Soros, Goldman, Hedge Funds Attack Greece, Euro
J. B.
Hedge Funds Attack Greece To Smash Euro
By Webster Tarpley
3-4-10
It has been evident for some time that the ongoing speculative attack
on Greece, along with such other countries as Spain, Ireland,
Portugal, and Italy, was not primarily a reflection of their economic
fundamentals, nor yet a spontaneous movement of "the market," but
rather an orchestrated action of economic warfare. The dollar had been
relentlessly falling through the late summer and autumn of 2009. It
obviously occurred to various Anglo-American financiers that a
diversionary attack on the euro, starting with some of the weaker
Mediterranean or Southern European economies, would be an ideal means
of relieving pressure on the battered US greenback. Since these
degenerate elites are incapable of directly solving the problem of the
dollar through increased production, full employment, and economic
recovery, one of the few alternatives remaining to them is to create a
situation in which the euro is collapsing faster, leaving the dollar
as the beneficiary of some residual flight to quality or safe haven
reflex.
This is what emerged during the first week of December with a
speculative assault or bear raid against Greek and Spanish government
bonds as well as the euro itself, accompanied by a scurrilous press
campaign targeting the "PIIGS," an acronym for the countries just
named, coming from inside the bowels of Goldman Sachs. I have
discussed this phenomenon several times over the last two to three
weeks on my radio program on GCN.
Now comes concrete proof of this conspiracy in the form of a Feb. 8
"idea dinner," held at the Manhattan townhouse of Monness, Crespi,
Hardt & Co, a boutique investment bank. Among those present were SAC
Capital Advisors, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital (a veteran of
the fatal assault on Lehman Brothers in the late summer of 2008),
Donald Morgan of Brigade Capital, and, most tellingly, Soros Fund
Management. The consensus that emerged that night over the filet
mignon was that Greek government bonds were the weak flank of the
euro, and that once a Greek debt crisis had been detonated, all
outcomes would be bad for the euro. The assembled predators agreed
that Greece was the first domino in Europe. Donald Morgan was adamant
that the Greek contagion could soon infect all sovereign debt in the
world, including national, state, municipal and all other forms of
government debt. This would mean California, the UK, and the US
itself, among many others. The details of this at dinner were revealed
in the headline story of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, February
26, 2010. (See article at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748703795004575087741848074392.html
Nor was this the only cabal in town intent on attacking the euro
through the week Greek flank. The article cited suggests that GlobeOp
Financial Services and Paulson & Co. are also piling on. The zombie
banks were also heavily engaged. The article reported that Goldman
Sachs, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and Barclays Bank of London were
also assisting speculators in placing highly leveraged bearish bets
against the euro. Note that these zombie banks are alive today because
of US taxpayer money, in Barclay's case through AIG.
It amounted to a deliberate attempt to create a large-scale world
monetary crisis which would certainly bring with it the dreaded second
wave of the current world economic depression. The creation of
monetary chaos in Europe through the convulsive destruction of the
euro under speculative attack would cripple commodity production in
western Europe, severely undermining one of the dwindling areas of the
world economy which are still functioning. The genocidal implications
for humanity ought to be obvious, but the assembled hedge fund hyenas
were not concerned with these consequences.
George Soros has been telling every media outlet that will listen that
the euro is doomed to fall apart and break up over the short run.
Soros even has a theory to deploy as part of his speculative attack.
Soros argues that the fatal flaw or original Sin of the euro is that
it was based on a common central bank among the participating
countries, but lacked a common treasury and tax policy. This means
that a country like Greece can no longer defend itself from a
speculative attack on its bonds by the simple expedient of currency
devaluation, since there is no more drachma, and the euro is
controlled from Frankfurt, not Athens. British spokesmen are quick to
point out that, even though the financial situation of London is far
worse than that of Athens, the British government is already devaluing
the pound through a downward dirty float.
Given Soros's infamous track record, he must be taken seriously. In
1992, Soros became world famous through his attack on the European
Rate Mechanism, which he executed by a highly leveraged speculative
assault on the British pound, at the time one of the weaker members of
the ERM. Soros' speculative attack led to a pound devaluation and the
ragged breakup of the ERM, and netted Soros £1 billion in profits. It
was as if Soros had personally stolen a £20 note from every man,
woman, and child in Britain. The speculative gains were no doubt
gratifying, but the overriding political purpose of the assault was to
sabotage that phase of European monetary policy.
The London Economist has gone out of its way to mock Spanish Prime
Minister Zapatero's remark that Spain was under international
speculative attack. Press organs of the city of London and Wall Street
have ridiculed the Greeks as a nation of paranoid conspiracy
theorists. And yet, the revelations made so far are strong
circumstantial evidence of pre-concert, as Lincoln would say. Even the
US Department of Justice has been forced to send letters to the
participants in the infamous "idea dinner," warning them not to
destroy any of their records and thus putting them on notice that they
are under investigation. While we should not have any illusions about
the prosecutorial zeal of Attorney General Eric Holder, who once
represented the international financial bandit Marc Rich, this is at
least a beginning. Spanish and Italian judges are noted for their
independence, and one of or more them may wish to examine the
activities of Soros, Goldman Sachs, and their hedge fund allies.
Greece does not need an austerity program, as the Greek labor movement
has eloquently argued in the course of their successful and admirable
general strike last week. Greece does not need a bailout from Germany,
the sinister International Monetary Fund, or from anyone else. Least
of all does Greece need to accept the advice of Austrian school or
Chicago schools charlatans who recommend the catharsis of a
deflationary crash that would destroy an entire generation through
unemployment, poverty, and despair. Greece needs to defend itself with
a 1% Tobin tax on all derivatives and other financial transactions.
Greece should take the lead in outlawing credit default swaps, which
amount to issuing insurance without meeting the capital requirements
of being an insurance company. Greece needs to enforce EU and national
antitrust laws. If Soros and his gang succeed in breaking up the euro,
Greece should make the best of it by immediately imposing heavy-duty
exchange controls and capital controls to protect the new drachma, on
the model of Malaysia a dozen years ago. Greece should shut down
domestic zombie banks and seize its central bank and use it to issue
0% credit for industrial and agricultural hard commodity production.
If the Greeks made plain what they intend to do if they are forced to
fall back on the drachma, the financiers who fear such an example
would have another reason to relent.
Another obvious expedient is that of a bear squeeze or short squeeze.
Soros, Goldman Sachs, and their gang of hedge fund allies have now
used derivatives to establish short positions against Greek bonds and
the euro, betting that these latter will go down. Political pressure
is now being brought to bear on the European Central Bank and the
Greek central bank to undertake an unannounced large-scale purchase of
Greek bonds and euros in the forward market, causing the Wall Street
predators to lose their bets, thus punishing them severely with
extravagant losses. This is normal central bank practice, and it will
be astounding if the Greeks do not execute such a maneuver very soon.
The world now faces a stark choice between two alternatives, with Wall
Street forcing the issue. The first is that the zombie banks and hedge
funds, having been saved and bailed out by national states and their
taxpayers, will repay the favor by driving the national states and all
forms of state, provincial, and local government into bankruptcy. This
will be synonymous with the destruction of modern civilization itself.
The second and preferred alternative is that the national states
summon the political will to use the inherent powers of government to
place the zombie banks, hedge funds, and related purveyors of
derivatives into bankruptcy receivership and shut them down once and
for all, relying in the future on nationalized central banks for the
provision of credit. The second alternative would allow the
preservation of modern civilization as we have known it. But in the
meantime, the derivatives-based speculative attack on the southern
flank of the euro has accelerated the arrival of the second wave of
depression, which now appears likely to strike the world before the
end of 2010.
J.B
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vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
trading. They are trading patterns, not securities. SOmetimes the
computers do most of the work.
Greek bonds dove in January because their sale was mismanaged.
At my tenth reunion I sat next to the Soros COO who was celebrating
his thirty second. I chided him about the instabilities in the French
and Brit currencies and he replied "We get accused of a lot of things
we are incapable of doing."
- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
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J. B.
Hahahahahah!