Tag Archives: National Sovereignty

France and Germany push to eliminate competition from low-tax countries

From today’s Open Europe news summary (my emphasis in italicized bold lettering):

France and Germany push for greater “tax coordination” in the EU and swifter negotiations on FTT
France and Germany yesterday unveiled a set of joint proposals which they say would boost growth in the EU. The proposals will be submitted to European leaders at their meeting on 30 January. The document reads, “European institutions and member states should accelerate the process of tax coordination…In particular, the negotiation of the European Commission proposals on Energy Tax Directive, Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and Common System of Financial Transaction Tax should be accelerated.”

In an interview with Bild, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán argues, “We support the initiative of Chancellor Angela Merkel on the fiscal union. But we strictly reject a Europe-wide harmonised tax system. Hungary’s low tax rate is for us a competitive advantage that we cannot do without.” Handelsblatt notes that the Czech Republic has voiced opposition to the introduction of an EU-wide FTT.

Euro breakup looking more likely

Banks Build Contingency for Breakup of the Euro open quoteFor the growing chorus of observers who fear that a breakup of the euro zone might be at hand, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has a pointed rebuke: It’s never going to happen.

But some banks are no longer so sure, especially as the sovereign debt crisis threatened to ensnare Germany itself this week, when investors began to question the nation’s stature as Europe’s main pillar of stability.

On Friday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Belgium’s credit standing to AA from AA+, saying it might not be able to cut its towering debt load any time soon. Ratings agencies this week cautioned that France could lose its AAA rating if the crisis grew. On Thursday, agencies lowered the ratings of Portugal and Hungary to junk.

While European leaders still say there is no need to draw up a Plan B, some of the world’s biggest banks, and their supervisors, are doing just that.

. . . .

Banks including Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Nomura issued a cascade of reports this week examining the likelihood of a breakup of the euro zone. “The euro zone financial crisis has entered a far more dangerous phase,” analysts at Nomura wrote on Friday. Unless the European Central Bank steps in to help where politicians have failed, “a euro breakup now appears probable rather than possible,” the bank said.close quote (Read more)

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Premarket: Now Germany can’t sell bonds open quoteOne of Germany’s worst bond sales since the launch of the euro sparked concerns the debt crisis was even beginning to threaten Berlin.The Bundesbank was forced to buy 39 per cent of the 6 billion euros of debt Germany had hoped to sell to investors after banks bought just 3.644 billion euros of the issue. close quote (Read more)

Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform

The Obama administration, anticipating that Congress might not pass comprehensive immigration reform this year, is considering ways it could act without congressional approval to achieve many of the objectives of the initiative, including giving permanent resident status, or green cards, to large numbers of people in the country illegally.

The ideas were outlined in an unusually frank draft memo [1] prepared for Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of the federal agency that handles immigration benefits, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS). The memo lists ways the government could grant permanent resident status to tens of thousands of people and delay the deportation of others, potentially indefinitely. (Read more from propublica.org)

US troops won’t be used to stop illegal immigration: State Dept.

US National Guard troops being sent to the Mexican border will be used to stem the flow of guns and drugs across the frontier and not to enforce US immigration laws, the State Department said Wednesday.

The clarification came after the Mexican government urged Washington not to use the additional troops to go after illegal immigrants. (Read more from rawstory.com)

How Changes in Accounting Standards Threaten Your Freedom

This is the most exciting discussion about accounting I’ve ever heard.

There is a confluence of interest leading to:

– our surrendering the power to establish accounting standards to an international body
– top down enforcement of standardized accounting standards
– devilish details which will tax businesses even more — Obama’s budget already project over $50 billion in increased tax revenue
– less transparency for international corporations — which will likely be an excuse for the government to take an even bigger policing role in the future
– even more obstacles for small businesses who want to compete with big corporations
– a lower standard of living

The interests are as follows:

– Academics who like things standardized and centralized, and think, like Lenin, that the entire world should be run like the post office
– International accounting firms who will make a bundle as the world
– The government who will be able to wrest even more wealth from the people who actually produce things
– International corporations who will have yet another government-imposed advantage over small businesses

(Listen at RadioFreeMerket.com)

Students Kicked Off Campus for Wearing American Flag Tees

On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal’s office.

“They said we could wear it on any other day,” Daniel Galli said, “but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus. (Read more from nbcbayarea.com)

(One of the boys was part hispanic.)

Corporate Media Plays Down Pro-Illegal Immigration Thugs Who Terrorized Santa Cruz

Imagine the uproar if 200 Tea Party members had gone on a rampage through a downtown city, smashing windows, starting fires, and spraying graffiti everywhere, the corporate media would be all over it, and yet gangs of pro-illegal immigration demonstrators do this and much worse on a regular basis, with no national news coverage whatsoever.

“A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker’s and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said,” reports The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

An Associated Press report states that eighteen businesses were damaged as pro-immigrants rights activists engaged in violent riots, spraying graffiti, smashing windows, setting fire to shop fronts, and causing damage to a cost of up to $100,000 dollars. (Read more from prisonplanet.com)

‘Harmonization’ of Taxes

This is an emerging issue is the EU, and I’m sure some visionaries have the idea to ‘harmonize’ taxes all over the globe.

Basically, the exploiters (governments) don’t like exploited people (anyone who engages in voluntary trade) moving away from their taxes. This ‘harmonization’ bullshit is nothing but pressure applied to low-tax governments. They’re pressuring them to steal more from their exploited masses, so the bigger crooks don’t look as bad.

THE Irish economy will be devastated under EU plans to introduce a common tax base across Europe in the next two years, a top Brussels lawyer warned yesterday.

Sources in Brussels have indicated that the new European Commission is treating as a matter of high priority the ‘harmonisation’ of taxes across the 27-member bloc.

There are real fears the move would drive foreign businesses out of Ireland, exacerbating the country’s already fragile economy. (Read more from thefreelibrary.com)

Give Up Meat!

Technological advances, not “live more simply” environmentalism, will deliver a greener planet, argues Madsen Pirie. Lord Stern, whose 2006 report set out the consequences and costs of various levels of global warming, has now called for humans to stop eating meat. His reasoning is that our farm animals, especially cows and pigs, expel methane, which is 23 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, making meat-production account for 18 percent of all carbon emissions. He says that it will become as socially unacceptable to eat meat as it is to drink and drive. The proposal is not surprising, since it is but the latest in a series of proposed behavioural changes which are claimed to be essential to the planet’s survival. . . .

Free-Market Analysis: It is very hard to deal with the idea that a powerful group of men create dominant social themes (memes) designed for the consumption of the rest of the world. It is even harder to wrap one’s mind around these memes being marketed the control and profit of those who generate them. But how else to explain many of the memes currently circulating?

These dominant social themes include the deadly swine flu, the ticking time bomb of overpopulation, the flooding of the world from global warming, the freezing of the world from peak oil – and on and on. We are even supposed to be scared of a meteor hitting earth. In all these instances – every one – a government solution is proposed that will ameliorate the difficulty. And all the solutions, we note, are increasingly international and involve the United Nations and other global bodies.

This can all be construed as coincidence – luck, etc. – but when one looks at the actual mechanism it is evident, in our opinion, that many of these dominant social themes are created and marketed by only a few highly placed, powerful, (often-titled) and wealthy people. (Read more from thedailybell.com)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Economics and the Pope’s latest Encyclical

I am not questioning the good intentions of the Pope, but I’d like to offer a very brief criticism of his recent encyclical.

From section 65: “Both the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation, and experimentation with new forms of finance, designed to support development projects, are positive experiences that should be further explored and encouraged, highlighting the responsibility of the investor.”

The end of this statement is rock solid – “highlighting the responsibility of the investor” – but is it government regulation which did away with this responsibility. It is more liberty, not more government which would “highlight the responsibility of the investor.”

Missing from most narratives of our financial crisis is the fact that our government subsidized irresponsible behavior and allowed our financial kings to invest without responsibility. It allowed the reckless experimentation which the Pope criticizes and, like many others, seems to blame on the free market.

Example 1: The 1998 bailout of the Long Term Capital Management. Had the Federal Reserve not supervised a bailout of this irresponsible hedge fund in 1998, we would not have begun as severe a financial crisis in 2008. Instead, the message from our government was clear: Gamble away. We have your back.

Example 2: Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae. These were government sponsored enterprises. Government created a demand for loans, even bad ones. Had the government not subsidized the purchase of bad loans, many fewer would have been made.

Example 3: Community Reinvest Act. This politically expedient legislation required banks to hold a certain portion of bad loans, or else they couldn’t expand. Once again, government subsidized irresponsibility. Do you remember how both Presidents W. Bush and Clinton bragged about how more Americans than ever before owned homes?

From section 67: “In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. . . . To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority. . . . such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties. . .”

Though I believe his intentions are good, this section is very troubling. It is a call for the creation of an unelected institution subject to no nation’s constitution with massive control and massive authority. The Road to Serfdom is paved with good intention (and a mistrust of freedom).

Though I would choose liberty over prosperity, the best economies happen to also be the freest. This is true almost without exception. Look at West Germany vs East Germany, South Korea vs North Korea, Botswana vs the rest of Africa, Chile vs the rest of S. America, Estonia vs Latvia or Lithuania, Hong Kong in the 80s vs China in the 80s, Cuba before communism vs after. The call for a global authority is an invitation for further economic fascism, and there are many arguments against it. I’ll make two:

1: The IMF and World Bank are completely corrupt and ineffective. Here I posted a Jim Rogers interview in which he says “abolish the World Bank and the IMF. . . they do little more than take care of themselves, their own pensions, their own perks, their own salaries, if you work for the World Bank or the IMF you have a great life, but they’ve not done much for the rest of the world.”

2: As Ron Paul said (here): “We do not abdicate American sovereignty to global institutions. The purpose of the United States is to protect the liberty of the American people. We should never allow the WTO, NAFTA, the U.N. or the Law of the Sea Treaty to transfer power from America to an international body.”

It’s baaaaack. G20 and World Government.

The vocabulary of so-called conspiracy theorists, “New World Order,” “One World Government,” “Global Currency,” returns again and again. Every day, their concerns look more reasonable. Are the they right? Is there a push toward compromising our sovereignty in the name of “stability”?

See also mass protests at G20 target banks. “Protesters pushed against police barricades outside the Bank of England on Wednesday, shouting ‘Abolish Money!’ Helicopters hovered over the capital. Many buildings in the financial district were boarded up and several streets were closed. Some bankers swapped their pinstripe suits for jeans to avoid being possible targets. Six people were arrested.

A threat to U.S. Sovereignty?

There’s broad speculation among the blogs I read about a movement to create a North American Union, which would give huge power to an international financial organization, and elevate them above the constraints of our pesky Constitution.

If true, the globalists attempting this may leverage the dollar crisis to propose the NAU. There’s even speculation that crashing the dollar is a deliberate step toward the NAU.

– U.S. Ships 800 Billion “AMEROS” to China; prepares to De-Monetize U.S. Dollar

– CNBC interview with some guy in an expensive suit.

– Great article from information clearning house.

– It will be come under the guises of euphemisms like this.