A Greek brainstorming session would sound something like this: Default! Downgrade! Bond Swap! ECB Bailout! Austerity Measures! IMF Recipes! Riots! Euro Collapse! Pay up!! Can anybody make any sense out of this??
First and foremost, Sovereign Debt “Crises” explode, then collapse only to “resurrect” bigger and fatter according to a Model: let’s call it “The Shylock Model” after William Shakespeare’s despicable Usurer in “The Merchant of Venice”: Shylock loaned money to Antonio, a Venetian Merchant, demanding he sign a bond pledging a pound of his flesh as collateral…
Let’s try… Because it’s a question of joining the dots… correctly!
First and foremost, Sovereign Debt “Crises” explode, then collapse only to “resurrect” bigger and fatter according to a Model: let’s call it “The Shylock Model” after William Shakespeare’s despicable Usurer in “The Merchant of Venice”: Shylock loaned money to Antonio, a Venetian Merchant, demanding he sign a bond pledging a pound of his flesh as collateral…
Models are orderly, consistent and sequential representations of complex systems. Like a Road Map, Models can guide us from point “A” to point “B” so that we don’t go astray. When you understand how a Model works, the complex system it represents becomes predictable.
A Comedy of Errors
In my 23rd February article for RT on Greece, I stressed the Sovereign Debt Crises are not the result of bad luck, worse judgment or coincidence. For over a quarter century we’ve seen the same show staged again and again with little variation. Greece, Argentina, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Iceland, Ireland, Russia, Asian Tigers… all “stupidly” borrowed too much from private bankers only to “discover” they couldn’t pay them back.
Symmetrically, the same group of powerful global Mega-Banks lent too much to those countries only to “discover” they couldn’t recover those loans.
A Comedy of Errors in which governments and bankers are either very stupid or… are they discretely winking at each other as they carve out pound after pound of flesh?
Can somebody please clean our dirty sheets…
Bankers and politicians make strange bedfellows. Invariably, their Comedies of Errors get their linen soiled. When that happens, bankers know they cannot go banging on the doors of presidential palaces, ministries of finance and parliaments yelling “Pay up, or else!”
The farce of “democracy” and “national sovereignty” must be maintained. That’s when banker-controlled “public multilateral agencies” come on stage – IMF, ECB, World Bank – to do the, er… banging!!
After all Greece, you ARE a member of the ECB so you must obey their orders (even if written in German). And you, Argentina, you ARE a member of the IMF so stop wailing and do your homework!!
After all Greece, you ARE a member of the ECB so you must obey their orders (even if written in German). And you, Argentina, you ARE a member of the IMF so stop wailing and do your homework!!
Doctor, I’ve got a fever…
Market Analysts and Rating Agencies are today’s financial witch doctors telling us why stock markets go up and down like a patient’s fever. Currencies rise, currencies fall in a casino-like roller-coaster; Sovereign Debt Bond Ratings are up-graded or down-graded, all to the tune of the Pied Pipers at S&P, Finch’s and Moody’s, FT and The Wall Street Journal… And, yes, these oracles of “good” and “bad” are on Mega-banker payrolls.
Whatever they utter is Revealed Truth. So what if in 2008 they rated AIG, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae “AA”, even “AAA” until they dissolved into oblivion?
In perfect sync, they downgrade Greece and Argentina, Spain and Italy, Ireland and Iceland forcing them to pay higher interest to the Mega-bankers…
I’ll have my Bond!
When Shylock the Usurer got ready to cut a pound of flesh nearest Antonio’s heart, he parrots time and again, “I’ll have my bond!” waving his legal contract, formally enforceable under the laws of Venice.
One will never understand a Usurer’s mindset if you believe that Shylock loaned the money to Antonio in order to get it back. Oh, no!! Shylock was betting on NOT getting it back!!
One will never understand a Usurer’s mindset if you believe that Shylock loaned the money to Antonio in order to get it back. Oh, no!! Shylock was betting on NOT getting it back!!
You see, rich, sovereign creditors who cannot pay back loans are music to bankers’ ears! What good is a sovereign creditor who CAN and will actually pay back a loan? That undermines the very essence of usury! It thwarts parasitism forcing usurer bankers to have to work to find new victims to loan all that money to…
Jesus! Do you expect a banker to work!?!? Banker Business thrives on refinancing debt, rolling it over year after year, exponentially ballooning it through compound interest…
When a country can’t pay its debts, then our modern Shylock Banksters demand their “pound of flesh”: full control of the country turning it into a Financial Colony of the Global Power Masters, who impose their Trilateral Commission brethren in key positions of power: Papademos, Monti, Cavallo, Geithner…
It was never Shylock’s goal to recover his 3.000 Ducats. No, Sir! He only wanted his pound of flesh. The loan and the bond were just the mechanism to get to that flesh. Shylock’s Model was to legally indebt Antonio under the laws of Venice, so that those laws would then enforce his immoral outrage of executing the collateral: a pound of flesh.
Bankers’ Worst Nightmare!
What’s the worst thing that could happen to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Rockefeller, and Rothschild who manage the Shylock Model? If any sovereign country – Argentina, Greece, Spain, Brazil, Italy – were to turn around and say: “Hey! How much did you say I owed you? 200 billion? No sweat! Come pick up your check Monday morning…”
If that ever happened, bankers would be confronted with two very serious problems:
Problem One (a Technical Hitch): Where would they find another group of ‘sheeple’ to impose unnecessary – even fictitious – 200 billion dollar debts at usury interest?
Problem One (a Technical Hitch): Where would they find another group of ‘sheeple’ to impose unnecessary – even fictitious – 200 billion dollar debts at usury interest?
Problem Two (a Political Hitch): They would lose control over Greece, or Argentina, or Spain, or Ireland,or Italy just when they had them right under their thumb, controlling their resources and governments; running the show because if any government were to do something “stupid” like being Sovereign, then all the bankers needed to do was say, “No, no!! Remember: you owe us Zillions in “sovereign debt” that you can’t pay back.
If you do something foolish like prioritizing your people’s national interests, we will wipe you off the global financial map; our global media will destroy you; we’ll throw S&P and Fitch downgrades at you! Watch out: we can literally set your country on fire!!”.
Yes, when a country finally owes nothing to the bankers then that country is truly FREE! Make no mistake: true national sovereignty, independence and freedom are the greatest enemies of the Global Money Power Masters.
Today’s Global Financial System functions according to “The Shylock Model”: it will go to great lengths to carve out its pound of flesh…
Good doctors say: proper Diagnosis is the first step to becoming cured.