Forgoing
the rental of an entire hotel and the secrecy surrounding previous meetings, the
80 people in attendance spent, according to the Italian daily newspapers, Il
Vostro (http://www.ilvostro.it/economia-e-lavoro/il-club-bilderberg-a-roma-per-commissariare-litalia/58693/) and
InvestireOggi (http://www.investireoggi.it/attualita/che-ci-fa-il-club-bilderberg-a-roma-alcune-strane-coincidenze/),
100,000 euros, a pricey sum considering that ordinary citizens of the 27-member
union were asked to make deep cuts in their welfare state driven budgets.
The
Bilderberg attendees included a long list of Italian CEOs, Mario Monti, the
Italian Prime Minister, cabinet members, Italian bankers, Mario Draghi, the
European Central Bank president, the owner or RAI, Tom Enders of Eads, Marcus
Agius of Barclays, Kenneth Jacobs of Lazard, Edmund Clark of Td Bank, and the
chairman of Alcoa and of Shell.
Spain,
Italy, and Greece have protested vehemently over the required austerity
measures which citizens were unwilling to accept - they strongly believed that
the crisis was engineering by the very people who were now “concerned” with
resolving it.
Additionally,
once citizens became dependent on the welfare state, mentality, and largesse,
it was much harder to become self-sufficient. When the free money and
entitlements were scaled back and financial responsibility was required in
order to pay for banks that gambled with derivatives but were unwilling to
write off the resulting losses, the masses protested vehemently and even
violently.
The
blame game was exacerbated by the British weekly, the Economist, after its 14
page report called France’s economy a “ticking time bomb and the biggest threat
to the euro currency’s stability.” The French called the photograph headlining
the article, a bundle of French baguettes tied with a lit fuse and the French
flag, inflammatory and “French bashing.” The Economist had accused the French voters
in March of being in “denial,” calling President Francois Hollande “dangerous”
for Europe. (France 24)
As
a strategic member of the Eurozone, France is a threat to EU because of its
large public sector that encompasses 57 percent of GDP. The socialist president
Francois Hollande was elected on the promise of 75 percent income tax on the
rich, higher taxes on companies, wealth, capital gains, and dividends, a higher
minimum wage, more entitlements, and the rollback of the Sarkozy measure to
increase the retirement age.
Politicians/oligarchs
spent huge sums to control the Eurozone. German industry in general and its exports
profited from the initial EU conglomeration. After Germany gave over one
trillion euros in bailouts to Italy, Spain, and Greece, Germany’s economic
growth slowed down, even in rich parts of Germany like Mainz and the industrialized
Rhineland.
Germany’s
economy has been successful when compared to the Eurozone. When compared to the
period when the currency was the German mark or when compared to other non-EU
countries, it has been a failure. (http://www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2012-11-12.html)
According
to Rodney Atkinson, “Germany’s success in productivity is ironically due not to
GDP per capita growth but to wages falling relative to production.” Thus
Germany was “left with poor consumers at home and poor consumers abroad who
cannot afford to pay their debts to Germany.” Chancellor Angela Merkel urged German
companies to give their employees higher wage increases in 2012. “Prosperous
Bavaria is challenging in court a fiscal balancing system that makes it hand
over some revenue to poorer federal states.” (Reuters, October 15, 2012)
The
fiscal engineering is not a surprise. Socialist states promote re-distribution
of wealth and progressives endorse taxing the rich excessively in order to
“even-out the playing field” in the name of social justice. If we were to
confiscate the entire accumulated wealth of every rich person in this country,
it would last perhaps, at the current rate of government spending, less than two
months.
The
permanent euro bailout, the European Stability Mechanism, has been challenged
in Constitutional Court by 37,000 Germans, the largest Constitutional complaint
in German history, but the oligarchs prevailed. The European Central Bank (ECB)
decided in September that it would purchase unlimited quantities of sovereign
bonds from EU countries in crisis. ECB will link its market interventions to
ESM, applying strict austerity criteria to any country that seeks aid. National
parliaments will have no control over the unlimited hyper bailout fund, making
them irrelevant. (Phillip Wittrock)
The
Catalan-speaking Catalonia, a wealthier region in Spain with high-tech
industries and productive farming, paying the lion’s share in taxes to Madrid,
while getting less revenue when its own finances are overstretched, resents
having to pay for poor areas such as Spanish-speaking Andalucia. Similarly,
Dutch-speaking Flanders resents paying for French-speaking Wallonia. (Paul
Taylor and Robert-Jan Bartunek, October 15, 2012)
Heather
Grabbe, the Brussels director for the Open Society Institute, explains the
separatist move among many states and countries as not correlated to money but
an expression of “historical grievances and language.” (Steven Erlanger, The
New York Times, Europe’s Richer Regions Want Out, October 6, 2012)
Could
it be that rich and productive countries are tired of subsidizing social
welfare, re-distribution of wealth schemes, failed multiculturalism, and sloth?
Mariano
Rajoy, the Spanish Prime Minister, warned separatist regions that opting for independence
will mean being shut out of EU – new member states admission requires unanimous
agreement. With unemployment at 25 percent in Spain, 6 of its 17 regions asked
the central government for a bailout. Creating jobs and improving economic
growth can only happen by the existence of the private sector and economic
activity of citizens who pay taxes to the government.
To
say that people in Spain or Italy do not like to pay taxes, it is an
understatement. According to the Tax Research Institute in the U.K., 22.5
percent of GDP in Spain comes from work off the books. As fewer people are
paying taxes in the underground economy, the state debt gets larger, more
austerity measures are required, and fewer resources exist to jump-start the
economy. (Lisa Abend, Time World, October 31, 2012)
Italy’s
Prime Minister, Mario Monti, wants his country to be bailed out as well because
he ‘fears the parliamentary democracy could bring down the European Union.” Mass
demonstrations in Rome against German imposed austerity measures reflected
those in Spain, France, Greece, and Portugal. There is a deep resentment
against Germany’s dominance in the EU.
Nigel
Farage believes EU bailouts are nothing short of subjugation of countries in
financial need to the new world order. Farage describes the next phase of EU
control as forcing those who “do not need or want a bailout to accept a
bailout, to sign budget guarantees and to have the power to strike down
national budgets after they’ve been through national parliaments.”
“I
feel that the Euro zone is now in a very dark place, economically, socially,
politically, and I fear for the countries trapped inside in that prison will be
there for many years to come. It is against this backdrop that the Nobel Peace
Prize has been awarded to the European Union.” (Nigel Farage, UK Independence
Party)
Oskar
Freysinger, Vice President of the Swiss People’s Party, pointed out in an
interview that the European Union is imposed on nations by technocrats. He
believes that EU will fail eventually because “citizens are identifying less
and less with a bureaucratic anti-democratic and centralized power” like the
EU.
Tony
Blair thinks that the EU needs a president who can rule over a “sustainable”
European integration. UN Agenda 21 is promoting everything sustainable, why not
a sustainable integration under the aegis of a president elected through
Europe-wide election? (The Telegraph, October 29, 2012)
The
Brits are not charmed by EU since the union is costing them jobs and it aims to
wipe out national borders. Brussels pays EU citizens to cross borders in order
to find employment elsewhere, but it won’t pay for Brits to move within their
country in search of jobs.
“A
common European jobs market exports Greek and Spanish unemployed to the
relatively rich north in order to bolster confidence in the Euro and keep it
going until the next crisis summit.” (Tim Aker, Get Britain Out, November 1,
2012)
Rodney
Atkinson has given the best and most succinct explanation in favor of the EU
demise, the end of the welfare enslaving union whose ultimate goal is to gain
one world government control. “The European Union is responsible for the
abolition of 27 national constitutions, 27 parliaments, 17 currencies and 17
Central Banks and a record decline in the share of world trade and wealth
creation attributable to its members. There are over 25 million unemployed in
the European Union and it has never been so detested by those who ‘benefit’
from its institutions.” (EU Fiddles Illegal Nobel Prize, October 24, 2012)
Giving
up the security of a mediocre standard of living provided by the welfare system
for the insecurity of making a better living, earning it, and being proud of
the accomplishments of self-reliance born by a productive citizen mentality, is
easier said than done. Millions of Europeans have become accustomed to the
socialist year-end bonus, the 13th salary, the six weeks paid
vacations, drinking on the job, the legal difficulty of employers to fire
inadequate employees, two years paid maternity leave, missing work for weeks
when afflicted by a simple cold, retiring at 50 in more than 600 professions,
being taken care of from cradle to grave by a state lording over its citizens,
having a small state-assigned apartment, utility bills subsidies, socialized
medical care, spa and massage vacations when overworked, and many, many
other perks.
As
Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, “The problem with socialism is that at some
point, you run out of other people’s money,” and huge national debt becomes a
threat that can no longer be ignored.
Welfare
dependency reduces other beneficial programs such as national defense.
Europeans have become accustomed to United States protecting their continent
while they are free to spend lavishly on social programs while belittling the
“stupid” Americans and their efforts.
Welfare
mentality has made Europeans lazier, working less hours per week than American
counterparts. During frequent union strikes and demonstrations they complain
that they are overworked.
Europeans
and their multicultural residents have learned how to game the system to
maximize benefits. Few care or take pride in earned success. Young people have
no work ethic or shame that they demand more and more entitlements, expecting
society to take care of all their problems while the truly helpless fall
quietly through the cracks of an overburdened social welfare system.
We
are not far from Europe; all you have to do is look at the liberal states that
voted socialism and Santa Claus every day.
The largest case study is California, the home of the deprived and proud
of it – huge public sector wages, benefits that would make Europeans proud, a
declining tax base as job creators and producers are moving out of state,
decreased economic production, high unemployment, ever-increasing welfare
enrollment from citizens and illegal aliens, higher taxes, and huge deficits.
The poverty rate is 23.5 percent. Michigan, Illinois, Miami, D.C. are not far
behind. Social Security was “created to prevent destitution among the elderly.
It now subsidizes the comfortable” and has become an expected and entitled way
of life. (Robert J. Samuelson, Welfare State, No Matter what You Call It, Is
Breaking Us, November 19, 2012)
The
ultimate irony of the welfare state dependency is exemplified by the pride with
which the U.S. Department of Agriculture advertises the distribution this year
of the greatest amount of food stamps ever to 47 million people while the
National Park Service asks visitors to stop feeding the animals because they
grow dependent on handouts and do not learn to care for themselves. “Social
justice” and helplessness born of dependency have replaced self-reliance.
Cordt
Schnibben of Der Spiegel asked in “Prison of Debt Paralyzes West,” if there is
a human debt gene. The welfare state has brought western debt to unmanageable
levels. Economic systems, whether capitalist or socialist, seem to be plagued
by an unending crisis. Democracies can’t manage money and are resorting to
printing, creating money out of thin air, incurring trillions in additional
debt in order to sustain the welfare state. He said that “the introduction of
the euro is nothing but the continuation of debt mania with more audacious
methods. The euro countries took advantage of the favorable interest rates
offered by the common currency to get into even more debt.” He believes that
democracy breeds loose monetary policy, allowing too much government spending
on social programs. Politicians at the municipal, state, and national levels
have become utterly irresponsible in their handling of money in the pursuit of political
control of the masses, offering lavish benefits to a citizenry that demands ever
more in exchange for a perennial vote for the party that promises and dispenses
most goodies.
The
recent EU Budget Summit in Brussels failed to agree on the next seven-year
budget – the “rich” and the “poor” countries disagreed on key points. The
richest countries, Germany, the U.K., Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands
decided to cut their contribution to the collective pool of welfare cash.
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