Gold News

Euro Crisis More Like Fall of Berlin Wall than Lehmans

It's becoming very hard to sustain the image that those in charge are working for our interests...

TO BE HONEST, not a lot happened in the markets yesterday that's worth reporting, writes Dan Denning for the Daily Reckoning Australia.

The Dow finished down in America. One reason given for the off day is that Slovakia's government became the only one of 17 European Union members to reject a plan to increase the size of Europe's bailout fund by several hundred billion Dollars.

This is apparently no big deal, though. Rejecting the deal has caused the coalition government to fall. The new government in waiting has promised to approve the plan. Even though Slovakia is the second-poorest member of the EU (Greece is first), its taxpayers will help bail out French and German bankers.

You see, government is part of the oligarchy. It can't vote against the interest of the cartel. The second it does, it's replaced.

By the way, this makes this moment in history a little more like 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell than 2008 when Lehman Brothers fell. True, the financial problems of the Welfare State are a direct result of a private sector crisis in 2008 becoming a public sector crisis in 2011.

But what we have now is the crisis of the oligarchy, much like the crisis that led to the fall of corrupt and bankrupt communist regimes in Eastern Europe that culminated in the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. Greece, the birthplace of ancient democracy, may be the first regime that defaults. But it won't be the last.

There are several interest groups who have an interest in preserving the status quo. The bankers want to keep passing on losses to the public. Bondholders who lent money to sovereigns (mostly banks) want the taxpayers to bail them out. Politicians want to please the people who vote for them. But they must do the bidding of the people who've bought them.

It's getting very complicated to sustain the image that the people in control are working for the best interest of the public. That's probably because they're not. They're working to save their own skins and line their own pockets.

Buying Gold?...

Best-selling author of The Bull Hunter (Wiley & Sons) and formerly analyzing equities and publishing investment ideas from Baltimore, Paris, London and then Melbourne, Dan Denning is now co-author of The Bill Bonner Letter from Bonner & Partners.

See our full archive of Dan Denning articles
 

Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News.

Follow Us

Facebook Youtube Twitter LinkedIn

 

 

Market Fundamentals