors had all enjoyed a return on their investments and had freely accepted the risk, but most people would be surprised to learn that too. What return do you get from a bank on a deposit account these days? And isn’t your deposit protected against risk by FDIC deposit insurance?

Not anymore, apparently. As Martin Hutchinson observed in Money Morning, “if governments can just seize deposits by means of a ‘tax’ then deposit insurance is worth absolutely zippo.”

The Real Profiteers Get Off Scot-Free

Felix Salmon wrote in Reuters of the Cyprus confiscation:

Meanwhile, people who deserve to lose money here, won’t. If you lent money to Cyprus’s banks by buying their debt rather than by depositing money, you will suffer no losses at all. And if you lent money to the insolvent Cypriot government, then you too will be paid off at 100 cents on the euro. . . .
The big winner here is the ECB, which has extended a lot of credit to dubiously-solvent Cypriot banks and which is taking no losses at all.

It is the ECB that can most afford to take the hit, because it has the power to print euros. It could simply create the money to bail out the Cyprus banks and take no loss at all. But imposing austerity on the people is apparently part of the plan.  Salmon writes:

From a drily technocratic perspective, this move can be seen as simply being part of a standard Euro-austerity program: the EU wants tax hikes and spending cuts, and this is a kind of tax . . . .
The big losers are working-class Cypriots, whose elected government has proved powerless . . . . The Eurozone has always had a democratic deficit: monetary union was imposed by the elite on unthankful and unwilling citizens. Now the citizens are revolting: just look at Beppe Grillo.

But that was before the Cyprus government stood up for the depositors and refused to go along with the plan, in what will be a stunning victory for democracy if they can hold their ground.

It CAN Happen Here

Cyprus is a small island, of little apparent significance. But one day, the bold move of its legislators may be compared to the Battle of Marathon, the pivotal moment in European history when their Greek forebears fended off the Persians, allowing classical Greek civilization to flourish.  The current battle on this tiny island has taken on global significance.  If the technocrat bankers can push through their confiscation scheme there, precedent will be established for doing it elsewhere when bank bailouts become prohibitive for governments.

That situation could be looming even now in the United States.  As Gretchen Morgenson warned in a recent article on the 307-page Senate report detailing last year’s $6.2 billion trading fiasco at JPMorganChase: “Be afraid.”  The report resoundingly disproves the premise that the Dodd-Frank legislation has made our system safe from the reckless banking activities that brought the economy to its knees in 2008. Writes Morgenson:

JPMorgan . . . Is the largest derivatives dealer in the world. Trillions of dollars in such instruments sit on its and other big banks’ balance sheets. The ease with which the bank hid losses and fiddled with valuations should be a major concern to investors.

Pam Martens observed in a March 18th article that JPMorgan was gambling in the stock market with depositor funds. She writes, “trading stocks with customers’ savings deposits – that truly has the ring of the excesses of 1929 . . . .”

The large institutional banks not only could fail; they are likely to fail.  When the derivative scheme collapses and the US government refuses a bailout, JPMorgan could be giving its depositors’ accounts sizeable “haircuts” along guidelines established by the BIS and Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

Time for Some Public Sector Banks?

The bold moves of the Cypriots and such firebrand political activists as Italy’s Grillo are not the only bulwarks against bankster confiscation. While the credit crisis is strangling the Western banking system, the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – have sailed through largely unscathed. According to a May 2010 article in The Economist, what has allowed them to escape are their strong and stable publicly-owned banks.

Professor Kurt von Mettenheim of the Sao Paulo Business School of Brazil writes, “The credit policies of BRIC government banks help explain why these countries experienced shorter and milder economic downturns during 2007-2008.” Government banks countered the effects of the financial crisis by providing counter-cyclical credit and greater client confidence.

Russia is an Eastern European country that weathered the credit crisis although being very close to the Eurozone. According to a March 2010 article in Forbes:

As in other countries, the [2008] crisis prompted the state to take on a greater role in the banking system.  State-owned systemic banks . . . have been used to carry out anticrisis measures, such as driving growth in lending (however limited) and supporting private institutions.

In the 1998 Asian crisis, many Russians who had put all their savings in private banks lost everything; and the credit crisis of 2008 has reinforced their distrust of private banks.  Russian businesses as well as individuals have turned to their government-owned banks as the more trustworthy alternative. As a result, state-owned banks are expected to continue dominating the Russian banking industry for the foreseeable future.

The entire Eurozone conundrum is unnecessary. It is the result of too little money in a system in which the money supply is fixed, and the Eurozone governments and their central banks cannot issue their own currencies. There are insufficient euros to pay principal plus interest in a pyramid scheme in which only the principal is injected by the banks that create money as “bank credit” on their books. A central bank with the power to issue money could remedy that systemic flaw, by injecting the liquidity needed to jumpstart the economy and turn back the tide of austerity choking the people.

The push to confiscate the savings of hard-working Cypriot citizens is a shot across the bow for every working person in the world, a wake-up call to the perils of a system in which tiny cadres of elites call the shots and the rest of us pay the price. When we finally pull back the veils of power to expose the men pulling the levers in an age-old game they devised, we will see that prosperity is indeed possible for all.

For more on the public bank solution and for details of the June 2013 Public Banking Institute conference in San Rafael, California, see here.
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Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.

Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade?

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February 14, 2012 | Original here

The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a democracy?

Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. Others note that elected officials represent the special interests that fund their campaigns and not the voters. The bailout of the banks arranged by Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson, and Washington’s failure to indict any banksters for the fraud that contributed to the financial crisis, are evidence in support of the view that the US government represents money and not the voters.

Recent events in Greece and Italy have created more skepticism of the West’s claim to be democratic. Two elected European prime ministers, George Papandreou of Greece and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, were forced to resign over the sovereign debt issue. Not even Berlusconi, a billionaire who continues to lead the largest Italian political party, could stand up to the pressure brought by private bankers and unelected European Union officials.

Papandreou lasted only 10 days after announcing on October 31, 2011, that he would let the Greek voters decide in a referendum whether or not to accept the austerity being imposed on the Greek people from the outside. Austerity is the price charged by the EU for lending the Greek government the money to pay to the banks. In other words, the question was austerity or default. However, the question was decided without the participation of the Greek people.

Consequently, Greeks have taken to the streets. The conditions accompanying the latest tranche of the bailout have again brought large numbers of Greeks into the streets of Athens and other cities. Citizens are protesting a 20% cut both in the minimum wage and in pensions larger than 12,000 euros ($15,800) annually and more cuts in public sector jobs. Greek taxes were raised 2.3 billion euros last year and are scheduled to rise another 3.4 billion euros in 2013. The austerity is being imposed despite Greece’s unemployment rate of 21% overall and 48% for those under the age of 25.

One interpretation is that the banks, which were careless in their loans to governments, are forcing the people to save the banks from the consequences of their bad decisions.

Another interpretation is that the European Union is using the sovereign debt crisis to extend its power and control over the individual member states of the EU.

Some say that the EU is using the banks for the EU’s agenda, and others say the banks are using the EU for the banks’ agenda.

Indeed, they may be using each other. Regardless, democracy is not part of the process.

Greece’s appointed–not elected–prime minister is Lucas Papademos, He is a former governor of the Bank of Greece, a member of Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, and former vice president of the European Central Bank. In other words, he is a banker appointed to represent the banks.

On February 12 the appointed prime minister, whose job is to deliver Greece to the banks or to Brussels, failed to see the irony in his statement that “violence has no place in a democracy.” Neither did he see any irony in the fact that 40 elected representatives in the Greek parliament who rejected the bailout terms were expelled by the ruling coalition parties. Violence begets violence. Violence in the streets is a response to the economic violence being committed against the Greek people.

Italy has formed a second democratic government devoid of democracy. The appointed prime minister, Mario Monti, doesn’t have to face an election until April 2013. Moreover, according to news reports, his “technocratic cabinet” does not include a single elected politician. The banks are taking no chances: Monti is both prime minister and minister of economics and finance.

Monti’s background indicates that he represents both the EU and the banks. He is former European advisor to Goldman Sachs, European chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Bilderberg Group, a former EU Commissioner, and a founding member of the Spinelli Group, an organization launched in September 2010 to facilitate integration within the EU, that is, to advance central power over the member states.

There is little doubt that European governments, like Washington, have been financially improvident, living beyond their means and building up debt burdens on citizens. Something needed to be done. However, what is being done is extra-democratic. This is an indication that Western elites – the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, the EU, transnational corporations, oversized banks, and the mega-rich – no longer believe in democracy.

Perhaps future historians will conclude that democracy once served the interests of money in order to break free of the power of kings, aristocracy, and government predations, but as money established control over governments, democracy became a liability. Historians will speak of the transition from the divine right of kings to the divine right of money.