World War III predicted Europe part 2018

http://www.fundweb.co.uk/fund-strat...l-to-spell-out-worst-scenario/1040463.article

[h=1]War in Europe? Leaders fail to spell out worst scenario[/h] Fund Strategy - 31 Oct 2011 | By Nick Rice

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One of the more commonly observed psychiatric conditions is avoidant personality disorder.



Among other symptoms, avoidant personalities may be characterized by the following three, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): “Excessive preoccupation with being criticised or rejected in social situations”; “unwillingness to become involved with people unless certain of being liked”; and “avoidance of social or occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact because of fear of criticism, disapproval, or rejection”.

If it were the WHO rather than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that was analysing last week’s eurozone crisis summit, it might have discerned some of these symptoms among the grouping of eurozone officials. Mindful of their national obligations, they have demonstrated an extreme preoccupation with avoiding any measures to solve the *crisis that might involve them being rejected by their electorates. At the same time, they are unable simply to ignore the chaotic reality of the eurozone’s finances and try to ensure that the market likes their proposals enough to keep the eurozone from collapse. For two years, senior officials have pored over technocratic details, yet avoided telling voters, person to person, what the alternative, a eurozone implosion, would entail.

In the lead-up to the summit, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, finally broke a taboo and spoke of what might happen if the eurozone foundered.

They even hinted that war could return to Europe. However, this contention lacked supporting evidence. Both Merkel and Sarkozy avoided spelling out the concrete, immediate economic effects that could arise from going back to national currencies. (News analysis continues below)

Without those effects being made clear, voters may not be persuaded that economic calamity, let alone war, could result from “doing anything it takes” to save the euro. Europe to this day survives with several currencies in operation. Most Greek voters remember drachmas, for instance, and will recall that the drachma survived the entire post-war period without leading to armed conflict between Greece and its European partners.

As Mark Pignatelli, the manager of the Smith & Williamson European Growth fund, has observed, the concrete, immediate consequences of even Greece leaving the eurozone in an uncontrolled manner are dire enough to shock stakeholders into action. Alongside massive default by the government and the banks, corporate default on euro debts would be a major threat. “The Bank of Greece would have to print money, and do so on a scale that would more resemble Zimbabwe than America,” Pignatelli said before the summit last week.

Last week, however, Merkel and Sarkozy omitted the gory details of mass default, emigration of workers and bank deposits, the potential printing of new currencies and, worst of all, Zimbabwean-style hyperinflation. During the crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has been reluctant to embark on a euro-based quantitative easing programme to avoid stoking the kind of hyperinflation that helped usher in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. However, the irony is that tight monetary policy makes it all the more likely that peripheral countries will leave the euro, with potentially catastrophic inflationary consequences.

In the end, at the summit, nations and supranational authorities such as the ECB avoided anything but minimal collective action on the crisis. They almost avoided coming to an agreement at all. The summit was initially delayed from October 17 to October 23. Its conclusion was delayed again until October 26 and only finally arrived in the early hours of October 27.

Even eurozone leaders, however, could not dodge the fact that Greece, the most insolvent eurozone nation, required a larger discount, or haircut, on its debt repayments. The eurozone granted it a new haircut, but a voluntary one of 50%, or the minimum conditions necessary to avoid triggering credit insurance payouts. Before the summit, the IMF had also suggested Europe’s banks needed to raise a high 12-figure sum to recapitalise themselves.

The eurozone made them raise almost the lowest 12-figure sum possible, or €106 billion - roughly enough to cover the haircut, but little more. The markets had demanded that the ECB or the European Financial *Stability Facility (EFSF) generate a 13-*figure sum to insure against further haircuts. Contrary to Germany’s previous wishes, the EFSF then agreed to leverage itself up to produce the lowest 13-figure sum possible, or at least *€1trillion.

The result? Greece is now projected to reduce its ratio of government debt to GDP, but to 120%, which is generally agreed to be an unsustainable number. The eurozone’s banks have guarded themselves against a Greek default, but not the immediate threat of haircuts on the government and bank debt of Ireland and Portugal, the other bailed-out nations. They have also failed to respond to the more distant threat of haircuts in Italy and Spain, the much larger peripheral economies that have not yet received a bail-out.

However, if a full €1 trillion is used to insure peripheral sovereign debt, it could guard against a Greek-style 50% haircut in Ireland and Portugal, which even on to last year’s debt to GDP ratios would represent a writedown of €156 billion, according to figures from Eurostat and the IMF. There would then be enough money left over for a haircut of a third on Italian and Spanish debt, according to the figures.

At first sight, the programme is similar to what Britain did after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008: recapitalise its banks and insure their bad debts against further losses. However, Britain performed this trick in tandem with near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing from the Bank of England.

Mario Draghi, the incoming president of the ultra-orthodox ECB, has not yet indicated he is willing to undertake these less conventional steps, particularly with eurozone inflation still above target. The eurozone will also rely on the whims of foreign powers such as China for the money, rather than creating a supranational institution of its own: a fiscal union. In the absence of the latter, the EFSF’s marketing trip to the world’s sovereign wealth funds is ominously reminiscent of similar trips by investment banks at the end of 2007. The following year, their governments were left with the bill.



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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...a-Merkel-says-euro-meltdown-spark-battle.html

[h=1]As Merkel says euro meltdown could endanger peace, a historian's imagination runs riot...[/h][h=1]German troops storm Greece. Putin's tanks crush Latvia. France humbles the British Army. Unlikely, yes, but as Angela Merkel says euro meltdown could endanger peace, a historian's imagination runs riot...[/h] By Dominic Sandbrook

Last updated at 12:43 AM on 31st October 2011

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The date is October 29, 2018, and Britain faces its darkest hour. On the battlefields of Europe, our Armed Forces have been humiliated.

In makeshift prison camps on the continent, thousands of our young men and women sit forlornly, testament to the collapse of our ambitions.

From the killing grounds of Belgium to the scarred streets of Athens, a continent continues to bleed. And, in the east, the Russian bear inexorably tightens its grip, an old empire rising from the wreckage of the European dream.
The crisis had been 'made in London', Sarkozy told French television in August 2016. By 2017, Britain's land forces were down to just 75,000
Yesterday, after a run of military defeats unequalled in our history, the Prime Minister offered his resignation. There is talk of a National Government, but no one has any illusions of another Churchill waiting in the wings.

In suburban streets across Britain, old men and callow teenagers are digging defensive positions in the cold autumn air. But with equipment scarce and ammunition non-existent, the Home Guard would barely last a week.

And all the time, across the Channel, enemy forces make their final preparations for the inevitable invasion. Some talk of surrender; no one speaks of victory. Less than ten years ago, millions still believed in a peaceful, united Europe. How did it come to this?
When future historians look back on our humiliation, they will surely judge that the turning point was the last week in October 2011.






An imagined future: In March 2016, Vladimir Putin's (left) army occupied Lithuania, Belarus and Moldova. Nicolas Sarkozy (right) sends 15,000 French troops to Italy


Largely forgotten today, the main event was yet another interminable European summit in Brussels — the 14th attempt to ‘save the euro’ in just 20 months.

Hoping to secure German support for a massive one trillion euro rescue package, Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her parliamentarians a chillingly prescient warning.

‘No one should believe that another half century of peace in Europe is a given — it’s not,’ she said.
‘So I say again: if the euro collapses, Europe collapses. That can’t happen.’

At the time, many observers scoffed that she was being absurdly melodramatic. But, seven years on, no one is laughing.

What Mrs Merkel had grasped — and what many European leaders refused to recognise — was that the Continent was threatened by a toxic combination of spiralling debt, economic recession, surging anarchism and a pervasive collapse of confidence in capitalism itself.

'No one should believe that another half century of peace in Europe is a given - it's not,' said Angela Merkel

That week, even St Paul’s Cathedral in London — whose survival had been a memorable symbol of British defiance during the last European war — was shut down by anti-capitalist protesters.
At the time it seemed a tiny, even trivial incident. But it was merely a taste of what was coming.

For by February 2012, it was terrifyingly obvious that the latest eurozone package had failed. In Greece, protests against the government’s austerity measures had turned into daily running battles, while much of Western Europe had now sunk back into recession.

A month later, after an angry mob had invaded the Greek parliament itself, Greece announced it was withdrawing from the euro. Almost overnight, the European markets were hit by the biggest losses in financial history.

As law and order collapsed on the streets of Athens, France and Germany sent in 5,000 ‘peacekeepers’ to restore calm. But when they came under attack from petrol-bomb throwing demonstrators, it was clear that more drastic action might be needed.
Meanwhile, the Greek collapse was sending shockwaves across Europe.

With the markets turning their attention to Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi’s beleaguered government struggling to maintain order, Europe’s fifth largest economy was suddenly at risk.

In the summer of 2012, massive anti-capitalist demonstrations in major Italian cities turned into outright rebellion. And when Berlusconi sent in the army to maintain order, the first bombs began exploding in the banks of Rome, Milan and Turin.

Anti-capitalism had caught the imagination of a generation. And the bomb alert at the Bank of England —when the entire City had to be evacuated after warnings from the so-called ‘Guy Fawkes Anti-Cuts Collective’ — was merely the first of many.

[h=4]More...[/h]

• Fight for Britain, Prime Minister: Mail poll shows huge majority wants powers back from EU
• Europe gets its begging bowl out: Bailout chief plays down hopes of a quick Chinese fix
• The cynical lie that leaving the EU would destroy Britain

In July 2012, three people were killed by a bank bomb in Frankfurt. A month later, 15 people were killed in Dublin. And in September, in tragic events that will never be forgotten, 36 people were killed by explosions across the City of London.


By now demonstrations and riots were fixtures on the evening news. And as Germany and France struggled to keep the eurozone alive, there were the first signs of a disturbing new authoritarianism.

In Italy, where the Berlusconi government had declared a permanent state of emergency, some cities had degenerated into virtual civil war.


And when Berlusconi formally requested assistance from his European partners, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy — who had narrowly won re-election earlier that year — was only too keen to flex his muscles.

By the end of 2012, there were an estimated 15,000 French troops on the streets of northern Italy — as well as a further 14,000 ‘European peacekeepers’ in Athens and Thessaloniki. Slowly but surely, the continent was sliding towards armed confrontation.

In Greece, protests against the government's austerity measures had turned into daily running battles

By the following year, a peaceful settlement to the implosion of the European Union seemed increasingly unlikely.

The last major Brussels summit, in March 2013, broke up acrimoniously when many smaller European nations refused to accept Germany’s demands for greater fiscal austerity and economic integration.
With alarming speed, the threads of peaceful unity were unravelling.

With the European economy heading into depression, nationalist movements were gaining support across the Continent. Skinheads were on the march; in cities from Madrid to Budapest, foreigners and immigrants were the victims of violent abuse.

'Europe's crisis is Russia's opportunity,' Putin announced.
'The days of humiliation are over; our empire will be restored.'


At another time, the terrible Spanish riots in the spring of 2014, when 63 people were killed in a shocking outbreak of arson and looting, would have dominated the headlines.

But most people’s attention was focused further east. No country had been hit harder by the financial crisis than little Latvia, which by 2014 had an unemployment rate of more than 35  per cent. And with almost one in three of its citizens being ethnic Russians, economic frustration soon turned into nationalist confrontation.

On August 12, 2015, after days of fighting on the streets of Riga, the Russian army rumbled across the border. The Russians had come to ‘restore order’, Vladimir Putin assured the world.

But his statement to the Russian people told a different story.

‘Europe’s crisis is Russia’s opportunity,’ Putin announced. ‘The days of humiliation are over; our empire will be restored.’

Once, the West would have come to Latvia’s aid. It was, after all, a member of both the European Union and of Nato — though the new American isolationism meant that Nato membership was effectively worthless.

But since French troops were already committed to Greece and Italy, Paris refused to intervene.

Apocalyptic: Fear and suffering emerge from the wreckage of the European dream

And in London, the new Prime Minister, Ed Miliband, assured the nation that he would never commit British troops to help ‘a faraway country of which we know nothing’.

In Moscow, the message was clear. Six months later, Russian ‘peacekeepers’ crossed the border into Estonia, and in March 2016, Putin’s army occupied Lithuania, Belarus and Moldova.

When Brussels complained, the Kremlin pointed out that European peacekeepers were already on the streets of Athens, Rome and Madrid. Why, Putin asked, should the rules be any different in the east?
And, indeed, he had a point. Even in Paris, there was chilling evidence of a slide towards ruthless suppression of civil dissent — justified as a short-term measure to check the rise of anti-capitalist terrorism.

Aided by Spanish and Italian auxiliaries, backed by German money and quietly supported by neo-imperialist Russia, the French army has encircled our expeditionary force on the other side of the Channel and cut it
to shreds.


That summer, Sarkozy amended the French constitution so that he could seek a third term, claiming that stability mattered more than legal niceties. Now more than ever he seemed to see himself as the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, ostentatiously tucking his hand into his military-style greatcoat.

Back in October 2011, he had told David Cameron to ‘shut up’, claiming that Europe had ‘had enough’ of British advice. Now he seemed to have tipped over into outright Anglophobia.

The crisis had been ‘made in London’, Sarkozy told French television in August 2016.

‘But Britain’s day is done. The future lies in a Russian east and a European — that is to say, French — west.’

For some British newspapers, his words were proof of an unspoken alliance between Moscow and Paris, sweetened with Russian oil and gas money. And, by now, Napoleonic ambitions seemed to have gone to the French president’s head.

Five days before Christmas 2016, Sarkozy told a cheering crowd in Vichy that ‘all European Union members must fully embrace our project and join the euro, or they will pay the price’.

In Britain, his remarks provoked a storm of outrage. Many insiders suggested that left to his own devices, Ed Miliband would have been more than happy to join the euro.

But, by now, the weak Prime Minister was almost completely ruled by his overweening Chancellor, Ed Balls, who insisted that Britain simply could not afford to join a patently unfair Franco-German currency.

As France tightened the pressure, with French farmers ritually burning British imports outside the Channel ports, Miliband cracked, handing in his resignation and scuttling off to take up a teaching post at Harvard.


Progress undone: The battles of 2015 take us back to the Second World War 70 years ago, when 60million people were killed

In a desperate attempt to reinvigorate Labour’s popularity, Ed Balls announced that he was opening talks on British secession from the European Union — even though France and Germany insisted that they would block this ‘illegal nationalist piracy’. But now events across the Channel took a bloody and decisive twist.

For years, Belgium had been crippled by antagonism between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons.

The country had not even had a proper government since the summer of 2010, being run first by a caretaker coalition and then, from 2014, by the European Union itself. But in the summer of 2017 inter-community rioting in the centre of Brussels became terrifyingly brutal.

From Wallonia, there came reports of Dutch speakers being beaten and intimidated out of their homes. On August 1, Sarkozy sent in French paratroopers.

‘Brussels is the very heart of Europe,’ he said. ‘Which is to say, it is properly part of France.’

In the summer of 2012, massive anti-capitalist demonstrations in major Italian cities turned into outright rebellion. And when Berlusconi sent in the army to maintain order, the first bombs began exploding in the banks of Rome, Milan and Turin.


For Britain, this was the final provocation. All parties agreed that, thanks to Britain’s long-standing pledge to defend Belgian independence, we had no choice but to dispatch peacekeepers of our own.

The events of the next few months make sorry reading. Even in 2011, Britain had only 101,000 regular soldiers to France’s 123,000, but years of swingeing spending cuts had taken their toll.

By 2017, Britain’s land forces were down to just 75,000. And when fighting broke out between French and British peacekeepers in the outskirts of Ghent, no one seriously doubted that the French would win.

So it is that, a year later, we find ourselves at our lowest ebb. Aided by Spanish and Italian auxiliaries, backed by German money and quietly supported by neo-imperialist Russia, the French army has encircled our expeditionary force on the other side of the Channel and cut it to shreds.

The Americans have deserted us, while every week brings fresh anti-war and anti-capitalist riots in our cities. The shelves are increasingly empty; national morale has hit rock bottom.

In Scotland, polls show that more than 70  per cent want independence; in Northern Ireland, the bombs of the Real IRA explode almost daily.

Last week, addressing a vast crowd in French-occupied Brussels, Nicolas Sarkozy declared that it was ‘time to extinguish the stain of Waterloo’.

‘Britain has always been part of Europe — even if they have refused to recognise it,’ he said.

‘It is time to welcome them into our family — by force, if necessary.’

A few diehards talk of fighting in the last ditch. But no one seriously believes that Britain can hold out for long.

The Union flag hangs tattered and forlorn; our days of glory are long gone. And, in Brussels, our new masters are preparing for victory.

Even now, the transformation in our fortunes seems almost incredible.

Seven years ago, Angela Merkel’s talk of the threat to peace seemed implausible, even absurd.

What a tragedy that we did not listen when we still had a chance.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politi...-german-leader-angela-merkel-115875-23517519/

[h=1]Europe could be plunged into war if efforts to save the euro fail, warns German leader Angela Merkel[/h] by James Lyons, Daily Mirror 27/10/2011
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David Cameron prepares, at the British Residence in Brussels (Pic:PA)


DAVID Cameron had to sit on the sidelines last night as the heads of countries in the euro met to try to strike a deal to save the currency.
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The Prime Minister was only invited to take part in an informal hour-long summit of all 27 EU nations in Brussels.
He was then left hanging around hoping 17 leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy could thrash out a deal.
Ms Merkel had dealt Mr Cameron an early blow by demanding European Union treaty changes and an international tax on city fatcats he opposes.
Then he got another slap in the face when Euro MPs in Strasbourg ignored the eurozone crisis and voted for a 6.6billion euro – or 5.2% – rise in Europe’s 2012 budget. That would take EU spending over 130billion euros next year and increase Britain’s bill by more than £700million.
He will now have to appeal to MEPs to honour their pledge to keep costs down. But this will mean teaming up with Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy, who appeared to snub him at yesterday’s informal talks.
Mr Cameron said after yesterday’s meeting: “We made some good progress. It’s very much in Britain’s interests that we solve this crisis.
“We have made good progress on the bank recapitalisation. That wasn’t watered down, it has been agreed.”
But he added that would only happen after “other parts of a full package go ahead” at the meeting he was excluded from. Leaders were last night trying to strike a three-part deal including writing off up to 60% of Greece’s debts.
They also hoped to agree on how much more money Europe’s banks should horde to protect them from the losses.
And they had to figure out how to boost the eurozone bailout fund to more than £1trillion to stop the crisis spreading to other countries with big debts such as Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy. Ms Merkel’s fatcats demand angered Tory MPs who staged a mutiny over Europe this week.
Mark Pritchard, secretary of the powerful 1922 committee of backbench Conservatives, said: “This provides the opportunity for Britain to repatriate significant powers back from Europe.”
The Prime Minister has said he wants to cut the powers of Brussels but Deputy PM Nick Clegg opposes it.
Labour leader Ed Miliband taunted Mr Cameron over the Tory split at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. He said: “We have a Prime Minister who has spent the last week pleading with his backbenchers, not leading for Britain.” Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said last night the Prime Minister must fight the “inflation busting” 5.2% EU budget rise. He said: “Last time the PM promised a freeze and then came out claiming that a rise was a victory. This time David Cameron must do better – he must not support another inflation busting rise in the EU budget.”
A Downing Street spokesman said: “Britain – along with France, Germany and others – will push for a more realistic proposal.”
The European heads of state hoped the outcome of last night’s summit would be positive enough to avoid a meltdown in the money markets.
Ms Merkel had even warned European countries could end up warring with each other if the euro collapses.
She told the German parliament: “No one should think that a further half century of peace and prosperity is assured. If the euro fails, Europe will fail.”
The FTSE 100 had a late rally last night to overcome losses triggered by fears that EU leaders would not reach agreement.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-unpopular-unity/story-e6frg6ux-1226178789885

[h=1]Angela Merkel mentions the war to pitch unpopular unity[/h]

• by: <cite> Roger Boyes </cite>
• From: <cite> The Times </cite>
• October 28, 2011 12:00AM

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FOR the German Chancellor, it was time to mention the war. It is always a sign of desperation when a modern politician stokes the memory of 1945 to create a parliamentary consensus.

Former chancellor Helmut Kohl once said introducing the euro was a matter of war and peace, knowing that only the fear of war could trump the fear of inflation in the German consciousness.

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http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/merkel-wins-support-after-invoking-war

[h=1]Merkel wins support after invoking war[/h]


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Thursday 27th October 2011, 12:47am
EUROZONE


PETER EDWARDS


ANGELA Merkel invoked Europe’s war-torn history as German MPs backed her plea for an increase in the size of the single currency’s rescue fund.
The German Chancellor told a packed Bundestag they must fulfil their “historic duty” by approving her negotiating role at the Brussels emergency summit, which is considering ways to boost the firepower of the €440bn (£383bn) European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
“No one should take it for granted that there will be peace and affluence in Europe in the next half century,” she said.
“The world is watching Germany and Europe to see if we are ready and able to take responsibility. If the euro fails, Europe fails.”
Supporters hailed Merkel’s victory – by 503 votes to 89 – as a boost to her authority at home and in Brussels but she remains weakened by the domestic perception of dithering during the crisis. Fifteen members of her centre-right coalition either voted against the motion or abstained yesterday.
The vote was passed with changes because German politicians do not want to see ECB loans used to prop up the EFSF. With a leveraged EFSF, the central bank will no longer need to buy bonds on the secondary market.
The options being discussed in Berlin are for the fund to offer guarantees to purchasers of new Eurozone debt or to use part of its capacity to set up an investment vehicle to attract money from sovereign wealth funds. The two proposals could also be combined.
Merkel said it was right to take the chance of higher risks which would come from leveraging the EFSF. She wants to see Greece’s debt to gross domestic product ratio cut to 120 per cent by 2020.
That would mean a 50 per cent writedown for private sector bondholders under plans put forward by the ECB, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2011-10/31/c_122218370.htm

NUS professors pse give us the Asian & American part. Hurry!

SAF BGs will start their own AWOL plans ASAP.

War is always a good thing. It's a cleansing process that need to take place on a regular basis.

Leongsam said:

War is always a good thing. It's a cleansing process that need to take place on a regular basis.

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OK I support BG Sam Leong. You lead us to fight.

Unlikely the French can defeat the British, France surrender to Germany without a fight in WW2

First thing they need to do is do NUKE Geneva ASAP since they are in trouble with money. Burn all the dirty money. Then tell LKY that SG's Swiss Island of Asia is next unless open the bank books 100% and donate surrender that money instantly including CPF.

currently, Germany & France are the biggest economic power in EUR.

With Russia seeming wanting to flex its muscle too.

But Germany is the "smart" one, they give money, France be the lackey chut force. Russia invade from East...LOL

very good leh...old foes fighting together.

it will be interesting to see what US & China will do.

But i reckon, US will face great internal pressure not to intervene as they are as well, powerless.

China will have to cope with internal unrests too...and maybe to distract everybody, invade Taiwan or pick a fight with Japan.

Singapore? Whose side to take?

red amoeba said:

Singapore? Whose side to take?

Click to expand...

whichever side that will win.

Sideswipe said:

whichever side that will win.

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France & Germany will win. And then, they may split Europe bet themselves & Russia.

I don't trust Russia, it will be a race (like WW2) to see how much land they can gobble up between Germany & Russia --> amongst E Europe.