Emergency ECB Borrowing and Germany's Euro Imperialism (continued).

I blogged yesterday on Ireland's coming default and Germany's Euro Imperialism, here and here. Both topics require further explanation and elaboration.

Something very fishy is going on between Ireland, presently without a government during its election campaign, and the ECB. An article in the Irish Times this morning, linked here, titled "Irish banks spark surge in emergency ECB borrowing" includes this startling information:

The lenders have used about €15 billion in bonds – State-backed IOUs – issued by the National Asset Management Agency as collateral, or security, to borrow the money.

The Nama bonds, however, are being auctioned with the deposits so they could no longer be used to support week-long loans, given that their sale is expected shortly.

This forced Anglo and Irish Nationwide to swap their existing week-long loans with the ECB for overnight borrowings to pave the way for a quick sale to take place.

The Irish Central Bank referred queries to the ECB, which said it did not comment on the borrowings of individual banks. Anglo, Irish Nationwide and the National Treasury Management Agency, which manages the Government’s banking interests, had no comment either.

The study by Richard Conquest on German Economic Policy and the Euro 1999 - 2010, linked from this blog yesterday and again from here, had the following comments on ECB chief, Jean-Claude Trichet's role in the aggressive destruction of the economies of the EU's non-German economies, which I have branded on this blog German Euro Imperialism, which is almost exactly along the lines of the eventual complete economic domination of Europe prdicted in my novel Millennium Blitzkrieg, published in 2000, which predicted that by 2014, with Europe subdued, German ambitions would turn to the USA. The studies more pertinent quotes are below:

From Page 12

The realities of the situation cannot be freely admitted by the political elite because to attribute any of the blame for Europe’s malaise to the Euro would at once confirm the worst suspicions of the financial markets and precipitate a market-driven crisis that would quickly pass beyond the control of any government. Or, indeed pseudo government such as the Brussels establishment. As time goes on this situation will only become more acute and crises more violent and economically destructive. So,for the time being at least, denial by the elite is the most expedient stance – stating and insisting upon that which they know to be untrue.
Most worrying of all, perhaps, is the fact that the President of the European Central Bank, Jean Claude Trichet, speaks in very much the same terms as the political class. He does not pursue an impartial, objective assessment of economic conditions which would allow the formulation of an appropriate monetary policy response. This is after all the proper function of a central bank governor. But no,

From Page 13

rather, he serves an overtly political purpose. It is not for him to say, for example, which countries should remain in the Eurozone and which should leave. He flatly denies the possibility of the latter option, a manifestly absurd and very political position. History dictates that the politicisation of money always ends in disaster and Trichet is working actively to remind us of the validity of this observation

From Page 15

How could it ever have been seriously argued that the fast-growing Spain, with its enormous trade and current account deficits, apparent well before the coming of the Euro, should share a common interest and exchange rate policy with a slow-growing and export dependent Germany, luxuriating in huge trade and current account surpluses? It was always a recipe for disaster but the political class, including Trichet, are in their comfortable state of denial and of course, in receipt of lavish rewards for their incompetence.1

Footnote 1 on Page 15

Can it be any surprise to learn that Trichet is the latest recipient of the ‘Vision for Europe’ award? Previous laureates have included Jacques Santer, Jean-Claude Juncker, Jean-Luc Dehaene and Helmut Kohl, a depressing and dreary collection of functionaries in the ‘leadership’ of Europe. This award is granted ‘in recognition of outstanding achievements in taking Europe into the future’; self-evidently an exercise in fatuity.The first recipient of this self-congratulatory award was Jacques Santer, former EU President, forced from his extravagant sinecure by Paul Van Buitenen’s devastating accusations of corruption and fraud.

From Page 35

This grim situation has prompted intermittent debate in Italy’s political and economic circles about the desirability or not of that country remaining within the Eurozone – whatever fatuous noises Trichet might make on this issue. The problem then is that this debate is now a matter of concern to German economists and politicians.


From Page 55


Unfortunately there can be no such happy ending to the nightmare of the Euro. Although its disintegration would be economically beneficial in the long term, its demise will be extremely destructive in the near to medium term. The example of the UK simply illustrates that there is life after Euro-folly. However, in the same way that we could not expect that the government would deliver Britain from the absurdities of the ERM, so Europe cannot expect that the likes of Herman Van Rompuy, Manuel Barosso, Jean Claude Trichet and the other grandees and potentates of Europe will deliver the Eurozone from the destructive absurdities of the Euro.