Having had a bit of trouble with my internet-connection, I´m back now for a very small report on my country´s troubles, which isn´t so different from American troubles, I think.
We are equally broke.
Today the new financial plan has come out. It´s about large cut-downs of at least 10% in health- and other services, over 50% in road-repairs, while at the same time tax-rises of 30% on all incomes are proposed, as well as another 10% on several goods and fuel, some “global warming” taxes on energy, how much isn´t quite clear, so are a lot of other things. Sure is only unemployment will rise further and buying power will shrink.
The Ice-save-Ice-slave situation is still the main issue. Britain and Holland have rejected the conditions set by the Icelandic Parliament for paying the debts, that Iceland would only pay as much as it´s economic situation allows on the Ice-save debts. And for that reason the IMF is refusing any loans to Iceland.
Yesterday the minister who was opposed to giving in to the Brits and the Dutch has resigned from the government. At the same time one Norwegian government party offered a Norwegian loan that would enable Iceland to throw the IMF out of the country.
Today the other government party of Norway retracted the loan-offer saying if Icelanders would ever ask for a loan from Norway, they would only get it under the supervision of the IMF and after the Ice-save case with Britain and the Netherlands was settled.
It looks like the Norwegian are dead scared of the IMF and the banking-establishment they represent, like every other country in the world.
And of course, the international bankers who had laid the trap for Iceland by first luring the government into privatizing the banks only five years before the collapse, and then encouraging the Icelandic bankers into over-leveraging, and then snapping the trap on the country by speculating against the Icelandic currency, could ruin Norway just as easily.
Sure Norway is rich with its oil-wealth, but if a large, ultra-productive and rich country like Japan could be set into permanent recession by foreign currency speculation attacks, which has lasted for a decade so far, Norway is surely not immune.
Talking about Japan and the Asian crisis, which started in 1997 with an attack on the Thai Baht and the ripple effect it had on other Asian nations, here is what
Professor Michel Chossudowski writes about the economic attack on Japan in 1998:
In Japan –where the yen has tumbled to new lows — “the Korean scenario” is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson), as a “dress rehearsal” for the take over of Japan’s financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Gruenfell among others who are buying up Japan’s bad bank loans at less than ten percent of their face value. In recent months both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo insisting “on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan’s bad bank loans — preferably to US and other foreign “vulture investors” at distress prices. To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system… Once foreign investors gain control of Japanese banks, these banks will move to take over Japanese industry…”
Those who had pressured the Japanese political class to sell out the country´s assets, industries and financial institutions to US speculators, had subsequently hindered the recovery of the country. It was far more profitable to start another round of speculation of the Japanese yen against many other currencies. This so-called Yen carry-over trade was then for instance used for those “glacier bonds”- speculations where foreign speculators bought en masse Icelandic currency in the last couple of years before the crisis.
While Japan had an extremely low interest-rate of 1,5% at that time, the Icelandic central bank, in order too cool down the then overheated Icelandic economy, had raised the interest-rates to 15%. So borrowing in Yen and investing in Icelandic Kronur was profitable until all of a sudden the very same big speculators withdrew their money and started to short-sell the Icelandic currency.
This had a ripple effect on those smaller speculators on the bandwagon, which then of course was the main-reason for the cash-deficit of the Icelandic banks and the main reason for the crash.
All this had nothing whatsoever to do with the real productive economy of either country.
People here are only half-joking when they use the biblical phrase with each other: ” And now in these last and worst times….”
And believe me, Icelanders weren´t used to be very religious, and you could find only few Armageddon-awaiting Evangelicals on our rock in the Northern Atlantic.
What bugs me is the government, supposedly a left one, combining Social-Democrats and Left-Greens. It´s like all of them have gotten a personality change operation.
The left-greens were so opposed to the IMF, they wanted to throw them out before they even set foot into the country. And now they, or at least the ones in the government, are so subservient to the organization, it would be truly obscene to use any kind of fitting allegory, so I won´t.
The left-wing Icelandic government is trying to push the British and Dutch demands through the Icelandic Parliament against the opposition of nearly all other Parlamentarians including the members of their own party and against the opposition of practically all of the Icelandic people.
And they won´t tell us clearly why.
It´s political suicide for their parties, in the long run it´s economic suicide for the country, it´s suicide for any form of Icelandic sovereignty. It will lead to a sell-out of anything and everything, the country and its citizens own, to foreign bankers.
We are more indebted than Germany after the Versailles treaty of 1918. Making the repayment conditional to economic stability and as a percentage of what we earn, would be the only way to ever reasonably pay without self-destruction.
I don´t believe our government has been infested by body-snatchers, so the only other explanation must be, that there have been enormous threats leveled at them, what would be done to the country, if it doesn´t comply.
The left-green finance minister once mentioned that not complying with the Ice-save demands was considered (by whom he didn´t say) as a declaration of war.
My guess is, if he would get into details, the mainline media would declare him insane. The media seems to be far more powerful than any politician and the mainline media´s task is to “protect” the ordinary people from knowing too much about what is really going on.
We get to know everything about what the corrupt Icelandic bankers and businessmen have done wrong. However, the connection between the Icelandic and the British bankers, and that the British part of the Icelandic Landsbanki, including Ice-save was actually controlled by a British banker, a British citizens, a member of a British banker´s affiliation is never, ever mentioned in our media.
The fact that this man came originally from the HSBC, one of the largest British banks, which also happened to be the “advisors” of the Icelandic government when they got suckered into privatizing those banks in the first place, is never mentioned either.
My guess is, the whole Ice-slave matter has nothing to do with any debts we as a country might be responsible for by any international law (or they would allow us to go to court over it). It´s nothing else but the sneaky British take-over of the country with all it´s resources, land and sea-area.
After only having been independent since 1944 (having been treated with deep disdain by the Danish before that), Iceland is being recolonized, disdain and all.
Stop thinking of it as a take-over of your State and start thinking of it as a hostile take-over of your Company, Iceland Corp.
it’s more like Economic Terrorism
And get ready for asset-stripping . . .
John Harris – It’s an illusion Part 1/5
It could be worse. . . .
Ireland PLC’s asset-raping/economic-terrorism , called Nama, is being managed by N.M.Rothschilds.
We are SO F*%ked
Hubris, how are sure that NAMA is being managed by the Rothschild…s?
Ooops… looks like I’ve been censored a little
Just to make it clear that the description of the Rothschilds I posted applies to them and their fellow banking elite ilk, and was not meant in any more general sense.
The fractional reserve banking / money as debt systems are akin to a useless leeches feeding on the productive host that is the real economy.
Start thinking about it for what it is: war against you by the overlord..s.
Fight for your freedom or die as slaves.
Create a tax haven in Iceland second to none. TOTAL secrecy. Reintroduce numbered accounts.
Invite all tax exiles, especially from the US.
Form your own banks.
Team silently with Vladimir Putin.
Use his encrypted satellite wire transfer channels. Use his energy assets. Use his nuclear umbrella. Welcome his AKULA CLASS patrol submarines.
Offer your warm water bases as permanent Russian installations.
Go it ALONE with these and only these tools.
Make your new economic logo a striking Icelandic beauty.
The IMF will capitulate. Vladimir will LOVE this new bargaining chip.
Gordon Michael: That is a great idea. I wonder if the author could address these options in a follow-up essay. I’m curious if these ideas could be spread to the general public in Iceland and whether the government would have the ability to go through with them.
emb and Michael Gordon
There were ideas of turning Iceland into a kind of new “Luxemburg” before the banking crash. It was ridiculed then. Now nobody in his right mind here would trust the banking industry ever again with anything as important as the well-being of the country.
We will be the very opposite of any kind of “tax-haven” in the near future and probably forever. With the new tax-rises we might soon be the country with the highest tax-rates in the world, surpassing Sweden without the benefit of all those social services the Swedish people get for their taxes.
As for the Russians. We actually tried that.
The day of the total banking collapse the director of the Central Bank announced that Putin had given the go ahead to give Iceland a very large loan to tie us over until the economy would have recovered and so the Central Bank director said we would not have to go to the IMF.
The very next day we found ourselves on the list of “terrorism supporting countries” right next to Iran, all Icelandic assets in Britain were frozen and for weeks all lines of trade were more or less closed by cutting off money transfer through any western banks from or to Iceland.
The government then caved in to British demands, taking on the Ice-save responsibility, when the retail-stores announced on TV that soon we were going to run out of all imported food and that at the beginning of winter. You know we aren´t food independent, we need to trade fish for bread (or actually wheat, we bake our own bread and process quite a bit of other food-stuff as well in our food industry).
But we haven´t even the population of North Korea or Iraq. And they couldn´t become totally self-reliant when they tried while they were boycotted. Instead they had a large-scale famine.
There was no way we could change all our trade- and economic structure towards Russia fast enough.
There are quite a few people over here who think becoming allies with Russia would be quite a good idea. It´s just that Iceland had been such a staunch ally of the Americans for so long, most people don´t find it easy to get used to the idea of changing camps.
hmmmm… revolution is in the air. Current circumstances requires action involving an inept government that ought to be representative of the sentiments of the people that created it, not the bankers or other influences that have hijacked it.
Tom Sullivan said:
Hubris, how are sure that NAMA is being managed by the Rothschild…s?</i.
I heard Foriegn Minister Dermot Ahearn say it on the radio. He as trying to re-assure de ppepil that NAMA was a 'good thing', and was being done in the best interests of all employees/vassals of Ireland PLC.
as soon as I heard it, instead of feeling 're-assured', I felt a distinct chill run down my spine.
As far as I can remember what he actually said was something like
‘The gov’t is taking the best advice on this. We are being advised by N.M. Rothschilds . . .
so me saying ‘Rothschilds is managing NAMA’ was not quite correct. Still, hopefully you can understand my reasons for hearing even MORE alarm-bells concerning the whole NAMA farce, once I’d heard that little gem of conspiracy-fodder.
if not , then perhaps you should read this:
SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE By Eustace Mullins
Something else which caught my attention was THIS Document which shows a list of Foreign holders of U.S. Gov’t Treasury Bills.
What is interesting, or really Freaking scary depending on how awake you are, is that Ireland PLC steadily increased their holdings of these rapidly devaluing pieces of paper, from a ‘mere’ $13.9 billion in June 2008 to $50.6 billion by May 2009.
I don’t know what the hell they think they are doing, but I do know I haven’t seen a word about this in the Irish media.
Here’s a graphic:
here’s a link to the graphic: Link
Note that Israel, a country of similar population size and in 2006 also had a similar GDP ($129 billion according to the CIA Factbook figures for that year) whose economy would appear to be equally, if not more, dependent on the US economy had in May 2009 less than half the amount invested which Ireland PLC had.
Also Switzerland had a figure similar to that of Ireland PLC, invested in US Treasury Securities.
well the graphic didn’t post in this thread but the link is there if you want to see it.
According to Wiki there a 3 main types of US Treasury Securites.
I do not know which types(s) Ireland PLC decided (in their wisdom) to purchase. Some are long-term some are not.
Thanks for your response hubris. That reference to N.M. Rothschild is worth following up.
Yeah, I know our beloved leaders have bought 35 billion plus of treasuries in the year ending May 2009. I’ve been asking myself why at a time when treasury bonds are worth less than toilet paper, our government is buying MORE of them.
While our economy may be in recession, we had enough in reserves to allow us to weather the storm. Now it seems it has been handed lock stock and stinking barrel to the Federal Reserve.
As far as I can ascertain, from the limited info available, the Federal Reserve appears to be mostly owned/controlled by Rothschilds through a series of what appear to be front-organisations.
In Mullin’s book, which he compiled mostly from US Library of Congress records, the author concludes that 4 out the 5 main original shareholdings were held by what Mullin’s reckoned were Rothschild-controlled Fronts.
So in future when you hear the terms ‘the Fed’ or ‘Federal Reserve’, it might be more useful to think ‘Rothschild’.
In the book, Mullins makes the point that one of the reasons often put forward in favour of the existance of Central Banks, is that they can help control the economy through regulation of the money supply.
Mullins claims that since the Fed was created in 1913 there has never been an ‘accidental’ recession. He also makes the claim that the Fed was ‘needed’ in order to create (from nothing) money which could then be loaned at interest (naturally) to allow the US Gov’t to finance it’s involvement in WW1. The Fed shareholders such a JP Morgan, Kuhn and Loeb etc., were busy engineering that war at the time.
He states that all economic booms and all economic recessions are simply a result of an increase or a decrease in the available money supply.
Since Central Banks regulate the money supply, it is obviously they who deliberately create the conditions for a boom or a recession.
I’m no financial expert but my in-light of what I have read in the book I came to the conclusion that the recent Wall Street Banksters-bailout was a good example of recession-creation in action.
Money that could have been circulated through the US economy providing health care or even maintaining infrastructure is hoovered out of the economy and disbursed amongst various banks who then refuse to re-lend the money as credit, thus halting the flow of credit the modern-day economy has been engineered to depend upon.
Halting the credit flow decreases the overall money supply, and at the same time the Fed is debasing the dollar through the hilariously mis-titled process economists call ‘Quantitive easing’.
Ireland appears to be dong it’s own version of that by propping-up the soon-to-useless dollar with money they can ill-afford to spare on such a dangerous ‘investment’.
At the same time, acting on ‘advice’ from none other than N.M. Rothschilds they are also preparing to bail out banks and property developers by putting, what appear to me to be, totally unrealistic valuations on now-useless property in what is an over-saturated property market. The idea that these properties will sell for anything like these values in 7 or 8 years seems to me to be a totally preposterous notion.
So again we see money which could have been used to help keep credit flowing and thus help maintain a somewhat healthy/robust economy is being directed into the pockets of the banks. There have been many reports of the Irish banks’ unwillingness to re-circulate this money back through the Irish economy.
Curiously not one Irish economist or media-outlet has drawn attention to these similarities.
But then I have come to believe that Economists are required in order to lay down a smokescreen by providing, or usually merely repeating, seemingly complex explanations (which upon closer exminaton usually turn out to be complete & utter pseudo-intellectual horse-excrement) for events that according to Mullins are usually relatively simple to explain.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
hubris
Orwell was definitely right.
If haven´t read the book you are mentioning, but I wouldn´t be surprised at all, if the American Federal Reserve was mainly owned by the Rothschild affiliated financial empire.
And yes the bank-bailout seems to me and most other ordinary people like a bank-coup, redistribution of real property from ordinary citizens to the banksters.
And I also have sometimes wondered if the current bust wasn´t deliberate and just for that purpose, just like the other booms and subsequents busts, just like the Icelandic banking collapse.
But I disagree with the Rothschild creating WWI. As far as I know, it was the British arrogant “manifest destiny” aristocrats who planned WWI. They saw Germany as an economic competition to the British Empire, feared Germany and Russian might one day become allies and they believed that, whoever rules “Eurasia” will rule the world.
Of course, when the British and French couldn´t succeed and got stuck in the trenches of Belgium, then the Rothschilds used the opportunity to get that Balfour-declaration promise for Palestine and in return get the United States into the war.
You really should read the book. It’s free.
The link above is an actual link to an actually free actually online actually unexpurgated actual copy of the actual book itself, NOT some link to a site trying to sell you the book.
Once you read it, you can decide for yourself.
But you should read it first.
I always prefer when people decide for themselves, once they have read the source material of course, rather than taking my word for it.
But I disagree with the Rothschild creating WWI. As far as I know, it was the British arrogant “manifest destiny” aristocrats who planned WWI.
You really should read the book. It’s free.
Of course, when the British and French couldn´t succeed and got stuck in the trenches of Belgium, then the Rothschilds used the opportunity to get that Balfour-declaration promise for Palestine and in return get the United States into the war.
I agree that what you have written IS the accepted version of events but . . .
You really should read the book. It’s free.
OR: you could read page 77 of The World War of 1914-1918 by Harry Elmer Barnes
another free online book.
Remember that Rothschilds were THE major player of the London-based International finance scene. They also would have been probable creditors to much of the British aristocratic class.
So if Mullins was NOT correct then the establishment of the Federal Reserve, with it’s complete monopoly on the provision and printing of US currency, in a very underhanded way in Dec 1913, just a little over 6 months prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, could probably rank as one of the most lucrative instances of ‘Just Good Timing’ in the history of modern International Finance.
I however am not much of a beliver in the existance of ‘just good timing’ when it comes to International Finance.
p.S.: I do wish this comment-function had a ‘preview’ option as I tend to do all this on-the-fly direct into the comment-box, so please try to ignore any minor spelling mistakes, missing word/letters etc.
According to Mulllins the House of Morgan was little more than a Rothschild front. Morgans first job in banking was in the London offices of Rothschids.
hubris
I will read the book you have linked to.
And the way you explain it, it does make a lot of sense, that the Rothschilds and their financial fronts were involved even before the Balfour Declaration – although I had read that Cecil Rhodes and his aristocratic gang had been the main warmongers driving British policy.
But if Mullin has good documentary evidence of Rothschild involvement I might stand corrected.
What I do know is, that already during the times of Herzl the Rothschilds were the main-financiers of Zionism. And since Zionism, even according to Herzl, needs Antisemitism for its success, I strongly suspected the Rothschild financial powers to be behind the onerous burden put on Germany by the Versailles Treaty after WWI.
Benjamin Freedman who was there and himself Jewish said in a later speech, that he felt as if everybody hanging around in Versailles, when Germany was treated so badly, seemed to be also Jewish. Of course, the injustice of the Versailles Treaty was then blamed on the “Jews” in Germany, which in turn gave the Antisemites a big boost and eventually also the Zionists.
And you might be right that “good timing” doesn´t seem to be the best explanation. The Rothschilds needed to incite Antisemitism in Germany (the most Jewish friendly country in Europe) in order to stampede European Jews en masse into Palestine.
The Rothschilds needed to incite Antisemitism in Germany (the most Jewish friendly country in Europe) in order to stampede European Jews en masse into Palestine.
I keep having to remind myself that Israel is really nothing more than a Rothschild personal fiefdom. sometimes I forget.
As far as I can make out, the backers of the Zionists see Judaism as merely a convienient cloth with which to cloak their activities. They appeared to see nothing wrong with sacrificing large numbers of apparently expendable Eastern European Jews in order to achieve their aims. It’s a pity that the diaspora and the citizens of Israel cannot see how they and their religion have been used and abused by these people all these years. Just mentioning that this might be the case will get you immediately labelled a ‘Jew-Hater’.
I totally forgot to mention the importance of the fact that the Berlin-Baghdad railway link was nearing completion at the outbreak of hostilities.
I guess the Anglo-American Axis was determined not to allow that to happen.
Imagine the effect that would have had on the oil monopoly . . .
Funnily enough the Berlin-Bhagdad rail link was not finally completed until 1940. Talk about coincidence!!
Some say that the real reason behind Hitler’s Drang nach Osten, Operation Barbarossa was merely to give Germany access to the oil-rich Caucasus.
Some even now say that the recent NATO Drang nach Osten, the Georgian attack on Russian forces in South Ossetia, is nothing more than Operation Barbarossa Part 2.
How different history looks, when one does no longer take the official propaganda narrative on face value.
And yes Barbarossa 2 or “der Drang nach Osten” of today is called “Fullspectrum Dominance”.
All the above comments about ww1/11 and the devious nature of the international bankers are, while true and factual, not very interesting to the ordinary man in the street. But I will make this point that I hope will make all who read it wonder and question: If the Rothschild Investment Bank(Irish Gov advisors) main business is the lending of funds to governments, then is in their best interests for the country to prosper or go bankrupt???
Obviously, it is the latter! We should all be very, very worried for our country!!
it’s not so much the continuance of debt which gives the bankers their power which I find troubling but rather what they will do with that power once they get it – the social and economic changes which they will insist the debtor nations instigate in order to ensure continued funding.
it’s exactly the same scenario laid out by John Perkins in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Eventually EVERYTHING will be privatised. Including the Police. If you can’t afford it there will be no one to protect you, not that Police actually do much protection as it is, but in the future we will only have those ‘rights’ which we can afford to pay for.
In the future, unless we take steps to stop it now – EVERY facet of human existence, from the cradle to the grave will be fully controlled by the banking elite/Corporations
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