Europe's Coming Summer Of Discontent

The summer of 2010 promises to be the most tumultuous summer in the short history of the European Union. The sovereign debt crisis sweeping the continent threatens to cause economic and political instability on a scale not seen in Europe for decades. The truth is that governments across the eurozone have accumulated gigantic piles of debt that simply are not sustainable. Prior to the implementation of the euro, these European governments often "printed" their way out of messes like this, but now they can't do that. Now they either have to dramatically cut government expenses or they have to default. But the austerity measures that the IMF and the ECB are pressuring these European governments to adopt are likely to have some very painful side effects. Not only will these austerity measures cause a significant slowdown in economic growth, they are also likely to cause the same kinds of protests, strikes and riots that we saw in Greece to erupt all over Europe.

You see, most Europeans have become very accustomed to the social welfare state. Tens of millions of Europeans aren't about to let anyone cut their welfare payments or the wages on their cushy government jobs. In most of the European nations that are experiencing big financial problems there are very powerful unions and labor organizations that do not want anything to do with austerity measures and that are already mobilizing.

As the IMF and the ECB continue to push austerity measures all over Europe this summer, the chaos that we witnessed in Greece could end up being repeated over and over again across the continent. This could truly be Europe's summer of discontent.

The following are just a few of the countries that we should be watching very carefully in the months ahead....

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The Euro Crisis is a Judgment on the Great Lie of 'Europe'

What we are witnessing here is a judgment on the entire deceitful and self-deceiving way in which the "European project" has been assembled over the past 53 years. One of the most important things to understand about that project is that it has only ever had one real agenda. Everything it has done has been directed to one ultimate goal, full political and economic integration. The headline labels put on the various stages of that process may have changed over the years, such as building first a "common market", then a "single market", finally a "constitution". But by far the most important project of all was locking the member states into a single currency.

This was always above all a political not an economic project, to be driven through at any cost, which was why all those "Maastricht criteria" laid down to bring it about were repeatedly breached. But as expert voices were warning as long ago as the 1970s, when it was first put on the agenda, there was no way economic and monetary union could work unless it was run by a single all-powerful economic government, with the power to raise taxes.

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$1 Trillion Was Not Enough

Zero Hedge notes that European banks are betting against the beleaguered euro. “Zero Hedge has received confirmation that several of the largest French banks are now actively shorting the euro to take advantage of globalized moral hazard, which with every ensuing bailout does nothing but make the bonuses of French FX traders surge.”

In other words, the very banks the EU plans to bailout in part with U.S. taxpayer money (or tax payer long term debt) via the IMF are placing bets against the survival of Europe.'

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Bankers Destroy Global Economy by Design to Consolidate Power

American taxpayers have been freshly liberated of hundreds of billions more dollars as part of the IMF’s new bailout package which is principally going straight to European banks, in addition to the Federal Reserve program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe, in a move that represents little more than a desperate effort to save the Euro and rescue the credibility of economic global governance.'

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British Taxpayers Ordered to Bail Out Euro

All 27 EU finance ministers have been summoned to Brussels on Sunday to sign up to a “European stabilisation mechanism. Britain will be unable to veto this as it will be put through under the “qualified majority voting” system.

The deal, effectively to shore up the euro, was denounced as a “stitch-up” last night after it emerged Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had devised it behind closed doors and were attempting to push it through at a time when there is no clear government in Britain.'

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Berlusconi: Euro 'Screwed Everyone'

Silvio Berlusconi launched an astonishing attack on the euro yesterday when he blamed the Europe's single currency for Italy's economic woes in the starkest comments to date, saying it "screwed everybody".

The Italian Prime Minister has frequently blamed the euro for pushing up prices and choking off exports. Yesterday the billionaire claimed that his main political foe, the former prime minister Romano Prodi, had brought Italy to the brink of disaster by negotiating bad terms for its entry into the single currency. He told a conference of his Forza Italia party: "Italy is not at a disastrous point, but I can say that Prodi's euro screwed us all," trying to score points against his opponent in the run up to the campaign for next year's general election.'

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Has Germany Just Killed the Dream of a European Superstate?

German and Dutch leaders have concluded in the nick of time that they cannot defy the will of their sovereign parliaments by propping up a country that lied about its deficits, or risk court defeats by breaching the no-bail-out clause in Article 125 of the EU Treaties.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has halted at the Rubicon. So has Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende, as well he might in charge of a broken government facing elections in a country where far-right leader Geert Wilders is the second political force, and where the Tweede Kamer has categorically blocked loans for Greece.

failure of EU leaders to cobble together a plausible bail-out – if that is what occurs at this week’s Brussels summit – is a 'game-changer' in market parlance. Eurogroup chair Jean-Claude Juncker said last month that such an outcome would shatter the credibility of monetary union. It certainly shatters many assumptions.'

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Soros, Goldman, Hedge Funds Attack Greece, Euro

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.'

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Ireland, Greece and Leaving the Euro

The economic travails of Ireland and Greece have provoked a debate on the wisdom of the two most vulnerable members of the infamous PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) grouping of Eurozone members, on leaving the euro.'

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Telegraph Pulls Story: ECB Prepares Legal Grounds for Euro Rupture as Greece Festers

Fears of a euro breakup have reached the point where the European Central Bank feels compelled to issue a legal analysis of what would happen if a country tried to leave monetary union.

"Recent developments have, perhaps, increased the risk of secession (however modestly), as well as the urgency of addressing it as a possible scenario," said the document, entitled "Withdrawal and Expulsion from the EU and EMU: Some Reflections."

The author makes a string of vaulting, Jesuitical, and mischievous claims, as EU lawyers often do. Half a century of ever-closer union has created a "new legal order" that transcends a "largely obsolete concept of sovereignty" and imposes a "permanent limitation" on the states' rights.

Those who suspect that the European Court has the power pretensions of the medieval papacy will find plenty to validate their fears in this astonishing text.

Crucially, the author argues that eurozone exit entails expulsion from the European Union as well. All EU members must take part in EMU (except Britain and Denmark, with opt-outs).

This is a warning shot for Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain. If they fail to marshal public support for draconian austerity, they risk being cast into Icelandic oblivion. Or for Greece, back into the clammy embrace of Asia Minor.'

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The original pulled story in the Telegraph on sunday was here...

Europe in Crisis

At the start of the last decade, in March 2000, the European Union heads of state announced the Lisbon Strategy. Its aim, by 2010, was to make Europe “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.” This would create “the conditions for full employment and the strengthening of regional cohesion in the European Union.”

As the second decade of the 21st century begins, the aspirations set forth in the Portuguese capital have evaporated. Instead of full employment, Europe is gripped by mass unemployment; instead of economic growth, there is stagnation; in place of cohesion, there is discord. Even the common currency, the foundation of the lofty plans of Lisbon, is in acute danger.'

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Poll: Danes Say No to Euro

The latest opinion poll on EU affairs in Denmark shows a majority of Danes would reject the euro if a referendum were to be held today. Similarly the previously so steady majority in favour of giving up opt-outs on legal and defence cooperation seems to have disappeared.

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Bilderberg-chairman: ‘Bilderberg Helped Create the Euro’

According to Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon, the Euro was helped created by the Bilderberg Group in the 1990’s. He admitted this in an interview to the EUobserver online newspaper on March 16 2009.

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Help Ireland or it Will Exit Euro, Economist Warns

"This is war: countries have to defend themselves," said David McWilliams, a former official at the Irish central bank.
"It is essential that we go to Europe and say we have a serious problem. We say, either we default or we pull out of Europe," he told RTE radio.

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Monetary Union Has Left Half of Europe Trapped in Depression

Events are moving fast in Europe. The worst riots since the fall of Communism have swept the Baltics and the south Balkans. An incipient crisis is taking shape in the Club Med bond markets. S&P has cut Greek debt to near junk. Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish bonds are on negative watch.

A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be. Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill.

Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped.

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The Prince Of Darkness And The Secret Plan To Ditch The Pound

Lord Mandelson was at the centre of a row last night over 'secret' plans to ditch the pound after an explosive claim that Britain is ready to join the euro.
The European Commission president said the UK was 'closer than ever before' to signing up to the single currency.
Jose Manuel Barroso said he had held private conversations with 'the people who count in Britain' and knew that they were ready to move into the euro-zone.

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How Ireland Will Destroy The Euro

Ireland's decision to guarantee all bank deposits will contribute to the demise of the single European currency, because it will erode the euro's credibility if it's allowed to go ahead, Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer and Partner at Eclectica Fund, told CNBC on Thursday

The plan pledges to guarantee the liabilities of six Irish-owned banks totaling some 400 billion euros ($565 billion), more than twice the country's annual gross domestic product.
"The decision, if left to stand … my prophecy is it will bring down the currency. The euro is not a tenable currency if you have politicians making such decisions. The reality is there is no such thing as a free lunch," Hendry told "Squawk Box Europe."

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