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Posts Tagged ‘International Monetary Fund’

Vatican Calls for a Central World Bank

Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011

http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/vatican-calls-for-a-central-world-bank/

By  | October 25th, 2011 | Category: Latest News | 161 comments


Enough about Jesus. Now listen to my economic policies!

On October 24th, the Pope officially gave his support to Occupy Wall Street and, like Gorbachev, proposed a solution that goes EXACTLY at the opposite of the protester’s demands: an international organization regulating economy. In other words, a Central World Bank. In other other words, a New World Order.

Thank you Vatican for your input. Jesus was indeed a big advocate of international banking. He also preached about a world financial system that would only benefit the elite. Yup, that’s what he did alright (sorry for the extreme sarcasm).

Here’s an article about the Vatican pushing for the same international system as the Rockefellers and others.

Vatican Calls for Oversight of the World’s Finances

The Vatican called on Monday for an overhaul of the world’s financial systems, and again proposed establishment of a supranational authority to oversee the global economy, calling it necessary to bring more democratic and ethical principles to a marketplace run amok.

In a report issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Vatican argued that “politics — which is responsible for the common good” must be given primacy over the economy and finance, and that existing institutions like the International Monetary Fund had not been responding adequately to global economic problems.

The document grows out of the Roman Catholic Church’s concerns about economic instability and widening inequality of income and wealth around the world, issues that transcend the power of national governments to address on their own.

“The time has come to conceive of institutions with universal competence, now that vital goods shared by the entire human family are at stake, goods which the individual states cannot promote and protect by themselves,” Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, the president of the pontifical council, said as he presented the report on Monday. “That is what pushed us.”

The language in the document, which the Vatican refers to as a note, is distinctively strong. “We should not be afraid to propose new ideas, even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest,” the document states.

The message prompted comparisons with the rallying cries of protest movements that have been challenging the financial world order, like the indignados in Madrid and the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City. Still, Vatican officials said the document was not a manifesto for disaffected dissidents.

“The document proposes ideas that seem to be in line with those proposed by the indignados, but really we are in line with the Magisterium of the church,” said Bishop Mario Toso, secretary to the pontifical council, referring to the church’s teaching authority. “It is a coincidence that we share some views. But after all, these are proposals that are based on reasonableness.”

The document is a reminder that the Catholic Church, without getting involved in policymaking, still seeks to shape its principles. “To function correctly the economy needs ethics; and not just of any kind, but one that is people-centered,” the document states, paraphrasing an encyclical that Pope Benedict XVI issued in 2009 calling for greater social responsibility in the economy.

In the United States, the report was embraced by politically liberal Catholics who are concerned about the widening gap between rich and poor. Vincent J. Miller, a professor of Catholic theology and culture at the University of Dayton, wrote, “It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation.”

John Gehring of Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said, “In the next Republican presidential debate, someone should ask Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both proudly Catholic, whether they support the Vatican’s call for more robust financial reform.”

Politically conservative Catholics, meanwhile, hastened to assure their camp that the document does not carry the full force of church teaching, since it was produced by a Vatican office, not by the pope himself. And some dismissed the report as nothing new, or simply misinformed.

Writing in the National Review, Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute, which promotes free-market economic policies, said of the document: “It reflects rather conventional contemporary economic thinking. Unfortunately, given the uselessness of much present-day economics, that’s not likely to make it especially helpful.”

– New York Times, Vatican Calls for Oversight of the World’s Finances

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The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism

Posted by Admin on July 10, 2011

http://www.truth-out.org/ideological-crisis-western-capitalism/1310127895

 

(Photo: emperley3)

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.

In the US, this right-wing resurgence, whose adherents evidently seek to repeal the basic laws of math and economics, is threatening to force a default on the national debt. If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that deficit has to be financed. Rather than carefully balancing the benefits of each government expenditure program with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer – not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes.

This leaves open the question of which expenditures get priority – and if expenditures to pay interest on the national debt do not, a default is inevitable. Moreover, to cut back expenditures now, in the midst of an ongoing crisis brought on by free-market ideology, would inevitably simply prolong the downturn.

A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the US faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. Unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health-care costs – fueled in part by the commitment of George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake – quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits.

The remedies to the US deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich. But the right will have none of this, and instead is pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the US economy in peril and that shred what remains of the social contract. Meanwhile, the US financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways.

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But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and others face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe this time around, too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece.

There is an alternative: an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth itself increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence that this engenders leads to still further growth.

Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government’s fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity’s advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.

Do we really need another costly experiment with ideas that have failed repeatedly? We shouldn’t, but increasingly it appears that we will have to endure another one nonetheless. A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous – even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.

For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use thislink.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.

5digg
JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in Economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.

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BREAKING NEWS: Mounting Evidence that Dominique Strauss Kahn was Framed

Posted by Admin on July 10, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25533

Global Research, July 7, 2011
While the media has gone to arms length to obfuscate the matter, there is mounting evidence that Dominique Strauss Kahnwas framed.

According to media reports, the 32-year-old Guinean Sofitel housemaid received the modest sum of 100,000 dollars paid into her bank account. The New York Times acknowledges the payment but fails to analyze the source of these payments. In an utterly confused statement, the NYT suggests that the money was deposited in the housemaid’s account by her Guinean boy friend who is serving time in a high security prison:

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends. (NYT, July 1, 2011, emphasis added)

The bank records of the housemaid, not to mention the record of her telephone calls, are known to police investigators, yet both the media and the prosecutors have failed to reveal the identity of the persons who instigated these money transfers.

The reports suggest that they may be “drug related”, thereby casually dismissing the likelihood that the money could have been part of the framing of DSK. The reports also mention that the money deposits were made “over the last two years”, thereby conveying  the impression that they bear no relationship to the DSK affair.

The exact timing of these money transfers including the identity of  senders are known to police investigators. Why has this information not been released?

If the 100,000 dollars had indeed been deposited into her bank account in the course of the last two years, why on earth would she be working as a housemaid?

Regime change at the IMF

Why was the substance of the housemaid’s false accusations not released at an earlier stage?  Who was protecting her?

Why did the media wait to reveal information which confirms DSK’s innocence.

This information was known to the prosecutors at an early stage of the investigation, yet it was only released after the appointment of France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as Managing Director of the IMF.

Lagarde’s candidacy was confirmed and accepted on June 26th. Her mandate was confirmed on June 28th following a decision of the IMF’s 24 member executive board.

Lagarde is an appointee of Wall Street and the US banking establishment. Her candidacy had been approved by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the 28th of June:

“I am pleased to announce our decision to support Christine Lagarde to head the IMF,” Geithner said in a statement hours before the 24-member IMF executive board was expected to select her as its managing director.

Careful timing. In a bitter irony, the report from the prosecutor proving DSK’s innocence was released on the day following the IMF’s executive board decision instating Lagarde as Managing Director of IMF for a five year term.

The frame-up has visibly succeeded. Who instructed prosecutors not to release this information until after the appointment of Lagarde as IMF Chief?

If this information had been revealed a few days earlier, Lagarde’s candidacy as IMF chief might have been questioned.

Regime change at the IMF has been speedily implemented, not to mention the implications of the DSK affair in relation to the French presidential elections.

Christine Lagarde commenced her five year term as IMF Managing Director on July 5th at the height of Greece’s debt crisis.

Sofar, the likely hypothesis of a frame-up directed against DSK is not being touched upon by the mainstream media.

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Former Head of IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn accuses Vladimir Putin of Being Part of a Plot to Have him Fired from his Post

Posted by Admin on May 24, 2011

Global Research, May 23, 2011

The former chief of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has reportedly accused the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, of being part of a plot to have him fired from his post.

­The British Daily Mail newspaper has claimed that before his arrest on sexual abuse charges, Strauss-Kahn voiced concerns that he could fall victim to a conspiracy.

In an interview with a French TV channel, Strauss-Kahn’s colleague, Claude Bartolone, said the ex-IMF chief told him that Russia and France were trying to stop him running for the French presidency.

“He had to watch out and be careful. They could have tapped the phone. He said the Russians, and notably Putin had allied themselves with France to try to have him fired from the IMF, to stop him running for the presidency. He said that by not leaving the IMF ‘cleanly’ he would no longer be able to announce his candidacy,” Bartolone told BFMTV on April 29.

Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has called the accusations entirely baseless.

“I’ve been secretary to Prime Minister Putin for the last three years and I’ve never heard such weird, such crazy, allegations that simply don’t have any sense in the background,” he stressed.

Peskov added that Bartolone’s confession had failed to become big news in France and now after one British had paper picked it up, he doesn’t believe that the story will have any continuation because “it’s something that has nothing to do even with a sense of humor.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is currently awaiting trial in New York.

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Does America have a Culture?

Posted by Admin on May 24, 2011

Global Research, May 24, 2011

The culture of the United States is said to be a youth culture, which is defined in terms of entertainment: sex, rock music or its current equivalent, violent video games, sports, and TV reality shows. This culture has transformed the country and appears on the verge of transforming the rest of the world. There are even indications that secularized Arab and Iranian youth can’t wait to be liberated and to partake of this culture of porn-rock.

America’s former culture–accountable government, rule of law and presumption of innocence, respect for others and for principles, and manners–has gone by the wayside. Many Americans, especially younger ones, are not aware of what they have lost, because they don’t know what they had.

This was brought home to me yet again by some reader responses to my recent columns in which I pointed out that Strauss-Kahn, the IMF director (now former) accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, was denied the presumption of innocence. I pointed out that the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty was violated by the police and media, and that Strauss-Kahn was convicted in the media not only prior to trial but also prior to his indictment.

From readers’ responses I learned that there are people who do not know that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty by evidence in a public trial. As one wrote, “if he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t be charged.” Some thought that by “presumption of innocence” I was saying that Strauss-Kahn was innocent. I was accused of being a woman-hater and received feminist lectures. Some American women are more familiar with feminist mantras than they are with the legal principles that are the foundation of our society.

Many males also confused my defense of the presumption of innocence with a defense of Strauss-Kahn, or if they knew about “innocent until proven guilty,” didn’t care. Right-wingers wanted Strauss-Kahn out of the picture because he was the socialist party candidate likely to defeat the American puppet, Sarkozy, in the French presidential election. With Sarkozy, Washington finally has a French president who has abandoned all interest in an independent or semi-independent French foreign policy. Didn’t I realize that if we lost Sarkozy, the French might revert to not going along with our invasions, as they refused to do when we had to get Saddam Hussein? With Sarkozy, the French are doing our bidding in Libya. Why in the world did I think Strauss-Kahn and some silly doctrine like the presumption of innocence were more important than French support for our wars?

Many left-wingers were just as indifferent to a legal principle that protects the innocent. They wanted Strauss-Kahn’s blood, because he is a rich member of the establishment and as IMF director had made the poor in Greece, Ireland, and Spain pay for the mistakes of the rich. What did I mean, “presumption of innocence”? How could any member of the ruling establishment be innocent? One left-winger even wrote that I had “reverted to type,” and that my babbling about presumption of innocence proved that I was still a Reaganite defending the rich from the consequences of their crimes.

It evidently did not cause the feminist, the right-wing or the left-wing to wonder that if such a powerful member of the establishment, as they regard Strauss-Kahn to be, can be denied the presumption of innocence, what would be their fate?

Independent thought is not a concept with which very many Americans are familiar or comfortable. Most want to have their emotions stroked, to be told what they want to hear. They already know what they think. A writer’s job is to validate it, and if the writer doesn’t, he is, depending on the ideology of the reader, a misogynist, a pinko-liberal commie, or an operative for the fascist establishment. All will agree that he is a no good SOB.

As I wrote a while back, respect for truth has fallen and taken everything down with it.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

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Regime Change at the IMF: The Frame-Up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?

Posted by Admin on May 24, 2011

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 19, 2011

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The arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US at the expense of those of France and the European Union. While there is for the moment no proof of a plot, the unusual circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment require careful examination.

Immediately following Strauss Kahn’s arrest, pressures were exerted by Washington to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF preferably by a non-European, an American or a handpicked candidate from an “emerging market economy” or a developing country.

Since the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1945, the World Bank has been headed by an American whereas the IMF has been under the helm of a (Western) European.

Strauss-Kahn is a member of elite groups who meet behind closed doors. He belongs to the Bildeberger. Categorized as one of the world’s most influential persons, he is an academic and politician rather than a banker. In contrast to his predecessors at the IMF, he has no direct affiliation to a banking or financial institution.

But at the same time he is the fall guy. His “gaffe” was to confront the Washington-Wall Street Consensus and push for reforms within the IMF, which challenged America’s overriding role within the organization.

The demise of Strauss-Kahn potentially serves to strengthen the hegemony of the US and its control over the IMF at the expense of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called “Old Europe”.

Blocking Strauss-Kahn, the Presidential Candidate

In recent years, a major shift has occurred in Europe’s political landscape. Pro-American governments have been elected in both France and Germany. Social Democracy has been weakened.

Franco-American relations have been redefined, with Washington playing a significant role in grooming a new generation of European politicians.

The presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy has, in many regards, become a de facto US “client regime”, broadly supportive of US corporate interests in the EU and closely aligned with US foreign policy.

There are two overlapping and interrelated issues in the DSK frame-up hypothesis.

The first pertains to regime change at the IMF, the second to Strauss-Kahn as a candidate in France’s forthcoming presidential elections.

Both these processes are tied into the clash between competing US and European economic interests including control over the euro-currency system.

Strauss-Khan as a favorite of the Socialist Party, would have won the presidential elections leading to the demise of “Our Man in Paris” Nicolas Sarkozy. As documented by Thierry Meyssan, the CIA played a central undercover role in destabilizing the Gaullist party and supporting the election of Nicolas Sarkozy (See Operation Sarkozy: How the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic, Reseau Voltaire, September 4, 2008)

A Strauss-Kahn presidency and a “Socialist” government would have been a serious setback for Washington, contributing to a major shift in Franco-American relations.

It would have contributed to weakening Washington’s role on the European political chessboard, leading to a shift in the balance of power between America and “Old Europe” (namely the Franco-German alliance).

It would have had repercussions on the internal structure of the Atlantic Alliance and the hegemonic role of the US within NATO.

The Eurozone monetary system as well as Wall Street’s resolve to exert a decisive influence on the European monetary architecture are also at stake.

The Frame-Up?

Fifty-seven percent of France’s population, according to a May 17 poll, believe that Strauss-Kahn was framed, victim of a set-up. He was detained on alleged sexual assault and rape charges based on scanty evidence. He was detained based on a complaint filed by the Sofitel hotel where he was staying, on behalf of the alleged victim, an unnamed hotel chamber-maid:

The 32-year-old maid told authorities that she entered his suite early Saturday afternoon and he attacked her, New York Police Department spokesman Paul J. Browne. She said she had been told to clean the spacious $3,000-a-night suite, which she thought was empty.

According to an account the woman provided to police, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he began to sexually assault her. She said she fought him off, then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7565485.html#ixzz1MfFWFlnY

Wednesday CFR.org Roundup: U.S. pressures Strauss-Kahn to resign

Challenging the Washington Consensus

What is at stake in the immediate wake of Strauss Kahn’s demise is “regime change” at the IMF.

The Obama administration has demanded his replacement by a more compliant individual. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank is pushing for the replacement of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “suggesting he can no longer perform his duties” as IMF Managing director.

“Geithner called for greater formal recognition by the IMF board that John Lipsky, the fund’s second-in-command, will continue serving as temporary managing director for an interim period. Although Strauss-Kahn has yet to resign, sources say the IMF is in touch with his legal counsel to discuss his future at the organization.”

What lies behind the frame-up scenario? What powerful interests are involved? Geithner had a close personal relationship with Strauss-Kahn.

On the floor of the US Senate (May 18), Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, called for the resignation of DSK while calling upon the IMF’s deputy managing director John Lipsky to “assume full responsibility of the IMF” as interim managing director. The process of “permanent replacement should “commence at once,” he said. John Lipsky is a well connected Wall Street banker, a former Vice Chairman at JPMorgan Investment Bank.

While the IMF is in theory an intergovernmental organization, it has historically been controlled by Wall Street and the US Treasury. The IMF’s “bitter economic medicine”, the so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), imposed on countless developing countries, essentially serves the interests of creditor banks and multinational corporations.

The IMF is not the main architect of these devastating economic reforms which have served to impoverish millions of people, while creating a “favorable environment” for foreign investors in Third World  low wage economies.

The creditor banks call the shots. The IMF is a bureaucratic entity. Its role is to implement and enforce those economic policies on behalf of dominant economic interests.

Strauss Kahn’s proposed reforms while providing a “human face” to the IMF did not constitute a shift in direction. They were formulated within the realm of neoliberalism. They modified but they did not undermine the central role of IMF “economic medicine”. The socially devastating impacts of IMF “shock treatment” under Strauss-Kahn’s leadership have largely prevailed.

Dominique Strauss Kahn arrived at the helm of the IMF in November 2007, less than a year prior to September-October 2008 financial meltdown on Wall Street. The structural adjustment program (SAP) was not modified. Under DSK, IMF “shock treatment” which historically had been limited to developing countries was  imposed on Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Under the helm of DSK as Managing Director, the IMF demanded that developing countries remove food and fuel subsidies at a time of rising commodity prices on the New York and Chicago Mercantile exchanges.

The hikes in food and fuel prices, which preceded the September-October 2008 Wall Street crash, were in large part the result of market manipulation. Grain prices were boosted artificially by large scale speculative operations. Instead of taming the speculators and containing the rise in food and fuel prices, the IMF’s role was to ensure that the governments of indebted developing countries would not in any way interfere in the “free market”, by preventing these prices from going up.

These hikes in food prices, which are the result of outright manipulation (rather than scarcity) have served to impoverish people Worldwide. The surge in food prices constitutes a new phase of the process of global impoverishment.

DSK was complicit in this process of market manipulation. The removal of food and fuel subsidies in Tunisia and Egypt had been demanded by the IMF. Food and fuel prices skyrocketed, people were impoverished, paving the way towards the January 2011 social protest movement:

Fiscal prudence remains an overarching priority for the [Tunisian] authorities, who also see the need for maintaining a supportive fiscal policy in 2010 in the current international environment. Efforts in the last decade to bring down the public debt ratio significantly should not be jeopardized by a too lax fiscal policy. The authorities are committed to firmly control current expenditure, including subsidies,… (IMF Tunisia: 2010 Article IV Consultation – Staff Report; Public Information Notice on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for Tunisia)

“[The IMF] encouraged the [Egyptian] authorities to press further with food and fuel subsidy reforms, and welcomed their intention to improve the efficiency and targeting of food subsidy programs. [meaning the selective elimination of food subsidies].

“Consideration should be given to introducing automatic adjustment mechanisms for domestic fuel prices to minimize distortions [meaning dramatic increases in fuel prices without State interference], while strengthening cash-based social programs to protect vulnerable groups. (IMF Executive Board Concludes 2008 Article IV Consultation with the Arab Republic of Egypt Public Information Notice, PIN  No. 09/04, January 15, 2009)

Under the helm of DSK, the IMF also imposed sweeping austerity measures on Egypt in 2008, while supporting Hosni Mubarak’s “efforts to broaden the privatization program”.(Ibid)

The Frank G. Wisner Nicolas Sarkozy Connection 

Strauss-Kahn was refused bail by Judge Melissa Jackson, an appointee and protégé of Michael Bloomberg, who in addition to his role as Mayor is a powerful figure on Wall Street.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. charged (using scanty evidence) Strauss-Kahn “with seven crimes, including attempted rape, sexual abuse, forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment”.

Who is Cyrus Vance Jr.?

He is the son of the late Cyrus Vance who served as Secretary of State in the Carter administration.

But there is more than meets the eye. Nicolas Sarkozy’s step father Frank G. Wisner II, a prominent CIA official who married his step mother Christine de Ganay in 1977 served as Deputy Executive Secretary of State under the helm of Cyrus Vance Senior, father of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior.

Is it relevant?

The Vance and Wisner families had close personal ties. In turn Nicolas Sarkozy had close family ties with his step father Frank Wisner (and his half brothers and sisters in the US and one member of the Wisner family was involved in Sarkozy’s election campaign).

It is also worth noting that Frank G. Wisner II was the son of one of America’s most notorious spies, the late Frank Gardiner Wisner (1909- 1965), the mastermind behind the CIA sponsored coup which toppled the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. Wisner Jr. is also trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Trust.

While these various personal ties do not prove that Strauss-Kahn was the object of a set-up, the matter of Sarkozy’s ties to the CIA via his step father, not to mention the ties of Frank G. Wisner II to the Cyrus Vance family are certainly worth investigating. Frank G, Wisner also played a key role as Obama’s special intelligence envoy to Egypt at the height of the January 2011 protest movement.

Did the CIA play a role?

Was Strauss-Kahn framed by people in his immediate political entourage including President Obama and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner?

District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior, son of the late Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State in the Carter administration

Sarkozy’s Step Father Frank G Wisner II, Deputy Executive Secretary of State (1976-79)
under Cyrus Vance Senior during the Carter administration

In this courtroom drawing, Dominique Strauss-Khan, centre, stands next to his lawyer Benjamin Brafman, in front of Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jackson during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court for the alleged attack on a maid at his penthouse suite of a hotel in New York. Photo: AP

In this courtroom drawing, Dominique Strauss-Khan, next to his lawyer 

Benjamin Brafman, in front of Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jackson during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court (AP)

File:Strauss-Kahn, Geithner (IMF 2009).jpg

DSK and Timothy Geithner

DSK and Timothy Geithner


Fair Trial?

Innocent before proven guilty? The US media has already cast its verdict. Will the court procedures be manipulated?

One would expect that Strauss-Kahn be granted a fair trial, namely the same treatment as that granted to thousands of arrests on alleged sexual aggression charges in New York City.

How many similar or comparable alleged sexual aggressions occur on a monthly basis in New York City?  What is the underlying pattern? How many of these are reported to the police?  How many are the object of police follow-up once a complaint has been filed?

What is the percent of complaints submitted to police which are the object of police arrest? How many of these arrests lead to a judicial procedure? What are the delays in court procedures?

How many of these arrests lead to release without a judicial procedure?

How many of the cases submitted to a judicial procedure are dismissed by the presiding judge?

How many of the cases which are not dismissed are refused bail outright by the presiding judge? What is the basis for refusing bail?

How many are granted bail?  What is the average amount of bail?

How many are imprisoned without bail based on scanty and incomplete evidence?

How many of those who are refused bail are sent to an infamous maximum security prison on Rikers Island on the orders of  Michael Bloomberg.

Diplomatic Immunity

Press reports state that full diplomatic immunity does not apply to officials of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, namely that the US did not ratify the protocol.

“U.N. convention on privileges and immunities for international agencies that most countries have ratified. It gives the heads of U.N. agencies broad immunity in the countries where they are based. But the U.S. government never became a party to that treaty. Employees of international agencies are covered by a U.S. statute that gives only limited immunity.”

The relevant question is how has this limited immunity provision been applied in practice?  Namely how many people with limited immunity (UN officials, officials of the Bretton Woods institutions) have been arrested and sent to a high security prison?

Has Strauss Kahn been given the same treatment as those arrested under the provisions of “limited immunity”?

Does the Strauss Kahn arrest fit the pattern? Or is Strauss Kahn being treated in a way which does not correspond to the normal (average) pattern of police and judicial procedures applied in the numerous cases of persons arrested on alleged sexual assault charges?

Without a frame-up instrumented by very powerful people acting in the background, the head of the IMF would have been treated in an entirely different way. The mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and Timothy Geithner would have come to his rescue.  The matter would have been hushed up with a view to protecting the reputation of a powerful public figure. But that did not happen.


Rikers Island Prison where DSK was imprisoned.

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IMF's Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces sex charge

Posted by Admin on May 15, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110515/wl_nm/us_strausskahn_arrest

NEW YORK/PARIS (Reuters) – IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested and charged on Sunday with sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid, in a scandal that appeared to wreck his hopes of running for president of France.

The charges threatened to create a leadership vacuum at the IMF, overseer of the global economic system, and threw wide open the French presidential election next April, for which opinion polls had made Strauss-Kahn the front-runner.

One of his lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, told Reuters that his client “will plead not guilty.”

The 62-year-old Socialist, a key player in the response to the 2007-9 global financial meltdown and in Europe’s debt crisis, was taken off an Air France plane about to leave for Paris from John F Kennedy International Airport on Saturday.

The news caused shock and disbelief in France, where a government spokesman called for caution and respect for the presumption of innocence. [nPISFGE7NF]

“The news we received from New York last night struck like a thunderbolt,” said Socialist leader Martine Aubry, appealing for party unity.

Francois Bayrou, a centrist opponent of Strauss-Kahn, said: “All this is completely astounding, immensely troubling and distressing. If the facts prove true … it’s something degrading for all women. It’s terrible for the image of France.”

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her rival’s presidential hopes had been crushed. Strauss-Kahn and Le Pen have led recent opinion polls ahead of conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, even though the chief of the International Monetary Fund had yet to declare his candidacy.

The Fund said in a statement on its website that it “remains fully functioning and operational,” and had no comment on the case.

MAID’S ACCOUNT

New York police spokesman Paul Browne said Strauss-Kahn was arrested at 2:15 a.m. EDT on Sunday on charges of a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment.

“We must wait until things settle and see if it’s true or a provocation, one of Strauss-Kahn’s French-based lawyers, Leon Lef Forster, said. “We must be especially careful not to get into a media circus and we must wait until things are clear.”

A 32-year-old maid filed a sexual assault complaint after fleeing the $3,000-a-night hotel suite at the Sofitel in Times Square where the alleged incident occurred around 1 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Browne said.

Strauss-Kahn appeared to have fled the hotel after the incident, the police spokesman said.

Browne told Reuters: “She told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom and began to sexually assault her, according to her account.

“She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room.”

Strauss-Kahn does not have diplomatic immunity, Browne said. He is expected to be brought before a state court on Sunday.

According to New York state law, a criminal sexual act carries a potential sentence of 15-20 years, the same as attempted rape. Unlawful imprisonment carries a potential sentence of three to five years.

The allegation is a major embarrassment to the IMF, which has authorized billions of dollars of lending to troubled countries and played a major role in the euro zone debt crisis.

It follows a statement on Thursday that the IMF’s No. 2, John Lipsky, plans to step down in August when his term ends.

A crisis of leadership at the Fund would especially worry European countries, given Strauss-Kahn’s pivotal role in brokering bailouts for Iceland, Hungary, Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

FRANCE IN SHOCK

Popularly known by his initials DSK, the IMF managing director had been expected to declare by late June if he would run for president of France. The latest opinion polls ranked him as a clear winner over conservative incumbent Sarkozy.

“The case and the charges … mark the end of his campaign and pre-campaign for the presidency and will most likely prompt the IMF to ask him to leave his post,” National Front leader Le Pen told i-Tele television.

Conservative Trade Minister Pierre Lellouche said: “I think we have to grant DSK the presumption of innocence. If all this were true it would be damning.”

Even Strauss-Kahn’s political allies were pessimistic.

“The most likely outcome is that this case will stick and even if he pleads not guilty, which he may be, he won’t be able to be candidate for the Socialist primary for the presidency and he won’t be able to stay at the IMF,” said prominent Socialist Jacques Attali.

If Strauss-Kahn were out of the race, leading candidates for the Socialist presidential ticket include party leader Aubry, left-wing veteran Francois Hollande and Segolene Royal, the candidate beaten by Sarkozy in 2007.

PLANE HELD AT JFK

In New York, police spokesman Browne said: “The NYPD realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind. We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody for questioning.”

The woman, who has not been named, was treated in hospital for minor injuries, Browne said.

Strauss-Kahn was on his way to Europe for a meeting on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the European debt crisis, and then was to attend a euro zone finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Strauss-Kahn took over the IMF in November 2007 for a five-year term scheduled to end next year. Before that, he was a French finance minister, member of the French National Assembly and a professor of economics.

He has faced controversy before. In 2008, he apologized for “an error of judgment” after an affair with a female IMF economist who was his subordinate. An inquiry cleared him of harassment and abuse of power, but he was warned by the fund’s board of member countries against further improper conduct.

Strauss-Kahn apologized to the woman, Piroska Nagy, and his wife, French television personality Anne Sinclair, as well as to IMF employees for the trouble he had caused.

Since taking over the Fund, he has won praise for putting it at the center of efforts to tackle the global financial meltdown. He introduced sweeping changes to ensure that countries swamped by the crisis had access to emergency loans.

He has overseen changes that have given emerging market countries, such as China, India and Brazil, greater voting power in the IMF, and weighed into thornier issues by urging China to let its currency rise in a dispute with the United States.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Noeleen Walder, Catherine Bremer and John Irish; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Peter Millership)

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IMF chief to activate crisis fund next week

Posted by Admin on March 27, 2011

http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/IMF-chief-activate-crisis-reuters-2530807212.html

On Friday 25 March 2011, 5:01 AM

 

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the International Monetary Fund will seek to activate a $580 billion crisis fund next week, a confidence-building step at a time of heightened global uncertainty.

“The biggest worry is the high risk of contagion from Portugal and general global uncertainty will trigger a new wave of borrowing from the fund,” a source familiar with the plan said. Two other sources also said economic worry spots were behind the expected move.

The IMF confirmed that IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn would seek to activate the fund — New Arrangements to Borrow — but said it was a “natural consequence of ratification of NAB on March 11, which was previously announced.”

Still, the global worry list has expanded in recent weeks because of Japan’s earthquake and nuclear crisis, as well as unrest spreading in the oil-producing Middle East and North Africa.

Concerns about Portugal’s debt crisis increased on Wednesday after the sudden departure of its prime minister made it likely that the country may not avoid turning to the European Union and IMF for financial help.

Sources emphasized that Portugal had not requested IMF bailout money and insists it is adamantly opposed to requesting IMF help. The country first has to request IMF help to trigger formal discussions on a rescue loan and program.

So far, Portugal has managed to finance itself in capital markets although government borrowing costs spiked on Thursday and rating agency Fitch cut Portugal’s credit rating by two notches to A- saying risks to the country had risen after parliament failed to pass fiscal consolidation measures.

The concern is that Portugal’s debt woes has wider repercussions, with neighboring Spain holding about one-third of Portuguese public debt.

In a statement on March 11 announcing the NAB had taken effect, the IMF called it a tool to “provide supplementary resources to the IMF when these are needed to forestall or cope with a threat to the international monetary system.”

The NAB was expanded ten-fold from $53 billion last year to include 13 new contributors, among them large emerging market economies like China, Brazil, India, Russia and Mexico.

The United States is the largest contributor to the fund through a $100 billion credit agreement approved by President Barack Obama in 2009.

The move was in response to a call by the Group of 20 leading economies in 2009 to triple the IMF’s lending resources to shore up confidence in its ability to respond to crises.

The IMF has been at the center of the response to the financial meltdown and recession as the global lender of last resort, recently approving emergency loans to Ireland and Greece.

(Editing by Dan Grebler, Bernard Orr)

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GLOBAL FRAUD: GLOBAL HOPE

Posted by Admin on March 27, 2011

Paul Hellyer defence minister on UFO

For Release:
4:30 p.m. EST, Feb. 26, 2011

An Address to the International UFO Congress
Fort McDowell Resort, Scottsdale, Arizona
Saturday, February 26, 2011
by
Hon. Paul Hellyer, P.C.
Former Canadian Minister of National Defence

The world financial system is a total fraud.  It is one gargantuan Ponzi scheme, no better than the one Bernie Madoff used to swindle his friends and neighbors, and thousands of times worse if you add up the total number of victims it has ripped off over countless generations.

The principal difference between the two schemes is that Madoff was acting outside the law while the international banking cartel has persuaded generation after generation of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers to provide legislative protection for their larceny.

The banks Ponzi scheme is alarmingly simple.  They lend the same money to several people or institutions at the same time and collect interest on it from each.  What the banks really lend, however, is their credit, and what they take back in compensation for that privilege is a debt that must be repaid with interest.

The number of times they lend the same money is called leverage.  The practice is as old as the hills but for our purposes we can start with the goldsmiths of Lombard Street in London, England, who accepted deposits for which they issued certificates redeemable on demand.  They paid their depositors a nominal interest rate on the understanding that they could lend the money to their customers at higher interest rates.  They soon found that they could lend more than they had in their vaults because only a few depositors came in to redeem their gold or silver at any one time.  It was a scam.  It was illegal.  Nevertheless they got away with it for a long while and the scam was legitimized when the Bank of England was chartered to help King William finance his war.  Rich people subscribed £1,200,000 in gold and silver, as capital, to found the bank, which then was lent to the government at 8 percent.  To show his appreciation the King allowed the bank to print £1,200,000 in banknotes and lend them at high interest rates.  In effect, the bank was allowed to lend the same money twice – once to the government and once to the people.

Over the years, due to the avarice of the banks and the complicity of the politicians, that ratio has increased dramatically.  In the early days of the 20th century, federal chartered U.S. banks were required to keep gold reserves of 25 percent.  That means they were allowed to lend the same money four times.  I remember when Canadian banks were required to maintain a cash reserve of 8 percent.  That means they were allowed to lend the same money 12½ times.
Today, thanks to Milton Friedman’s irrational flip-flop from being a proponent of 100% cash reserves to the opposite extreme of zero reserves, and the adoption of his ideas by the major central banks of the world in 1974, multiples have increased dramatically – in some cases to as much as 20 to 1 or more.  Banks only keep enough cash to meet day-to-day demands for those few customers who go in and request it, and consequently the fraud is virtually total.

The system works this way.  Suppose that you want to borrow $35,000 to buy a new car.  You visit your friendly banker and ask for a loan. He or she will ask you for collateral – some stocks, bonds, a second mortgage on your house or cottage or, if you are unable to supply any of these, the co-signature of a well-to-do friend or relative. When the collateral requirement is satisfied you will be asked to sign a note for the principal amount with an agreed rate of interest.

When the paperwork is complete, and the note signed, your banker will make an entry on the bank’s computer and, presto, a $35,000 credit will appear in your account which you can use to buy your car. The important point is that seconds earlier that money did not exist. It was created out of thin air – so to speak.

The banking equation is a species of double-entry bookkeeping where your note becomes an asset on the bank’s books, and the new money that was deposited to your account is a liability. The profit for the bank comes from the difference between the low rate of interest, if any, you would be paid on your deposit if you didn’t spend the borrowed money immediately, and the much higher rate you would be obliged to pay on your note – the technical term is “the spread.”

At some point, however, you have to pay off your note and any interest owing.  And not only you but everyone else who has borrowed “money” from banks – including governments which, by the way, own the right to print money but that have irresponsibly handed the right over to an elite group of private bankers.  Anyone who defaults is in big trouble.  Individuals who default will have the assets they pledged as collateral seized by the bank.  A government that is in danger of defaulting, will be forced to borrow from the International Monetary Fund, which will then tell that government how to run its affairs including cutting back on services and selling off public assets to the international vulture capitalists.

In reality, then, the banks have turned the world into one humongous pawn shop.  You hock your stocks, bonds, house, business, rich mother-in-law or country and the bank(s) will give you a loan based on the value of the collateral.

A world system where all the money is created as debt is a perpetual disaster in the making.  It is like a giant balloon that the banks pump full of debt.  The balloon gets larger and larger until the debt load becomes too heavy to carry, and then it is like a balloon with a pin stuck in it.  The system crashes and thousands or sometimes millions of innocent people lose their jobs, homes, farms and businesses.
Almost any high school student should be able to see that any monetary system based on debt creation is totally insane.  The total world debt, mathematically, is always tending toward infinity – and there is no possible way of paying it off.  The real money (legal tender) to do so doesn’t exist.  And the real economy that depends on cash to grow shifts into low gear whenever the supply of credit money dries up.

Not surprisingly, there have been 25 recessions and depressions in the United States since 1890.  In several cases, including the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current Great Recession, the evidence indicates that the meltdown was anticipated by a few insiders who helped trigger the catastrophe.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the U.S. Senate Banking and Currency Committee Report that became widely known as the Pecora Report on the Practices of Stock Exchanges, indicated that there were insiders who benefitted from the crash.  “Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker’s stoutest allies,” Pecora wrote in his memoir.  Similar allegations were evident in Charles Ferguson damning documentary “Inside Job,” relating to the 2007-2008 meltdown.  These reports, and other historical evidence prove beyond any doubt that much of Wall Street is rotten to the core.  It has become one gigantic millstone around the neck of both the American and world economies.

The collateral damage from the recent meltdown has been staggering.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor estimated that 8.4 million jobs were lost in the U.S. alone.  Most countries experienced similar dramatic losses.  The reduction in asset values worldwide has been estimated at $20 trillion U.S. dollars, yet not a single one of the culprits is in jail.  You would think that someone would have had the decency to launch a class action for at least $10 trillion against every individual and every organization that contributed to the catastrophe in any way.

It boggles the mind that a system so vulnerable to manipulation would ever have come into existence in the first place.  The evolution did not happen by accident.  It was not guided by the mythical invisible hand of Adam Smith.  On the contrary, for more than a century-and-a-half, it was engineered by the barely visible hand of the Rothschild family and its allies, and since World War II by the Rockefeller family.  The two dynasties combined forces to exercise influence on many fronts sheltered by the cloak of secrecy established by the Bilderberg Group.

The long term influence of the banking cartel is incalculable.  Their biggest coup was the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in the United States.  The big New York banks really didn’t like the idea of genuine competition, so a small group held a secret meeting at the private resort of J.P. Morgan on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.  Their scheme, devised by Paul M. Warburg, and subsequently adopted by Congress, is a legal private monopoly of the U.S. money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public interest.

It is a tribute to the skill of the international bankers that they were able to draft a bill, revise it, change its name and make the few window dressing compromises necessary to get it adopted by Congress just before Christmas when quite a few Representatives must have been dreaming of sugar plum fairies instead of exercising due diligence.  Only Charles Lindberg Sr. seemed to grasp the essence of what was going on.

To put it bluntly, the Congress transferred its sovereign constitutional right to create money to the sole custody of a group of private bankers.  The magnitude of the hoist is unprecedented in the history of the world – the numbers now are in the high trillions.

Soon after the bill was passed the magnitude of the tragedy began to be recognized.  William Jennings Bryan, who acted as Democrat whip, later said: “In my long political career, the one thing I genuinely regret is my part in getting the banking and currency legislation (Federal Reserve Act of 1913) enacted into law.”  President Woodrow Wilson, just three years after passage of the Act, wrote: “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.  Our system of credit is concentrated (in the Federal Reserve System).  The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men….  We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world.”  But the bill was not repealed; almost 100 years later the sell-out is still the law.  This makes you wonder what the people’s representatives have been doing to earn their salaries.

The people in charge of the original deception were very far-seeing.  They realized that when future governments had to borrow from them they would need a constant income stream to pay the interest on the bonds.  So they persuaded the government to introduce income taxes, first as a temporary measure, but later permanently, so it would be able to meet its obligations to the bondholders.  In fiscal year 2005 total individual income taxes in the U.S. totalled $927 billion.  Of that amount $352 billion, or 38%, was required just to pay interest on the federal debt.  The figure would be higher now.

The banksters, as they were often called, then decided that an independent press might catch on to the chicanery.  Oscar Callaway is reported in the Congressional Record of February 9, 1917 as follows.

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world, and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States… They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.  The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; … an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers [and to suppress] everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.”
It has been suggested that the Bilderberger Group may have taken a leaf from the Morgan precedent to protect their interests in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  That is impossible to prove because its members are sworn to secrecy, and the press won’t report on its meetings.  Could it be mere coincidence that the monetary system, the downside of globalization and the decades-long cover-up of the extraterrestrial presence and technology (especially the clean energy sources that would impact the value of oil stocks), the three subjects of most direct beneficial interests of the banksters, are the three subjects that are avoided like the plague by the mainline press?

I am not willing to go so far as to say that the men behind the international banking system are evil men because their thoughts are private.  But Sir Josiah, later Baron Stamp, a former director of the Bank of England, has given us a rare snapshot of the truth.

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin.  The Bankers own the earth.  Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of the pen they will create enough money to buy it back again.  However, take that power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in.  But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”

In the latest meltdown of 2007-2008, the Fed acted quickly to prevent the Ponzi pyramid from collapsing completely.  It printed trillions of dollars to bail out the banks and a few industries that were highly indebted to banks.

But what did the Fed do for the taxpayers whose money was so wildly diluted to save the banks?  Nothing!  They were left to fend for themselves.  Millions of people lost their jobs, their farms, their houses, their hopes, and their dignity as a result of circumstances beyond their control.  The taxpayers bailed out the banks, but got nothing in return.

The same is true of governments who came so quickly to the rescue.  As a result of the meltdown their revenues were decreased so they were forced to incur or increase their deficits, as well as to start cutting back on essential services.

The Fed pretended to be helping stimulate the economy by reducing interest rates to near zero.  It would be an interesting exercise to find out what happened to all of this low-cost money.  It would be a good subject for Congressional attention.  How much did the banks use to buy up domestic and foreign assets at fire-sale prices?  Was any of it used by financial institutions to try to corner world food markets and raise prices at a time when millions are starving?

No doubt some taxpayers did take advantage of the low interest rates available but were they warned about the old bait and switch game?  Anyone who acquires assets with cheap money runs the risk of losing their property when the Fed ultimately raises rates.  It’s all part of the boom-bust cycle inherent in our infinitely silly monetary system.

The Economics Profession

What does all this have to say about the economics profession?  What it really says isn’t fit to print.  Someone once said that if you put 20 economists in a room you will get 21 opinions.

That is not my experience.  If you get 20 economists together they are likely to give you one stock answer, or at most two.  And if there is one dissenter he or she is likely to be drowned out by the 19, squawking like a flock of parrots the words memorized from what their professors taught them.

I have witnessed this herd-like mentality firsthand.  When I was first elected to the House of Commons in 1949 there were only a handful of Keynesians in Ottawa.  Twenty years later nearly everyone was a Keynesian including, I am told, Richard Nixon.

At that time there were only a few monetarists around.  But they spread like mushrooms and soon dominated the economic landscape.  It reached the stage when Keynes was anathema, and it was almost impossible to get a tenured position in a school of economics unless you were part of Milton Friedman’s monetarist revolution.

Apparently little if any thought was given to the possibility that neither Keynes nor Friedman had got it right.  The former was a bit closer to reality than the latter, but both theories foundered on the rocks of one inescapable truth.  Both assumed that the economic system is self-correcting, yet more than two centuries of experience has demonstrated clearly that it is not!  Someone has to be at the tiller charged with steering clear of the shoals and rocks of economic disaster and that person has to be someone who is responsible to the people and not the self-serving boom-busters.

Global Warming

While bank reform is the most urgent problem facing the world today, it is global warming that has equally or even greater long term consequences.  It is a total fraud to pretend that we have thirty, forty or fifty years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  There are reputable scientists who think we may already have crossed the Rubicon.  Even if that is true, we can’t roll the clock back; we can only influence the present and the future.   Each of the past three decades has been the hottest on record, according to a report released in July 2010 by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  The report pulled together data from ten climate change indicators, measured by 160 research groups in 48 countries.

The data shows sea levels are rising; snow cover in the Arctic melts earlier; the average air temperature is rising; ocean surface temperatures have also been rising; the summer sea ice cover is declining; sea air temperature has been rising; for 19 years glaciers have lost mass; land air temperature has been rising – a global trend.

All of this puts the lie to the propaganda of the oil industry aimed at creating doubt about the reliability of scientific data.  Taking a leaf from the tobacco industry, which managed to create doubt about the safety of their products years after they privately knew the facts, the oil industry has been attempting to raise doubt about the urgency of replacing fossil fuels with clean energy, and with considerable success.  In their case, however, the stakes are higher.  It was a tragedy that so many people lost their lives through lack of sound information about the consequences of smoking.  In the case of global warming, however, many times more people will have their lives put at risk.

Still the oil cartel is making plans as if nothing is going to change, and that we are going to be stuck with a fatal oil economy for decades until the damage is irreversible.  It is too late to begin more offshore drilling.  It is too late for new developments in the Alberta oil sands.  It is too late for more noisy windmill farms.  The transition must start now, with a 10-year deadline.

Is that possible?  Of course it’s possible but only with the kind of mobilization essential to win a war for survival.  One excuse for inaction has been the lack of money due to government deficits and debt.  But that obstacle can be overcome in less than a year if governments and legislatures change the system and exercise their sovereign right to make what is physically possible financially possible.  Heaven knows there are millions of unemployed workers worldwide waiting to rise to the challenge.

The other major obstacle has been a lack of consensus on the form of clean energy to use to replace fossil fuels.  And that brings me, finally, to the subject of the day, the extraterrestrial presence and technology.

The Extraterrestrial Presence and Technology

It is a fraud for the U.S. government to pretend that it is not interested in UFOs.  In fact, it has been a matter of high and probably pre-eminent interest for decades.

An early Canadian ufologist, Wilbert Smith, who was a senior employee at the Department of Transport, where I became minister not long after his retirement, wrote a top secret memorandum to the Controller of Communications dated November 21, 1950 asking permission to set up a group to study the geomagnetic aspects of UFOs propulsion systems.

As part of his memorandum Smith said that he had made discreet enquiries through the Canadian embassy staff in Washington where he obtained the following information.

(a) The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.
(b) Flying saucers exist.
(c) Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group, headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.
(d) The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.
So, Dr. Vannevar Bush, one of America’s pre-eminent scientists, and a team of experts he had assembled, were already working on back-engineering by 1950.  (Back-engineering is the combined art and science of analyzing an object, in this case parts of a crashed vehicle, in order to determine its characteristics for possible replication or adaptation.)

Many people who are interested in the subject of UFOs use one of the Roswell crashes of July 1947 as their starting line.  Recent evidence, however, confirms that the U.S. Army Air Corps was in the crash retrieval business before that.  Paola Harris, on July 5, 2010 interviewed two men, Jose Padilla and Reme Baca, aged 9 and 7 at the time, who witnessed a saucer crash on Padilla land near San Antonio, New Mexico, in August 1945.  In her new book Exopolitics: Stargate to a New Reality, Paola gives the detailed account of what these men saw as children, the actual crash, the creatures’ appearance, the pieces of the craft they took, the military clean up, and an in-depth analysis of the significance of the case.

I had the opportunity to chat with Reme Baca by telephone recently and the thing that stuck in my mind was that when Sgt. Avila came to ask Mr. Padilla’s permission to enter his land to retrieve the “object,” he referred to it as “an experimental weather balloon.”  That was exactly the same ruse that Brigadier General Roger Ramey used in reference to the Roswell incident two years later.  Apparently there was a considerable lack of imagination on the Army’s part.

In later years the Air Force, that had succeeded the Army Air Corps, became much more sophisticated in its misinformation and disinformation techniques.  These include having the Star Visitors portrayed in movies as sinister beings that we should be fearful of – probably without justification.

Another fascinating case that Paola brought to my attention not long ago was that of Charles Hall, the physicist and information technology professional, who worked as an airman meteorologist at the USAF bombing and gunnery range at Indian Springs, Nevada, in the 1960s.

Charles worked in close contact with Tall Whites, a species that I had been previously unfamiliar with.  Over a period of months he learned to lose his fear of the aliens who lived, worked and played on Air Force property.

In a two-hour telephone conversation he gave me many of the characteristics of the Whites, described the scout ships in which they travelled and said most of them were assembled in the U.S.  Furthermore, he talked about the mother ship arriving on the nights of the full moon and sliding into its hangar cut into the side of a mountain nearby.

It was all fascinating stuff that included the fact that the Tall Whites were working closely with the USAF and exchanging technology in the mid-1960s.  So it is very difficult to imagine how much has been achieved in 60 years of back-engineering alien technology that was much more advanced than our own.  There is no doubt that myriad scientists, technicians, and many of America’s most advanced aircraft and weapons corporations must have achieved what would have been classified as miracles just a few years ago.

It is alleged that the U.S. engineers working in one of the vast underground facilities have built vehicles that are virtually indistinguishable from those of other planets.  If this is true, to what purpose will they be put, and will it be for good purposes or military purposes?

The area of discovery that is most relevant to this presentation, however, is the question of exotic energy sources.  Years ago it was reported that both zero point and cold fusion energy had been developed.  These are energy sources that could facilitate the 10-year target date and not only revolutionalize the world for the better, but help preserve it as a happy habitat for Earthlings.

In the unlikely event that these sources are not yet commercially viable, all we would have to do is ask one of the friendly species to help us and they would because they are deeply concerned about our stewardship.  In the event that we are still treating them as enemy aliens, and doing our best to shoot them down, we would have to curb our lust of conflict and adopt an acceptable level of intergalactic civility.

Better People

The third essential change is for us as individuals.  A just and peaceful world is not possible when it is riddled with graft, fraud and corruption of all kinds.  Greed is king and mammon rules the world.

Institutions have to change too.  For centuries major religions have been selling their alleged superiority or exclusiveness at the point of a sword, leading to the deaths of thousands of innocents.  The three Abrahamic religions, for example, all claim the inside route to paradise.  Mathematically that is impossible.  It is far more probable, mathematically, that they are all wrong and that the truth is larger and more inclusive.

Ancient and modern history both suggest that there is no hope of a just and peaceful world unless all religions, and those with no religion, forget their differences and start working together to build the Kingdom of God on Earth.  I define this as a world where every child can expect food to eat, clean water to drink, adequate clothing to wear, a roof overhead, access to medical support and enough education to be able to determine how best he or she can serve humankind positively, with dignity and self-fulfillment.

What a wonderful world that would be!  But it would require a 180-degree change in policies and priorities and a serious effort to apply the Golden Rule that all religions claim as a common thread.

The application of the Golden Rule would mean an end to empire building, and the pursuit of military power and advantage.  The U.S., for example, would have to stop being its own worst enemy.  The declaration of the war on terror was the biggest strategic blunder I have seen.

On the 11th day of September 2001, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States enjoyed the sympathy of the world, including Arab states and populations.  The threat from al-Qaeda was limited and quite within the potential of police and intelligence operations to cope with.

The situation changed dramatically with the launch of a war on Iraq.  The goodwill began to evaporate overnight.  Soon, instead of a few dozens insurgents the numbers of young Muslims willing to die for their cause multiplied to thousands and a great chasm of hate and mistrust enveloped much of the world.

The U.S. has consistently refused to be even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the Israelis deceive themselves, and the world, when they claim to be the victims.  For a long while peace has been within their grasp if they could have agreed to a just settlement, and establishment of a vibrant Palestinian state.  But a handful of fundamentalists have always succeeded in disrupting the peace process because they are not willing to accept the great Rabbi Hillel’s admonition.  “So always treat others the way you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.”   Meanwhile the peace and stability of the world remains in jeopardy.

The world community must adopt principles and practices that override fundamentalists of any stripe whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Economic.  In addition, religious people should pay more attention to their holy books.  There is nothing in the Bible that would legitimize a preventive war, with its carpet bombing, or the launch of a drone or missile intended to kill one person when there is risk that innocent bystanders will also die.  Similarly, there is nothing in the Qur’an that would justify suicide bombing that results in the random death of innocents.

Global Hope

If you get the impression that the world is going to hell in a hand basket you have heard me correctly.  But it doesn’t need to be so.  There are remedies but they involve massive change in the areas discussed – none of which are even on the political radar at present.  There is light at the end of the tunnel but, as Sir John Quinton, a former chairman of Barclay’s Bank said, “Bankers sometimes look on politicians as people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.”

What we are really talking about is restoring democracy to countries that not only claim they have it, but also take pride in trying to export it, even though they don’t really qualify as democratic as defined in the dictionary.  In Webster’s it is: “government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them or their elected representatives.”  To begin, Wall Street has been the dominant power in the U.S. for decades, and still is.  Add to that the fact that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the President of the United States, does not have the security clearance for a number of projects controlled by troops under his command, and you have to conclude that the U.S. is not really a democracy.

The same can be said about Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and myriad countries that are really puppets of the International Financial System.  In each case the real interests of citizen voters is subjugated to the demands of international finance.

There is a sad irony in reading U.S. history of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary days.  Historians often attribute the revolution to the tax on tea.  On the other hand, “[Benjamin] Franklin cited restrictions upon paper money as one of the main reasons for the alienation of the American provinces from the mother country.”  The U.S. won the revolutionary war but then lost the next critical one when it adopted the British banking system instead of pursuing the better model their provinces had been experimenting with.

For the U.S. now to inflict the British practice on countries around the world, using the International Monetary Fund and World Bank as enforcers, is comparable to the King’s edict that gave birth to the United States.  So the financial chains of oppression have to be broken and freedom restored to citizens everywhere.

It’s time to forget the tea party and address the critically important issues facing the U.S. and the world.  All of these issues are non-partisan by definition and deserve the attention and support of all genuine patriots without distinction of race, color, religion or political affiliation – both in the U.S. and worldwide.  We must unite to preserve and enhance the beautiful satellite that is our birthright.

An Agenda for Action

The first and most urgent project is to clip the wings of the bankers and democratize the money-creation function.  In the U.S. the Federal Reserve System must be abolished and its alleged function of regulating the money supply be assumed by the federal government or an agency under its direct control.  The most powerful and valuable tool in the economic arsenal must be available to the representatives of the people who can be held responsible for their success or failure.

Some monetary reformers recommend that governments create 100% of new money in a debt free form, greenbacks or equivalent.  In the interests of a fast and smooth transition I am suggesting that a ratio of 34% government-created money to 66% bank-created money would work satisfactorily.  Banks would be required to maintain 34% cash reserves against their deposits.

The important thing is that governments must immediately create the large sums necessary to balance their budgets and get their economies running at maximum output again.  I am talking about an infusion of perhaps $10 trillion U.S. dollar equivalent to start and more if needed to get economies up to speed and to reduce unemployment worldwide by at least half, with the creation of millions of new jobs.
Is this likely to cause massive inflation, as the financial cartel will immediately allege, because it is one of its longest running and most successful bugbears?  The answer to their phony phonetics is a resounding “no.”  As any economist should know, it is the amount of money that is created that influences prices, and not who prints it.  So as long as governments limit what economists call “the multiplier effect” there will be no problem.

Certainly the present system has been inflationary.  A 1950 U.S. dollar is only worth 7.5 cents today.  A common sense monetary system should produce better results than that.  So there is no reason why the banking system should not be fundamentally reformed – at once!

There are four other actions that I think we, the people of the world should demand of our politicians.

1.   A law must be passed at once to prohibit all politicians, candidates for political office and political parties from accepting money from any financial institution as well as make it a criminal offense for any such institution either directly or indirectly to offer it.
2.   World leaders must adopt a 10-year time frame to reduce greenhouse emissions by 90 percent.
3.   That will only be possible if the U.S. discloses its knowledge of the ET presence and technology, and what has been accomplished in 60 years of back-engineering.
4.   The U.N. should declare 2012 the year of forgiveness and reconciliation – a new era of cooperation and (agape) love between races, tribes, religions, nations, and regions both mondial and intergalactic.  We have so much to learn from our star visitors in many areas including medicine and food production.

So the U.S. must relinquish its privileged position as the center of “the loop” as part of a new kind of leadership in creating the better world we all dream of.

International Finance vs. The People of the World

None of this vision of a just and peaceful world will be possible unless the all-pervasive power of the international banks has been broken.  In 1999 I wrote a book in which I said the next world war would be between the banks and the people of the world.  There have been skirmishes for centuries and, so far, the banks have always come out on top.  They are now taking advantage of the recent meltdown, and the resulting sovereign debt crisis to line up their heavy artillery including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank for International Settlements for a final conclusive battle.

As always the aim of the game is to rob the people of the world of their sovereign right to govern their own affairs, and to entrench the power of the international banks, their elite industrial allies and a small cabal of military insiders who run the world as their private fiefdom.  The word “unjust” is too small a word by far to describe what they are up to.
If any skeptics think I am overstating the case don’t take my word for it.  Go to http://www.victoryfortheworld.net and read some of the books that can be used as references.  A hundred pages of The Web of Debt, for example, setting out the history of money, will probably be enough to make you sick at your stomach.  I stopped reading it at night because if often made me so angry I couldn’t sleep.

I entered politics more than 60 years ago because I thought recessions were quite unnecessary.  They were monetary phenomena with a relatively easy fix.  I have made hundreds of speeches on the subject and convinced a few thousand people.  But never the movers and shakers.  And the mainline press were less than helpful.  They were so jaundiced that they were not interested in a maverick speaking truth to power.  So it was always a case of David vs. Goliath, to use a Biblical analogy.

Now, for the first time, the power exists to turn the tables and go for the jugular.  The internet is providing power to the people that they have never enjoyed before.  The young people of the world, in concert with the thousands of their parents and others who care about the state of the world can use the power of social networking to effect a miracle on their own behalf and that of succeeding generations.

The valiant people of Tunisia and Egypt have shown the way by achieving what was believed to be impossible.  We share their euphoria.  At the same time they, and we, must acknowledge that it is only the beginning.  Real freedom will only be possible when they have escaped from the tyranny of international banks, and Wall Street is no longer able to manipulate the price of their daily bread.

A good start might be to distribute a million copies of this speech and translate it into a number of languages.  Then the rising generation can bombard the barricades through their social networks.  Regime change is not necessary except for leaders who refuse to see the light.  But concerned citizens of the world should band together and rattle the cages of all federal politicians.  Tell them bluntly that they must vigorously support the above agenda or face inevitable defeat at the next election.  It is a simple message, but the only one they understand.

At a press conference on March 29, 2001 announcing the U.S. was backing out of the Kyoto Protocol, President George W. Bush said, “A friend is someone who tells you the truth.”  That is what I have been doing today.  It is a message of global hope for every race, color, religion and nationality in the world and of peaceful relations with visitors from other realms.
——————–
Paul Hellyer
20 Bay St., 12th Floor
Toronto, Ontario  M5J 2N8 Canada
Tel: 416/850-1375
phellyer@sympatico.ca

Posted in Conspiracy Archives, Economic Upheavals, Exopolitical Interventions | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Global imbalances returning, could fuel unrest – IMF chief

Posted by Admin on February 4, 2011

http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/Global-imbalances-returning-reuters-1199879621.html

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF) smiles during a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker event at the Newseum in Washington, December 16, 2010. REUTERS/Molly Riley/Files
On Tuesday 1 February 2011, 12:44 PM

 

By Kevin Lim

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The world economy has begun improving but is beset by problems such as high unemployment and rising prices which could fuel crippling trade protectionism or even lead to war within nations, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday.

Rising food and fuel prices in recent months have already hit poorer countries and are one of the factors behind massive anti-government protests in Egypt and in Tunisia, whose president was ousted last month.

The United Nations ‘ food agency (FAO) said last month that global food prices hit a record high in December, above 2008 levels when riots broke out in countries as far afield as Egypt , Cameroon and Haiti.

“The pre-crisis pattern of global imbalances is re-emerging,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a speech in Singapore.

“Growth in economies with large external deficits, like the U.S., is still being driven by domestic demand. And growth in economies with large external surpluses, like China and Germany, is still being powered by exports,” he said.

“As tensions between countries increase, we could see rising protectionism — of trade and of finance. And as tensions within countries increase, we could see rising social and political instability within nations — even war.”

Over the next decade, 400 million young people would join the global labour force, posing a daunting challenge for governments, he added.

“We face the prospect of a ‘lost generation’ of young people, destined to suffer their whole lives from worse unemployment and social conditions. Creating jobs must be a top priority not only in the advanced economies, but also in many poorer countries.”

Unemployment stands at 9.4 percent in the United States while a number of European countries are also struggling to create jobs in a global economy where much of the growth is coming from emerging market countries.

DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ALSO AT RISK

Concerns about rising debt in developed countries, meanwhile, have increased in recent months.

Ireland was engulfed by Europe’s debt crisis late last year, Greece continues to struggle despite a rescue package and many market watchers fear Portugal and Spain may be next.

Last week Standard & Poor’s cut Japan ‘s credit rating and Moody’s warned it may place a negative outlook on the United States unless it can reduce its gaping budget deficit.

In Asia, the worries centre around inflation and analysts say central banks in countries such as Indonesia need to respond faster to contain rising prices.

Strauss-Kahn also said foreign exchange rate adjustments have an important role to play in addressing global economic imbalances and should not be resisted.

“Holding back such adjustment in one country also makes it harder, and more costly, for other countries to let their exchange rate adjust,” he said.

“For this adjustment to take place, time is of the essence, but asking for time only makes sense if there is a significant and regular move in the right direction.”

Chinese policymakers were moving in the right direction by taking steps to bolster domestic demand, he noted, though the United States and many other Western countries continue to push Beijing to let its yuan currency appreciate faster.

Strauss-Kahn said the IMF expected subdued growth of 2.5 percent for advanced economies this year as high unemployment and household debt weighed on domestic demand.

“Without jobs and income security, there can be no rebound in domestic demand — and ultimately, no sustainable recovery,” he said.

Emerging markets would grow at a faster pace of 6.5 percent, with Asia excluding Japan expanding by 8.5 percent, he said.

“Monetary policy in the advanced economies should remain supportive as long as inflation expectations are well anchored and unemployment stays high,” while Asia may need to do more to address the threat of overheating and a possible hard landing, he said.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

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Ireland swallows bitter pill, asks EU for loan

Posted by Admin on November 22, 2010

Image representing Associated Press as depicte...

Associated Press

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, left, and The ...
AP – Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, left, and The Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan speak to the media
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press – Sun Nov 21, 9:34 pm ET

 

DUBLIN – Debt-crippled Ireland formally applied Sunday for a massive EU-IMF loan to stem the flight of capital from its banks, joining Greece in a step unthinkable only a few years ago when Ireland was a booming Celtic Tiger and the economic envy of Europe.

European Union finance ministers quickly agreed in principle to the bailout, saying it “is warranted to safeguard financial stability in the EU and euro area.” But all sides said further weeks of negotiations loomed to define the fund’s terms, conditions and precise size.

Ireland’s crisis, set off by its foundering banks, drove up borrowing costs not only for Ireland but for other weak links in the eurozone such as Spain and Portugal. Ireland’s agreement takes some pressure off those countries, but they still may end up needing bailouts of their own.

The European Central Bank — which oversees monetary policy for the 16-nation eurozone and first raised alarm bells about a renewed cash crisis in Dublin banks — said the aid would “contribute to ensuring the stability of the Irish banking system.” Sweden and Britain, not members of the euro currency, said they also were willing to provide bilateral loans to Ireland.

Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan spent much of Sunday talking to other eurozone financial chiefs about conditions they would place on the emergency aid package taking shape.

Lenihan said Ireland needed less than euro100 billion ($140 billion) to use as a credit line for its state-backed banks, which are losing deposits and struggling to borrow funds on open markets. He said the loan facility could last anywhere from three to nine years.

International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said his organization “stands ready to join this effort, including through a multiyear loan.” He said IMF experts already in Dublin would “hold swift discussions on an economic program with the Irish authorities, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank.”

Ireland has been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by its fateful 2008 decision to insure its banks against all losses — a bill that is swelling beyond euro50 billion ($69 billion) and driving Ireland’s deficit into uncharted territory.

The country had long resisted a bailout, but Lenihan said it was now painfully clear that Ireland needed “financial firepower” immediately to complement its own cutthroat plans for recovery.

This country of 4.5 million now faces at least four more years of deep budget cuts and tax hikes totaling at least euro15 billion ($20.5 billion) just to get its deficit — bloated this year to a European record of 32 percent of GDP — back to the eurozone’s limit of 3 percent by 2014.

The European Central Bank and other eurozone members had been pressing behind the scenes for Ireland — long struggling to come to grips with the true scale of its banking losses — to accept a bailout that would reassure investors the country won’t, and can’t, go bankrupt.

The economically struggling governments of Spain and Portugal, in particular, had criticized Ireland’s recent determination to keep going it alone. Ireland’s inability to stop its financial bleeding has fueled investor fears of wider eurozone defaults and driven up those countries’ borrowing costs on bond markets.

But even with Ireland seeking aid, financial analysts say Spain and Portugal remain on course for potential bailouts of their own. Spain is fighting Europe’s highest unemployment rate and Portugal is seen as doing too little to restructure an unusually uncompetitive economy.

Ireland’s move comes just six months after the EU and IMF organized a euro110 billion ($150 billion) bailout of Greece and declared a euro750 billion ($1.05 trillion) safety net for any other eurozone members facing the risk of imminent loan defaults. It demonstrates that creating the three-layered fund didn’t, by itself, reassure global investors that it would be safe, or smart, to keep lending to the eurozone’s weakest members.

Economists question whether the economies of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece will grow sufficiently to build their tax bases and permit them to keep financing, never mind paying down, their debts. The euro, however, has shown some resiliency in the tumult so far, remaining relatively strong against the U.S. dollar.

Lenihan said Ireland most needed a “contingency” fund from which Irish banks could borrow. He said the funds would “not necessarily” be used and emphasized that the government’s own operations are fully funded through mid-2011.

The rapid pace of Sunday’s humiliating Irish U-turn surprised many analysts, given how Lenihan and Ireland’s deeply unpopular prime minister, Brian Cowen, appeared in recent days to be in denial that Ireland needed a cent of foreign aid.

More than 30 banking experts from the IMF, ECB and European Commission began arriving in Dublin only on Thursday to begin poring over the books and projections of the government, treasury and banks, a mammoth task expected to take weeks.

Ireland’s precipitous fall has been tied to the fate of its overgrown banks, which received access to mountains of cheap money once Ireland joined the eurozone in 1999. The Dublin banks bet the bulk of their borrowed funds on rampant property markets in Ireland, Britain and the United States, a strategy that paid rich dividends until 2008, when investors began to see the Irish banking system as a house of cards.

When the most reckless speculator, Anglo Irish Bank, faced bankruptcy in September 2008, it and other Irish banks persuaded Lenihan and aides that they faced only short-term cash problems, not a terminal collapse of their loan books.

Lenihan announced that Ireland would insure all deposits — and, much more critically, the banks’ massive borrowing from overseas investors — against any default, an unprecedented move.

At the time, Lenihan billed his fateful decision as “the cheapest bailout in history” and claimed it wouldn’t cost the Irish taxpayer a penny. The presumption was that confidence would return and Ireland’s lending would resume its runaway trend.

But in the two years since, Lenihan has nationalized Anglo and two other small banks and taken major stakes in the country’s two dominant banks, Allied Irish and Bank of Ireland. The flight of foreign capital began accelerating again in the summer amid renewed doubts that the government understood the full scale of its losses.

Lenihan and the Irish Central Bank responded in September by estimating the final bill at euro45 billion to euro50 billion ($62 billion to $69 billion). Investors, initially relieved to have a figure, quietly resumed their withdrawal from Irish banks and bond markets in mid-October, driving up the borrowing costs for Portugal and Spain, which face their own deficit and debt crises.

Over the past two months Cowen and his 15-member Cabinet have been drafting a four-year austerity plan for Ireland that is expected to be unveiled later this week.

It seeks to close the gap between Ireland’s spending, currently running at euro50 billion, and depressed tax revenues of just euro31 billion. It proposes the toughest steps in the 2011 budget, when euro4.5 billion will be cut from spending and euro1.5 billion in new taxes imposed — steps that threaten to drive Ireland’s moribund economy into recession and civil unrest.

Both Cowen and Lenihan have stressed that Ireland’s 12.5 percent rate of tax on business profits — its most powerful lure for attracting and keeping 600 U.S. companies with bases in Ireland — will not be touched no matter what happens.

France, Germany and other eurozone members have repeatedly criticized the rate as unfair and say it should be raised now given the depth of Ireland’s red ink.

However, IMF and EU leaders negotiating the bailout terms with Ireland have said they don’t intend to dictate any specific tax reforms to Ireland, only to ensure that targets for cutting spending and raising taxes overall are met. Ireland’s right to set its own tax rates also has been enshrined in a series of EU treaties, making any strong-arm tactics now unlikely.

Ireland’s 2011 budget, however, could yet be torpedoed by its own divided lawmakers.

The budget faces a difficult passage through parliament when it is unveiled Dec. 7. Cowen has an undependable three-vote majority that is expected to disappear by the spring as byelections, or special elections, are held to fill seats.

Cowen and his long-dominant Fianna Fail party are languishing at record lows in opinion polls. The latest survey published in the Sunday Business Post newspaper said Fianna Fail has just 17 percent support, whereas the two main opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labour, command 33 percent and 27 percent respectively. Those two parties are widely expected to form a center-left government after Cowen loses his majority, which would force an early election.

Reflecting the national mood, the Sunday Independent newspaper displayed the photos of Ireland’s 15 Cabinet ministers on its front page, expressed hope that the IMF would order the Irish political class to take huge cuts in positions, pay and benefits — and called for Fianna Fail’s destruction at the next election.

“Slaughter them after Christmas,” the Sunday Independent’s lead editorial urged.

___

Associated Press Writers Raphael G. Satter in London and Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels contributed to this report.

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