PRESS RELEASE
As Euro System Disintegrates,
EU Finance Ministers Present No Solution
Feb. 15, 2010 (EIRNS)—After today's fruitless meeting of Finance Ministers of the 16 European nations using the euro, Helga Zepp-LaRouche said: "These guys are clueless, and meanwhile the clock is ticking on sovereign defaults not only in Greece, but across the entire eurozone."
Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxemburg Prime Minister who chairs the Eurogroup, had nothing to announce to the expectant world media about the results of their latest urgent discussion of what they continue to insist is the Greek financial crisis.
Lyndon LaRouche emphasized that while people continue to focus on Greece, the situation is actually far worse in Spain and Portugal, where the assets of banks like Santander are totally fake, and are cross-related. For that reason, only a total reorganization-in-bankruptcy of the international financial system, such as that proposed by LaRouche, in which banks and other institutions are sorted out along Glass-Steagall standards, can defuse the otherwise certain explosion.
The British financial empire, which had intended to use the Greek crisis to bully European nations into adopting draconian austerity across the board instead of bailing out the holders of Greek debt, is now in a jam. Robert Mazzuoli, chief analyst at the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (state bank, LBBW) in Germany, is quoted in yesterday's German media as having warned that the option of driving Greece out of the euro to protect the eurozone would not work, "because there is no middle-of-the-road approach." It's either a full sovereign default, or a full bailout, and a Greek default would, he added, not only pull down the other "PIIGS" states (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) immediately, but also the highly indebted Great Britain, and the rest of the EU thereafter.
The vulnerability of the British had not been publicly discussed until Lyndon LaRouche pointed out last week that the holdings of the Spanish bank Santander is worthless, and that Santander is closely linked with British financial interests. Before that, the British financial imperialists had portrayed themselves as a powerful force other nations could look to as they attempted to navigate the financial collapse.
The European finance ministers today took the occasion to further beat up on Greece, demanding that more, and more, and yet more austerity be imposed on Greece, but no concrete steps were announced, nor bailout package revealed, because Germany remained firmly opposed to picking up the tab and bailing out the banks and derivatives traders who have been gambling with the Greek debt. The only thing agreed upon, was that they would "monitor" Greece's "progress," and send in a team from the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF in March to pronounce their verdict. Predictably, the euro headed for a nine-month low against the dollar on Monday, "as investors grew increasingly nervous about the absence of any quick bailout package," as one wire service put it.
