B00BLPJNWE EBOK (2 page)

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Allem voran gilt das für den Glass-Steagall Act, der 1933 verabschiedet wurde und die Fusion von Versicherungsgesellschaften, Investmentbanken und Geschäftsbanken verbot. Er wurde 1999 aufgehoben.

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Forderungsbesicherte Schuldverschreibungen (Collateralized Debt Obligations / CDO) und besicherte Hypothekenobligationen (Collateralized Mortgage Obligations / CMO) spielten hier eine Schlüsselrolle.

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Credit Default Swaps (CDS) sind Kreditderivate zum Handeln von Ausfallrisiken. Finanzinstitute verkauften sie, ohne Rücklagen für den Fall zu bilden, dass sie diese Art von ‚Versicherungen’ an ihre Kunden auszahlen mussten. Der Commodity Futures Modernization Act hatte eine Regulierung der forderungsbesicherten Schuldverschreibungen und der CDS verhindert.

Also, on the subject of free trade the author breaks down walls: David Ricardo’s free-trade theory was tightly tied to certain premises. In a globalized economy this theory has no validity. The practice of companies relocating their production of goods and services for their home markets in low-wage countries for profit reasons only (offshoring) has nothing to do with free trade. Offshoring is nothing else but labor arbitrage between differently developed countries. In the offshoring countries the jobs, the incomes, and the basis of existence that were previously related with the production disappear. Hence, fewer employees are paying taxes and contributions to social security. At the same time the number of people who need support from the state increases. By offshoring jobs, companies impose social costs on society.

Most anti-globalists criticize the exploitation of the developing countries. They do not recognize the fact that the developed industrial countries are among the main losers of globalism. The change towards a service society that has been promoted by apologists for globalism proved to be a fatal delusion.
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Nations can create wealth only with products and services they are able to sell in the global markets. This fact was forgotten.

Paul Craig Roberts warned against the consequences of offshoring. In part 2 of his book he delivers the depressing facts on the poor prospects for the US economy.

We Europeans would be well-advised to scrutinize the development in the U.S. Isn’t deindustrialization already spreading on the European continent? Isn’t deindustrialization one reason for the extremely high unemployment (of young people) in the southern European countries? On balance, manufacturing has been cutting jobs also in Germany. The German industry as a whole offers less jobs than it did prior to the reunification. In the monthly report for December 2010 of the Federal Employment Agency we read: “There were still small losses in employment in the manufacturing sector.”

The report supplies also the allegedly becalming explanation for this development: The restructuring towards the service sector is continuing in Germany. The share of the jobs subject to social insurance contributions in the service sector is increasing, while the share of the employees in the manufacturing sector decreases. According to the monthly report of the Federal Employment Agency (December 2011) in June, 2011, 69 per cent of the employees subject to social insurance contributions were working in a service industry (compared to 67.7 per cent in 2008) and 30.2 per cent in the manufacturing sector (compared to 31.5 per cent in 2008).
Compared to the United States, Germany with 30 per cent of the working population in industry is better off than the U.S. where only some 11 per cent of the population still works in the manufacturing sector of the economy.

Moreover, following employment losses in the years 2009 and 2010 the number of employees in Germany’s manufacturing sector (without construction) grew by 131,000 persons (1.7 per cent) in 2011 (Federal Bureau of Statistics press release, January 2, 2012).

No doubt: Offshoring is also a threat for Europe. The suction effect of the low wages in the emerging countries is too strong. The argument is naive that global competition will balance the incomes in the emerging countries and the industrial nations of the Western World. Even if the wages in, for example, China already are climbing, with hourly wages of less than 2 euro in emerging countries and fifteen times more in European countries, what would a balancing of wages look like? Where should wages balance? Wages would increase in the emerging countries and fall in the European countries. Unless prices in European countries fall with wages, the population will be facing significant income losses. These losses will be aggravated by the demographic development that is reducing the tax base for social insurance. Against this background, can we afford a balancing of wages on a world level?

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Siehe hierzu www.EconomyInCrisis.org

The prospects and ladders of upward mobility of the American middle class have been systematically destroyed by the deindustrialization of the country. From rags to riches--the American dream--is over. More and more citizens and families are falling from a comfortable middle class existence. Real incomes (adjusted for inflation) for most Americans are lower than they were years ago.
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There is little basis for economic improvement. American corporations have moved offshore millions of manufacturing and professional service jobs. For a consumer-driven economy, the loss of consumer incomes retards economic growth. The modest growth of the U.S. economy since the millennium was not real growth based on rising real income. It was an artificial growth created by artificially low interest rates and an expansion of consumer debt. When consumers reached the limit of the debt that they could service, the economy fell into recession.

Americans are not only losing their economy. They are losing their liberty.
As far as domestic policy is concerned the face of the United States has undergone basic changes. Against the background of the war against the alleged terror threat important civil rights granted by the Constitution were abolished systematically within a few years. In his book, Paul Craig Roberts shows the degeneration of the U.S. into a warmongering police state.

To put it briefly, the America that Europeans knew during the second half of the 20th century does not exist any more. This is the most important epochal change to which we are contemporary witnesses. The European belief is that the Americans have always got back on their feet and will do so again, but this time might be different. The executive branch has freed itself of accountability to U.S. laws and to international law.

“In the course of human history every state sooner or later went broke or was conquered. Where do we get the arrogance to believe that our politicians are more intelligent than all their predecessors?“ When Paul Craig Roberts at the occasion of a meeting in September 1993 in his office in Washington spoke those sentences he hardly expected that both could be true for his country not even 20 years later. Not only is the United States effectively bankrupt, but also the military-industrial complex and the financial oligarchy of the country have seized the power and initiated an unprecedented re-distribution of income, wealth, and power to the top. Super rich people are financing both large political parties, and with their unlimited financial means they decide on the results of both the presidential and the congressional elections.

Only recently, by ruling that this massive exertion of influence on election outcomes is merely the exercise of free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessings to the private purchase of the U.S. government. Plutocratic power structures have developed out of the crony capitalism that now sets the agenda in Washington.

“There really are two Americas, one for the grifter class and one for everybody else,” Matt Taibbi writes. “In everybody-else land the government would be something to be avoided. In the grifter world, however, government would be a slavish lapdog that the financial companies use as a tool for making money. The grifter class depends on these two positions getting confused in the minds of everybody else. They want the average American to believe that what government is to him, it is also to JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.“
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Siehe zum Beispiel http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/economy/family-net-worth-drops-to-level-of-early-90s-fed-says.html?_r=2

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Matt Taibbi, Kleptopia. Wie uns die Finanzindustrie, Politik und Banken für dumm verkaufen. Seite 43.

Apart from its military engagement in Arab states, America is fighting an economic war against the rest of the world – especially against Europe. At stake is the U.S. dollar’s role as reserve currency and as anchor currency of the world financial system. It is a matter of financing the global power, the thirst for consumption, and the debt of the United States. With the U.S. dollar as anchor currency of the world, the United States has been in a very comfortable position since the middle of the 20th century: The U.S. can pay for its imports with its own currency. The U.S. does not have to earn foreign currencies by exporting in order to import. While the trade partners are delivering real goods like industrial products and crude oil, they receive fiat money in return, much of which is then converted into U.S. government bonds. For America’s trade partners to finance the U.S. trade and budget deficits requires confidence that the U.S. dollar represents an adequate equivalent to the real goods and services. Considering the potentially disastrous economic situation of the United States today, this confidence is eroding.

The times have gone, in which the U.S. dollar was the unchallenged king of the currencies. Especially the euro has been a threat for the U.S. dollar. The same should increasingly apply to the yuan in the future. The Chinese government is working to establish the ‘people’s currency’ (Renminbi) as an international trading currency. Only recently, it signed appropriate bilateral agreements with a number of countries. For example China and Japan agreed to directly trade their currencies since June 1, 2012. Moreover, the Chinese government strives to establish a yuan bond market and to achieve the free convertibility of the people’s currency that was tied to the dollar. China can count on support from all over the world. Governments of other emerging countries have expressed the objective to end the global predominance of the U.S. dollar. They do not want to be at the mercy of U.S. financial policy.

In order to save it’s position, the U.S. government doesn’t waste any opportunity to disguise the serious economic situation of its country. Roberts tells us to what extent the official statistics are being manipulated. On the other hand, in close cooperation with the Federal Reserve and the U.S. financial oligarchy, the U.S. government obviously wastes almost no opportunity to intervene against the euro in the global financial markets. The objective is clear: The weaker the euro appears, the surer and stronger the U.S. dollar appears, and the more likely investors are to buy U.S. Treasury debt and, thus, to finance the wars and budget deficit of the United States.

Against this background the developments in Europe are increasingly significant. The ‘Old Continent’ is also changing its face in these days. Which way will Europe finally take? The reply to this question determines the second epochal change to which we are contemporary witnesses.

This much seems clear: The European political elites are using the sovereign debt crisis to finally end the sovereignty of the European national states – especially also of Germany – and to bring the single countries of the eurozone under the control of a dirigiste bureaucratic central government. The goal is to establish the United States of Europe in the place of historically sovereign nations.

The founding fathers of the European unification envisioned the process of integration quite differently. They intended to build it upon a liberal regulatory policy that would establish and secure an anti-discriminatory competition between the member states. In paragraph 3 of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (EEC Treaty / Treaties of Rome) of 1957, it says: “For the purposes set out in Article 2, the activities of the Community shall include, as provided in this Treaty and in accordance with the timetable set out therein: the institution of a system ensuring that competition in the common market is not distorted.“

A good approach, because Europe distinguishes itself by its variety that grew over centuries. The continent consists of many and very different regions with unique cultural, culinary, linguistic, social, and political idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, there are very different mentalities and perceptions of life. Out of this variety Europe’s strengths, Europe’s creativity, and Europe’s charm arose.

Instead of protecting these special idiosyncrasies with a liberal regulatory policy and to promote the competition between autonomous regions, the authorities in Bruxelles and Europe’s political elites have been pursuing a dirigiste bureaucratic integration programme for roughly five decades that increasingly limits the scope for personal initiative, variety and the richness of human mind in society, state and economy. The centralistic orientated Bruxelles is steadily expanding its power and sphere of influence. “The markets and other areas of life shall be ‘gripped’ with planning methods in order to subordinate the ‘mircrostructural’ substructure of the economy to superior ‘macrostructural’ objectives – by guidelines on technical and economical efficiency standards, by criteria for best sites, by minimum wages and other ‘social standards’, by regulating currency-exchange, by standardized interest rates, tax rates, and aid rates, by structural funds, regional funds, and cohesion funds, by an European financial compensation and forms of collective responsibility for sovereign debt,” summaries Prof. Dr. Alfred Schüller (the tools of the one size-fits-all policy in the ORDO
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yearbook). Bureaucrats in Bruxelles are seizing responsibility for judging and deciding what should be the measure of all things for the different European nationalities. Entire Europe is about to be levelled and “normalized.” Even fruits and vegetables should orient themselves on standards cogitated by highly paid bureaucrats in Bruxelles.
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