GERMAN ELECTIONS:
Scandalous Fraud
Against the Voters
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Sept. 27—The author is the national chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement. The party's TV campaign spot is available at the party's website.
Given the almost total top-down control of the media in Germany, which cares less about the citizen's right to information and certainly not about the truth or ideas overall, but rather sees itself as the steward of powerful interests, designing an election campaign was not so easy. Since the so-called "small" parties were granted only a ridiculous 90 seconds on TV for a campaign broadcast, one had to choose, from the many extremely important issues, the one that the voters must absolutely be informed about.
The key topic was, without a doubt, the planned expropriation of the population in the new outbreak of the banking crisis, which is expected soon. This will occur according to the "Cyprus model" for so-called "bail-in" of the banks, for all of Europe and the United States. So I devoted the precious 90 seconds of the BüSo's TV spot to this "Cyprus template," as Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the Eurogroup [Eurozone finance ministers], called the "haircut" for the people of Cyprus. And of course, I also laid out the real solution to the financial crisis, a two-tier banking system in the tradition of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Glass-Steagall Act.
Although the "bail-in" directive was already developed long ago by the European Commission[1] and backed almost completely by the European Parliament, and although all Germany's parliamentary parties know about this and endorse it, not a single one of them devoted so much as one syllable to the "bail-in" during the election campaign. But BüSo activists raised the issue in many panel discussions and debates, and briefed people on the growing support for the Glass-Steagall Act, especially in the United States. This made it crystal clear that representatives of the parliamentary parties were either well informed about the existence of this expropriation law, but wanted to keep it out of the discussion at all costs; or they were pretending not to know anything about it, which naturally also disqualifies them as representatives of the people's interests.
Exactly four days after Election Day (Sept. 22), the "HR Info" program on Hessischer Rundfunk [public broadcasting station] aired a three-part program about the power of the banks in Europe. In the third segment, they explained the concept of the bail-in to some extent, referring to the already adopted position paper of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).[2] If a bank runs into financial difficulties, the bail-in occurs according to a creditor hierarchy: The shareholders come first, then other banks that lent the bank money, then bondholders, then holders of convertible bonds, and—if there is anything left—the depositors. Deposits up to €100,000 remain protected, they say.
But this is also a lie. First of all, the outstanding derivative contracts of the international "too big to fail" (TBTF) banks, estimated at €1.4 trillion, are many times larger than total bank deposits, and second, the example of Cyprus shows that the entire population is impoverished by the bail-in. If a company's working capital is more than €100,000, it may no longer be able to pay its employees and its bills, so the effects could ravage the entire economy.
But, of course, this HR broadcast also did not say explicitly that the bail-in is intended for all of Europe and the United States. Apparently the citizens who had just cast their votes are deemed better off getting used to the fate that awaits them in homeopathic doses. With the expropriation measures threatening to take effect in the near future, the scandal continues to grow. After all, the situation on the financial markets is so tense that the Fed, at the recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, did not dare to adopt the previously announced "tapering" of the quantitative easing policy, for fear of bringing about the collapse of the system. In other words, the hyperinflationary increase of liquidity continues unabated.
'Post-Democracy'
If the current coalition negotiations in Germany lead to a Grand Coalition with an almost 80% majority in parliament, this government would have the required two-thirds majority to adopt any constitutional amendment deemed appropriate by the financial elite. But other coalition combinations also offer no reason to breathe a sigh of relief, since previous votes in support of EU policies often carried with 80% majorities, or even more.
Journalist Thomas [[Trares]] [[http://www.spiegelfechter.com/wordpress/127826/angela- merkel-die-erste-lupenreine-postdemokratin-im-kanzleramt]], writing just before the election, quoted from a book by British political scientist Colin Crouch, entitled Post-Democracy, and commented that this precisely describes the situation in Germany now with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Crouch wrote:
"Under this [post-democratic] model, while elections certainly exist and can change governments, public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind this spectacle of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in private by interaction between elected governments and elites that overwhelmingly represent business interests."
In the recent federal election campaign, the only problems discussed were those chosen by PR experts. Day-care centers or child-care benefits, adoption rights for gay couples, parking tolls, etc., may be important issues for those affected, but the question of whether there will be economic devastation à la Cyprus, to the benefit of financial gamblers and banks, plunging the entire trans-Atlantic region into misery and chaos, or a Glass-Steagall Act, which allows the start of economic construction, is infinitely more important. And this existential issue was addressed only by the BüSo.
The choice now comes after the election. The BüSo is determined not to accept the transition from post-democracy to an outright dictatorship, but to bring to Germany the momentum for Glass-Steagall, which is massively increasing, especially in the U.S., and to return our country to a nation of poets and thinkers.
Translated from German by Susan Welsh
[1] See Helga Zepp-LaRouche, "An Appeal to Citizens of Germany: European Commission Readies Bail-In Law To Grab Citizens' Bank Deposits," EIR, May 31, 2013—ed.
[2] See Claudio Celani, "Swiss Bail-In Scheme: Stealing Half a Trillion Euros from Depositors," EIR, Aug. 23, 20213—ed.
