Friday, April 20, 2012

The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How Goldman Sachs Captured Europe

In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress.  But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair.  Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone’s permission.  And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press.  The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers  on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.
The bankers’ coup has triumphed in Europe seemingly without a fight.  The ESM is cheered by Eurozone governments, their creditors, and “the market” alike, because it means investors will keep buying sovereign debt.  All is sacrificed to the demands of the creditors, because where else can the money be had to float the crippling debts of the Eurozone governments?
There is another alternative to debt slavery to the banks.  But first, a closer look at the nefarious underbelly of the ESM and Goldman’s silent takeover of the ECB . . . .
The Dark Side of the ESM
The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as Member States representing 90% of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012.  A December 2011 youtube video titled “The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!”, originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length.  It states:
The EU is planning a new treaty called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM:  a treaty of debt. . . . The authorized capital stock shall be 700 billion euros.  Question: why 700 billion?  [Probable answer: it simply mimicked the $700 billion the U.S. Congress bought into in 2008.] . . . .
[Article 9]: “. . . ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them . . . within seven days of receipt of such demand.”  . . . If the ESM needs money, we have seven days to pay. . . . But what does “irrevocably and unconditionally” mean?  What if we have a new parliament, one that does not want to transfer money to the ESM?  . . . .
[Article 10]: “The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorized capital and amend Article 8 . . . accordingly.”  Question:  . . . 700 billion is just the beginning?  The ESM can stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any time it wants to?  And we would then be required under Article 9 to irrevocably and unconditionally pay up?
[Article 27, lines 2-3]: “The ESM, its property, funding, and assets . . . shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process . . . .”  Question:  So the ESM program can sue us, but we can’t challenge it in court?
[Article 27, line 4]: “The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall . . . be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action.”  Question: . . . [T]his means that neither our governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM organization?  That’s a pretty powerful treaty!
read full article here The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How Goldman Sachs Captured Europe

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