Part One

 

Inability:

The EU’s inability to deliver repeated promises of prosperity continues to ring hollow. After six bitter years of recession, now the bloc can barely register anemic growth. All – sovereign – governments use GDP to show a shiny picture to their electorate. But this GDP is a construct too far removed from reality. Yet people make real-world policy on this fantasy. Boosting GDP higher, lowering unemployment rate, and polished inflation figures are far from reality. All governments swindle their figures for the motive to obtain fresh loans.

 

“To tell a lie is considered by them the greatest disgrace, and next to that to be in debt… especially because they think that one in debt must of necessity tell lies.” Wrote the Greek Historian Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) in the fifth century BC of the Persians. So lying governments is nothing new under sun. Since these lies replace the reality they obliged to represent. So GDP goes up even though the quality of life has gone nowhere; the unemployment rate falls, but tens of millions can’t find work and stop looking; and inflation is low even as people find their living expenses are going up – thus, ditch the GDP- and all other figures.

 

broken euroThe EU is contributing another nightmare chapter to its economic history. The Europhile single currency mania promised a prosperous destiny. Brussels’ hype has instead delivered a festering economic disaster. Mediterranean citizens are frustrated at economic bulimia: crazed austerity followed by spendthrift governments. With remarkable timing as EU nations are obliged to belt tighten, the EU decides once again to expand its contentious budget with another € 5 billion. Unbelievable…

 

It shows; the EU’s incompetence of a self indulged arrogant caste that believes they better can spend other people’s money than the overtaxed citizens themselves. Their fiscal mismanagement resulted in the EU racking up unpaid bills of €23.4 billion. Even, the EU’s own auditors remain spectacularly unimpressed by the lack of sound financial controls. They have to date failed to sign off any EU-account for the past 19 years. Which underpins the sheer irresponsibility of their dysfunctional apparatus, and rampant incompetence that clearly are the seeds for the haughty EU’s demise.

 

Even Germans are unimpressed that they have suffered library closures and other Teutonic civic dysfunction in order for Berlin to help bail out their southern neighbors. Banking remains a massive weakness to EU-recovery. So far this year, lending once again declined to households and businesses. This is highly worrying as it clearly shows businesses are not being funded to expand.

 

Even leaving aside the uselessness of the misguided bailout programs, the truth is banks aren’t lending to business. That is stifling recovery. Here lies the final element of the EU’s ultimate undoing. The Economist: The overall subsidy for banks is worth up to $110 billion in Britain and Japan, and $300 billion in the euro area, according to the IMF. At a total of $630 billion in the rich world, the distortion is bigger than Sweden’s GDP – and more than the net profits of the 1,000 biggest banks.

 

The digital age is a great economic leap forward full of innovative potential for extending mass prosperity. Alas, the EU’s bulky stakeholders remain painfully stuck in an analogue industrial era. Europe was slow to adopt the Internet and continues to frustrate with bureaucratic rules – how many times have you had to read a cookie policy, or experienced red tape for patent applications – all merely stymie innovation.

 

National leaders have been played for fools by the EU’s massed kleptocrats, as they wilfully divert the hard-earned wages of the few Europeans still actually in workbed despite the EU’s war on enterprise to complete nebulous social programs and subsidies to maintain low productivity, while decimating enterprise with endless red tape which keeps multinational firms eagerly complicit in the EU’s corporate socialist racket.

 

The future is not with big multinational organizations – the future lies with small- and medium sized- businesses, and co-operatives. If Europe is to recover its lost economic prestige, it must acknowledge the failure of corporate socialism and move forward. Growth and innovation must be encouraged from the bottom up. That probably means dismantling the EU to return to a simple free trade zone, in empowering individual creative enterprises.

 

Given how rapidly the EU demands others to enact ‘democracy’ and ‘European standards’ of human rights, it is an act of breathtaking hubris to see how poorly Brussels is treating its own citizens in this ongoing economic disaster. Europe’s tragic lost decade remains on track to deliver its citizenry poverty over prosperity.

 

As a poignant contrast: MEPs were arguing about the inclusion of foie gras on the heavily subsidized Christmas menus in the Brussels Parliament. Of course it was a question of animal welfare, which was raised. The EU is so removed from its citizens, that questioning the gravy train in Brussels is viewed with utter incomprehension.

 

When special created interests direct the agenda of the European Union that disagree with member states, the true nature of this supranational enterprise becomes painfully apparent since those dictatorial special interests squeeze regional policy that benefits none of its individual member states. No example of this can be clearer than the dispute that has emerged over the construction of Russia’s South Stream natural gas pipeline set to run through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Italy.

 

South Stream is Pipe Dream:

The pipeline produces a large number of benefits for each of the nations it passes through, as well as for energy markets on either end of the pipeline. For the people and governments of these nations set to benefit most from the pipeline, the deal is an attractive, long-term investment. For the special interests that have been created and currently direct the EU, on the other hand it poses as a direct threat to their designs of continued expansion and corporate-financial hegemony beyond the collective borders of today’s EU.

 

“While the European Commission opposes Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project, certain EU countries like Austria and Italy continue to openly support the world’s most expensive pipeline project, which aims to transport Russian gas by bypassing Ukraine. For the last two years, Russia has signed bilateral agreements with Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Austria and Croatia for the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline, which is estimated to cost nearly US$40 billion according to the Moscow Times. Gazprom recently announced however that it was abandoning construction of the Italian portion of the pipeline.”

Since the European Commission deemedEU Drums these agreements a breach of EU anti-trust law in December 2013. And, in April 2014, following the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia, the European Parliament voted (rubber stamped) for the South Stream project to be stopped.

 

So, Russia is forced to withdraw from the South Stream project due to the EU’s unwillingness to support the pipeline, and gas flows will be redirected to other customers. Accordingly, Vladimir Putin turned to Turkey, and said after talks with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “We believe that the stance of the European Commission was counterproductive. In fact, the European Commission not only provided no help in implementation of [the South Stream pipeline], but, as we see, obstacles were created to its implementation. Well, if Europe doesn’t want it implemented, it won’t be implemented,” the Russian president said, and continued: “We’ll be promoting other markets and Europe won’t receive those volumes, at least not from Russia. We believe that it doesn’t meet the economic interests of Europe and it harms our cooperation. But such is the choice of our European friends.” 

 

The EU Commission has been pressuring member states to withdraw from the project, with the new Bulgarian government saying it will not allow Gazprom to lay the pipeline without permission from Brussels. Putin said that Russia is ready to build a new pipeline to meet Turkey’s growing gas demand, which may include a special hub on the Turkish-Greek border for customers in southern Europe.

 

Now it’s up to Bulgaria and Hungary – which, by the way, have always fought the EC “strategy” – to explain the fiasco to their own populations, and to keep pressing Brussels; after all they are bound to lose a fortune, not to mention get no gas, with South Stream out of the picture. Russia still gets to build a pipeline under the Black Sea – but now redirected to Turkey and, crucially, pumping the same amount of gas South Stream would. The redirection makes total business sense. Turkey is Gazprom’s second biggest customer after Germany. And much bigger than Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria combined. This means Turkey acceding to a privileged position as a major hub simultaneously in the Eurasian Economic Belt and joins the Chinese New Silk Road. – If the EU blocks Turkey? Then, Turkey looks east. That’s Eurasian integration on the move. Russia has got another graphic proof that its real growth market in the future is Asia, especially China – and not a fearful, stagnated, austerity-devastated, politically paralyzed EU. This is business with a sharp geopolitical reach – not ideology-drenched politics.

 

Turkey’s look eastwards, and its newly created friendly relationship with the Iranians are causing a major geopolitical shift in the Middle East. As an important NATO member, this move is an extremely positive development on the road to defeat the bloodline clan with their world dictatorship ambitions.

 

Whatever the EU motive is, Europe will not be able to survive without the energy supply from Russia. Which actually means: “The world will not be able to survive if oil and gas from Russia is subtracted from the global balance of energy supply”. “Europe cannot entirely do without Russian gas,” according to Jerome Ferrier, head of the International Gas Union and Senior Vice President of France’s Total. It also is bad news for EU companies that have already invested at least €2.5 billion in the South Stream project. Losing South Stream could also mean less energy security. Even though Europe is increasing renewable energy, it still relies on Russia for a third of its gas supplies, half of which travels via Ukraine. “Russia won’t turn away from the EU; in fact, a EU pipeline project could still be realized, just not in the current political situation.” For now, however, Moscow’s money is going to Ankara, not Brussels, an important geopolitical step for both nations who feel they have been strung along with lofty EU promises. 

 

Third Power Bloc

For years there were speculations that Russia’s resources and military power with Western Europe’s technology would become the single most powerful economic and military bloc in the world.bear Such a rapprochement makes sense. Contrary, it is Washington’s worst nightmare, such EU-Russia alliance that would erode America’s influence in Europe.

 

It seemed Germany was warming up for such an alliance, but the US has managed to drive a massive wedge between Moscow and its natural allies in Europe. As in number occasions before, the Americans might regret this interference, as they now sent Russia into China’s warm embrace. Instead of allowing a tri-polar world, the US in control of the Americas, China in Asia, and a giant Eurasian alliance as a buffer – Washington has managed to create a much more confrontational bi-polar world.

 

With this unethical move, the US at one hand has created a divided Europe, which is being pulled in all kinds of directions, and at the other hand a ‘red corner’, a rising China and Russia that, most likely, would prefer to be in a different corner altogether.

Apparently the way the US State Department wishes the world to be – in a constant state of chaos. Instead of a US-EU-Russia detente, they have managed to manufacture a new Cold War for the 21st century with Ukraine as the New Berlin.

 

The Western world, built on the hegemony of the petrodollar, enters a catastrophic situation. In which it cannot survive without oil and gas supplies from Russia. And now Russia is selling its oil and gas to the West only in exchange for physical gold! The twist of Putin’s game is that the mechanism for the sale of Russian energy to the West for gold only, works regardless the West agrees to pay for Russian oil and gas with its artificially cheap gold, or not.

 

Interestingly; the suppression of the gold price by the special department of US Government – ESF (Exchange Stabilization Fund) – with the aim to stabilizing the dollar, is accepted in the financial world as a given that gold is an anti-dollar. Right now the West spends much of its efforts and resources to suppress the prices of gold and oil. On the one hand to distort the existing economic reality in favour of the US dollar and on the other hand, to destroy the Russian economy, as reprisal measure for refusing to play the role of obedient vassal of the West.

 

As result of the West’s actions: Assets such as gold and oil look proportionally weakened and excessively undervalued against the US dollar, a consequence of the enormous economic effort on the part of the West. But now Putin takes his revenge by selling Russian energy resources in exchange for these overvalued US dollars. With which he immediately buys gold, artificially devalued against the U.S. dollar! Read more about here.

 

To be continued in Part TwoEU is in serious trouble

 

The EU Is 1 Big Scam & The Ukraine Is It’s Next Victim…

Dr Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work, joins Thom Hartmann. Joining the European Union has been a disaster for countries like Greece – Spain – and Ireland. Austerity cuts have decimated their already struggling economies. So why is Ukraine even THINKING of moving closer to joining the EU?

Watch below video to understand where all of us are heading.