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Лудостта на еврото
The madness of the euro
La locura del euro
La folie de l'euro
La follia dell euro
De waanzin van de euro euro
A loucura do euro
Безумие евро

The madness of the euro

By Rudo de Ruijter,
Independent Researcher
Netherlands

Private banks must grow infinitely in order not to fail.  (See: The banking system in short.) That is why we have inflation and live according to the dogma of eternal economical growth.

Restrictions to grow beyond the country's borders would endanger the banks sooner or later. This was well understood by Pierre Werner, banker and prime minister of Luxembourg, who presented the first blue print for the common currency in 1970.

Already at that time, prominent economists had warned that because of the big economic differences this would lead to severe indebtment of the weaker countries. These problems were easy to predict. But debts mean extra income for the bankers. So the euro came and with it the problems.

Many euro-countries have severe financial problems by now. Many people still don't understand that the euro is not the solution, but the cause.

The problem? Because of the big differences between euro-countries the cost prices of products differ too. With the open borders, consumers prefer products from less expensive euro-countries. As a result, their local economy fails. At the same time, the euros leave the country as payment for the import-products. To continue to dispose of euros citizens and government must borrow more and more.. The country is trapped in  growing debts...

A country disposing of its own currency can, in such a case, devaluate it. That makes the imported products more expensive for its own population and the export products cheaper for foreign purchasers. The debt will decrease and the productivity increase again. Devaluations were very common before the euro started. The euro works like a fixed exchange rate. Less productive countries are trapped like rats. They will never be able to get out of debts again. That is why the chosen method of loading still more debts on these countries is a strange and ill one.

Consecutively the banks raise the interest for the local government in such a way, it can only obtain further loans from the Troika (International Monetary Funds, European Central Bank, European Commission.)

To supply these loans, the Troika demands Draconic budget cuts. Public officers are fired, services come to a standstill, social achievements are broken down. The people are taught they would be still worse off without the euro. Also, all lucrative possessions of the country must be sold to foreign parties to lower the debt. A man of Goldman Sachs is appointed as governor.

Financiers earn billions of interest with these mountains of debt. To prevent that they risk losses because of impayments, the ESM-bank has been set up. (ESM stands for European Stability Mechanisme) The ESM may grab as much tax money as it wants from the treasuries of the eurocountries to make good the losses of the lenders, freely, without any democratic control and without limit.

The ministers of finance appoint themselves as governors of the ESM. (Signature of the first version of the ESM-treaty, 11 July 2011. By the way, this signature was illegal, because the Convention of Vienna, that sets the rules for treaties, does not mention ministers of finance as legal representatives of countries.)

Apparently because the US was not satisfied with this first version, it disappeared in the trash bin a few days later. A second version came on 2 February 2012, this time it was signed by EU-ambassadors. The treaty, however, is not a EU-treaty, but an international treaty. (The EU has not the right to extend its own competences and the ESM limits the competences of the national parliaments.) The rules of the EU don't apply to the ESM and the ESM doesn't have to justify its actions to anyone. No democratic control on the use of our tax money has been foreseen.

Unbelievable but true, the treaty has been ratified by the parliaments and senats of the 17 euro-countries.

This means that in each country a majority (and in some countries even a 2/3 majority) has voted in favor of the treaty. Curiously, that does not mean that those who voted in favor have read the text. At least, those of whom I have read comments in the press had, apparently, read a few lines, without understanding what the treaty was about. We should rather fear that hardly any representative has read the text, because for them, studying the text would have been a waste of time. Whatever the content, they have to vote the way they are ordered to by the leader of their political party. That is the way things go when coalitions are in power.

What we can conclude is that the lobby of the bankers and the europhiles have succeeded to convince enough leaders of political parties - a few persons in each country - to make a majority of representatives vote in favor of the treaty.

They voted in favor of the bankers, not for the people.

Barroso, president of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014.

It is the European Commission that, according to Barroso, should be the economic government of the Union, which defines the actions that national governments must carry out. (28.09.11)

[1] Iceland, Hungary and Ukraine

     http://uk.reuters.com/article/ marketsNewsUS/idUKLJ43131520090119

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