Jew World Order

Rehn warned on Thursday that European leaders must anchor their actions in more austerity if the eurozone is to avoid “disintegration” and “depression” amid the economic crisis.

His remarks come as EU leaders have been struggling to ease the Europe economic crisis and amid concerns over a Greek exit from the debt-stricken eurozone.

Nearly two weeks ago, leaders of 27 EU countries met to find ways to contain the crisis, and prepare contingency plans in case Greece quits the single currency area. The leaders concluded their latest summit with few concrete steps to fix the financial crisis.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Nick Kochan, author, “Corruption: The New Corporate Challenge,” to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: In terms of the population of Europe, they’re not really happy out there, leaders, are they?

Kochan: Well, I think what we’re really saying is austerity may be the kind of hard-nosed economist answer to where we’re at with the debt crisis and the economics of downturn, the recession and the rest.

Austerity is kind of the hard-nose of neo-conservative answer but the real question is: is it winning populations towards its support? It’s natural. There’s a great withdrawing of living standards across Europe.

Indeed, it’s going to hit America shortly. People are not going to like it. The politicians that are wedded, that are proselytizing this philosophy, this austerity philosophy, they are all likely to get pulled into this whirlpool of unpopularity of being despised.

I think we’ve seen it. We’ve seen it in Greece; we’ve seen it in Italy. We’re on the verge of seeing it in France and elsewhere in Europe. It is an inevitable, sort of being sucked into the whirlpool of the austerity mire, and it’s not pretty.

Press TV: Part of that neo-liberal paradigm is either you adhere to it or you have to be very radical. Over here in Britain, I think both parties are quarrelling over four percent of GDP or whatever, as the saying goes. In France, Holland, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece that’s not the same, that’s not the choice, is it?

Kochan: It’s interesting because those economies, by virtue of having spent and got so indebted and having their GDP to debt ratios so poor, are thought of being presented with a Hobson’s choice, i.e. no choice – you either take it or you go get your bonds and your bonds yields get so huge that you literally go bust as a country.

Press TV: Or just leave the system?

Kochan: Yeah, but if you leave the system, then the economists come along and they say, ‘Ah, if you leave the system, you still got your debts in euros, so if you got debts in euros and you got a drachma that’s worth a twentieth of what it was yesterday, you’re going to have to pay for that difference, you’re going to have to pay your euro debt; you’re going to be bust again’.

Press TV: Or you get more radical and say you’re not going to.

Kochan: Or you go inflation, you see; you go the inflation route. We’ll say we’ll raise our prices 20 fold, then your exports become…

Press TV: What about actually leaving the whole mechanism as it is now? People are talking about barter systems already in place in Greece, much more radical than anything in the mainstream financial press so that Greeks parties advocating incredibly radical alternatives.

Kochan: There will be people that say the economic system as it stands has let us down; there is no place for us. If we stay in there, we are going to get ratcheted down, down and down, and our living standards are going to get destroyed, are already being destroyed. What’s in it for us?

When we had the euro, when the euro was buoyant and everyone could forgive spending and debt because it seemed there was no end to it, interest rates were so low, there was no end to the good times, then it seemed irresponsibility could reign.

But now some countries are saying we can’t take the responsibility of our poor, earlier decisions. I take a slightly intolerant view of people that say we cannot turn to the system because, after all, the money that Europe invested in Greece, in Ireland, in Portugal and even in France, the Netherlands and wherever, that money, you know, came from somewhere, it came from taxpayers.

Press TV: Well, Germany benefited out of it, it wasn’t exactly a “largess.” A fair degree of disquiet here that George Osborne, the finance minister here, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, giving ten billion dollars to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), very euro-skeptic, of course, the conservative partner in the coalition. Do you think the IMF are just scare-mongering when they say it’s the end of the euro and they’re just begging as much money as they can to keep funneling it into the euro?

Kochan: The key thing here is that they need a confidence trick or at least putting a better light on it they need a confidence war. If the IMF and the European Investment Bank and the EU can say we’ve got so much money – markets, you markets out there – we’ve got so much money, however much you want us to spend we’ve got more.

If the EU can say that with the help of the IMF, then the markets will say they’ve got so much money we won’t take the risk because we could lose.

Press TV: Ten billion dollars doesn’t really sound like very much in comparison to the debts of European countries.

Kochan: Ten billion is our contribution. The total is in fact over a trillion worth of what is there, literally a trillion. A lot of it, at least a third of it, roughly, is Germany, and the rest is spread around the whole EU. And then there’s the IMF, the G20, and the Chinese.

In fact, if the markets did go after Italy or after Spain, that would put more pressure than that wall could carry.

Press TV: Which is why they don’t because they know it’s a self-defeating mechanism rather like Chinese, US treasury – the Chinese ownership of US treasury bills.

What about the people on the streets. If the governments start giving up on this neo-liberal austerity model and saying we don’t care about triple-A ratings, other people saying frankly we’d use SP and what have you, it don’t make any difference, then what happens? The markets just have to ignore the ratings.

Kochan: I think it’s quite interesting because there is a bit of a democratic gap, basically, opening up between these governments that want the austerity to please, as you say, the rating agencies and the folk on the street who want to maintain some sort of standard of living.

I think what you’re saying is, effectively, there are people who are sort of walking away from the economic mainstream and just saying we’ll have our own economy whether it’s barter, you know, people are setting up their own currencies.

There’s this kind of body of opinion of people who are saying it’s not serving us, and I think that’s likely to grow.

I think the other thing that will grow is the risk of social unrest. The London riots were not accidental when they broke into shops and stole. That was more than just outright theft; that was, in my opinion, and expression of discontent with the system.

I think there is a sort of growing awareness in the media that this economy, and I think one can say it perhaps in France as well, you know, people are saying, whether it’s more of an inclination to be skeptical about sort of trans-Atlantic economics, in Britain and America, we kind of bought in to austerity, we bought into the markets. I think the media in our two countries tend to be more, you know, the markets have a legitimacy.

Press TV: They are owned in large part by the companies that are quoted on the stock exchanges and so forth.

Kochan: And the people that own the media companies, they own stocks and are part of the economic superstructure, if you like.

Press TV: Finally then, how do you think all of this is seen in Washington? Obviously there is a military dimension to this as well in terms of geo-strategic power.

Kochan: Not just Washington, by the way. Britain and France have recently teamed up in a military sort of agreement. We were with the French in Libya. The Americans were relatively out there. We’ve got some agreements for long term investments in very expensive projects and, as you say, what is America? Well, of course, America is in its own state of flux with its own election.

Europe is no longer the geese that’s going to lay the golden eggs for America or indeed for Europe. I think people will say well that’s one for the back burner.

GMA/SS