Michael Roberts has a very good post on the appointment of the technocrats, Lucas Papademos in Greece and Mario Monti or Giuliano Amato in Italy, who are supposed to lead Greece and Italy through those “much needed reforms” that these countries need to reduce their oh so troubling debt levels. The ‘reforms’ or austerity, are needed to deal with the intransigance of those democratically elected governments who are not doing enough to reduce the debt because they want to pamper their electorate. It’s a lie of course. As Paul Krugman points out “the countries in trouble are not in any way marked out by having especially generous welfare states”. Using the OECD measure of “social expenditure”, measuring both public spending and private spending, we can see that “Sweden, with the largest social expenditure, is doing just fine. So is Denmark. And Germany, which is the up side of the pulling-apart euro, has a bigger welfare state than the GIPS”.
Michael Roberts post reminds us (or informs us) about the previous positons that these men have held.
Democracy should be put above markets, said Papandreou. Berlusconi said that the appointment of a government of technocrats would be “an undemocratic coup” that ignored the 2008 election result. But it is still happening. In Greece, Lucas Papademos will become prime minister. He was head of the Greek central bank when Greece joined the euro and boasts of his leading role in achieving that. Now he takes over in order to keep Greece in the euro, a decision that now President Sarkozi says was “a mistake”. Papademos was in charge when Greek officials lied about their fiscal position to the EU authorities and he presided over the failure of the Greek government to collect taxes from rich Greeks (like himself). But he is now the financial markets’ own man. Greece is to be run by the very man most responsible for getting them into this mess. It’s like Alan Greenspan taking over as President after Wall Street demanded President Obama step down for failing to cut entitlement spending enough to balance the budget!
In Italy, Mario Monti and Giuliano Amato are to take over. Monti is a mainstream economics professor who briefly worked for (guess who?) Goldman Sachs and then became EU competition commissioner for many years, where he insisted on ‘liberalising and deregulating’ markets. He is a close friend of the new ECB chief, ‘Super Mario’ Draghi, another Italian banker. In the 1990s, when a number of countries, including Italy and Greece, engaged deliberately in credit swap transactions to take part of government debt and deficits off the official accounts with the connivance and help of Goldman Sachs in particular, Draghi was director general of the Italian Treasury and then joined Goldman Sachs (2002-2005). Draghi and Papademos both got their doctorates in economics at MIT in 1978. Amato is a ‘centre left’ ex prime minister who was close to the corrupt social democrat premier Craxi of the 1990s. He was head of the Italian anti-trust commission which tried to deregulate the economy especially in financial services.
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November 11, 2011 1:36 pm
On today Lew Rockwell Portal a similar comment is made,
mentioning the adherence of borth Draghi and Papademos
to the Trilateral Commission
November 13, 2011 10:08 pm
A few notes on Loukas Papadimos – the man who is going to save Greece
Little has been said in the Irish media about Loukas Papadimos – Greece’s new PM. To start with, he’s definitely NOT a man who came to prominence from nowhere…..the use-by-date of his tenure as PM may turn out to be quite short, most likely until elections are held on February next year, but he is very much a distinguished member of the governing upper class elite both in Greece and internationally. He’s educated by that elite in the US and his whole career to date has been drafted and managed by those centres built to ensure that international economic and political forces control political developments worldwide.
Those elites are the cartels, the big multinationals, the big banks and the think-tanks and media acolytes they pay and control. They groom their people, they choose them carefully and promote them to represent them in the international decision-making centres. They build managers and redraft politicians.
And in case I’m accused of being a conspiracy prone hack, let me go through some details of this man. He has come to become an unelected PM, chosen by an alliance of a centre-right (New Democracy) and a social democratic party (PASOK) with the help of an extreme right movement (LAOS). All sections of the Left, which electorally in Greece command up to 20% of the popular vote have condemned the choice and opposed him. Papadimos has been for a while now a prominent member of the Trilateral Commission …he joins as PM the promotion of Mario Monti, another member of the same Commission who is going to lead Italy.
http://www.trilateral.org/
The TC’s objective, as per its published documents is to ensure international political and economic stability, even if the contours of democracy are somehow reduced and to guarantee the free international movement of capital. It is in my opinion, the vanguard of international capital
According to an article in the Financial Times October 21st 2011) Papademos (as he is referred to) is a very prominent Trilateralist along with other Trilateral members such as Bill Clinton, Bush and Carter. The Commission was first set up in 1973, to draft and prepare managers and politicians who would lead the globalisation of capital. The Rockefeller and Rothchild families continue to support the TC with their wealth while people like Agnelli of FIAT, Cyrus Vance, Warren Christopher and Minorou Manahara continue to lead proceedings.
In conclusion, Papadimos is not a Johny-come-lately nor is he just a decent technocrat who has been put in charge of a very difficult if not impossible task.. The next few weeks will show what he’s made of….if I can be allowed a prediction, his choice as PM may turn out to be the last stone on the political epitaph for those political forces and individuals who selected him.
Michael Youlton – Dublin Nov. 12th