GREEK CRISIS: Juncker hangs Samaras out to dry

Following close study of the Athens Government’s austerity proposals, Jean-Claude Juncker, Eurogroup president, had this to say in the last hour:

“The Eurogroup took note of the progress made towards a full staff level agreement between Greece and the Troika on updated programme conditionality, including ambitious and wide-ranging measures in the areas of fiscal consolidation, structural reforms, privatisation and financial sector stabilisation. We called on the Greek authorities to solve remaining issues so as to swiftly finalise the negotiations with the Troika institutions.

The Eurogroup expects to further discuss the Greek adjustment programme at its next regular meeting on 12 November on the basis of the relevant programme documentation and seek to conclude on the programme, subject to the completion of prior actions by the Greek authorities and of national procedures in Member States, in line with the established practice.“

Basically, JCJ is batting the ball back at Samaras…..even though he knows the New Democracy leader has staked his political reputation on the Troika and FinMins accepting what Athens has achieved in terms of cuts and reforms. This is what Prime Minister Samaras said yesterday:

“Today we concluded negotiations over the measures and the budget. We did everything we could. We exhausted all the limits of pressure and time. We achieved significant improvements even in the final hour…..What would happen if the deal isn’t passed and the country is led to chaos? Such dangers must be avoided. That is the responsibility of each party and every lawmaker individually. Provided that the deal is approved and the budget is voted through, Greece will remain in the euro”.

But without that approval, the Prime Minister asserted, Greece would be forced out of the eurozone and into complete economic collapse.

Well, the agreement isn’t forthcoming. More measures are being demanded. So Antonis Samaras is left dangling over a sheer drop somewhere near the top of the Matterhorn.

It is really difficult in all this not to reach the conclusion that Berlin-am-Brussels intends quite simply to reduce Greece to the status of a socio-political basket case….the easier thereafter to neuter its sovereignty, and impose upon it economic demands that will leave the country little more than a slave satellite.

Having said that, there is absolutely no reason why the Greek Establishment has to go along with any of this bollocks. Athens has several other options – from Israel via America to Russia via Cyprus – and the EU itself knows only too well that, the last time a German delegation was in Beijing, the Chinese leadership made it abundantly clear that Grexit was an option upon which they would frown mightily.

Berlin-am-Brussels is bluffing. Alexis Tsipras seems the only leader capable of grasping this. Why can’t the others?

Connnected: Is the UK really any different to Greece in its EU dealings?

From the Archives

With the American Presidential election almost upon us, I thought it might concentrate some minds to go back some two and a half years ago to this Slogpost from June 9th 2010. It does make you wonder why on earth Barack Obama is even in the running, let alone likely to win, this contest.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Is he a jerk?

I’m told by one in a position to know that Barack Obama’s first congratulatory phone call to David Cameron had the shine taken slightly off it by a fairly repetitive reference to getting the UK’s deficit down.

I’m further told by a senior Brussels mole that when the Euro started to plummet, Obama rang quite a few people up and said, more or less, did you know that your currency is falling off a cliff and you know what, I think it might have something to do with your deficit: so you guys need to kick some ass, am I right?

Then today, Fed Chairman Benny the Benanke told the world that “the U.S. economy should grow this year and next, but the pace won’t be strong enough to fix the job market and cut the budget deficit”. And as Obama let him stay in the job he made such a pig’s ear of under Bush, we have to assume that Ben and Barack shoot the breeze now and then.

President Obama also gave Israel something of a brush-off about its soldiers boarding a ship illegally present in its own waters, a vessel the CIA had already told him was owned by mad people close to Hamas.

And for the last week, the Prezz has been displaying his cojones at BP’s expense: he’d fire the CEO, he’d make the bastards pay, he’d show these goddamn ecological criminals just how tough he could be.

In 1967, the Torrey Canyon broke up off the British coast and spilled more oil onto the UK coastline than any other disaster before or since. The boat was American built, and owned by Standard Oil of California Inc. None of we Brits over here remember Harold Wilson threatening to sue Exxon…or Esso as it then was.

Then of course, talking of Exxon, we had The Exxon Valdez, a major oil spill that took place on March 23, 1989 at Prince William Sound in Alaska, and knackered the wildlife there for two decades afterwards. Second only to the Torrey Canyon, it too was American owned and caused.

Just this year – with the US deficit at a record high and showing signs only of going up – Obama introduced a national health care system free for Americans. Astonishingly, this will add massively to the debt in 2011.

When FDR became President in 1932, he closed all the banks for 72 hours and passed eleven emergency bills in nine weeks. He got all the banking heads into the Oval Office sooner rather than later, and told them one by one “no more foreclosures, or no more Mr Nice Guy from me”.
He organised a revalued dollar and gold relationship over the first weekend of his Presidency, and by the end of 1933 had rooted out every crooked practice on Wall St.

So far, tough-guy Barack has done nothing to the banks (2009). Then last January he made some threatening remarks about the banks: “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.” In the same week last January he also called them a rude name – ‘fatcats’. He has proposed ‘extensive new curbs’ on the banks. He has proposed the banks pay the taxpayer back $117 billion. He has said he thinks senior bank executives should forego their bonuses this year.

On 21st May this year he got the Senate to pass the principle of banking reform. To back this up, the White House issued an eight-point plan. This contains zero hard detail, and lots of maybe: banks may be banned from proprietary trading; credit default swaps may be walled off from retail; and there may be new powers to break up some unspecified institutions somewhere. Somehow. Whatever.

Of the other points in the master plan, ‘there will be a powerful new consumer protection agency’ (sounds good but vague); there’ll be ‘a new multi-authority oversight of the risks’ (sounds sensible, but even more vague); and the Fed will be a super-power ‘although the precise scope of its remit remains to be defined’ (sounds, well, just vague I guess).

For the last three weeks, US money-supply has been falling at a faster rate than 1929, bank closures have been running at a higher than ever pace, and both exports and job creation are below expectations. I’d say the US is heading for double-dip and another financial crisis. And I wouldn’t be the only one saying it.

With respect for the Office, President Obama is in no position to preach; and it’s a very unwise man who talks big (and down) to the closest allies and markets he has in the world.

As a man who wanted Hillary in the White House, after Obama’s election I was pleased for Black America, but still wrote on this site, “Where’s the beef?”

Eighteen months on, it’s a question I’m still asking – along with another one: is President Obama a jerk?

See also: The Benghazi Caper….what does Obama have on his enemies to keep them so quiet?

ANALYSIS: As Europe’s progress towards silent obedience accelerates…

…our ruling class twiddles its thumbs

Now that democracy and freedoms are clearly disappearing right across Europe, I thought a brief Slog audit might be in order…purely for those who insist it is all a mountain fashioned from a mole-fart by Blogosphere fantasists.

Rewind first of all to those long-gone days when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou still thought he was an equal member of a liberal democratic union of European States. French minister Francois Baroin has just released his memoirs about this period, and the bottom line is this: in November 2011, the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Papandreou that the Greek bailout would be scrapped if he went ahead with plans to hold a referendum on the austerity package demanded by the country’s lenders. Baroin notes:

“Papandreou sweats more, jumbles his words, then collapses. Cornered, he has no choice. I attend his political death live.”

This was merely the latest in a long series of attempts by Berlin-am-Brussels to subvert the EU Constitution, and tell the People to butt out. Not long afterwards, the severely unlikeable and swivel-eyed Wolfgang Schäuble went a step too far (for now at least) by saying that, following the bailout, the Greeks couldn’t have their general election. Even Sarkozy suggested he shut up at that point: but it doesn’t alter the fact that Wild Wolfie felt able to say it….and didn’t grasp what the fuss was about once he had.

Not a single eurozone referendum has been held since that time….a period during which both Italy and Greece had their democratic processes prorogued by unelected Goldman Sachs technicians, and another of the brood took over at the European Central Bank (ECB). Mario Draghi has since purged all those Board members he finds disagreeable, and concluded the illegal subordination of Greek bondholders. And finally, Germany (and this is Berlin and Frankfurt, not Brussels) has first posited and then driven the concept of a Fiskalunion, where the Finance boss will be….the very same Herr Schäuble from the previous paragraph.

The thoughtless humiliation of George Papandreou led to the ascendancy of the incorrigibly corrupt Evangelos Venizelos, a man who has done more than any other to remove the Greek faith in liberal democratic politics. As a result, his Party PASOK has seen a collapse in support, reflected in turn by rapid growth in the more radical Left under Alexis Tsipras, and the further embedding of Golden Dawn into the country’s police and parliamentary structures.

Although until recently distracted by the ominous rise of Nazism in Wiltshire, The Guardian has at last caught on to the real thing being available to write about in Athens. It pains me to say this, but their coverage of the Golden Dawn phenomenon is spot on, well-informed and realistically expressed with a minimum of strained polemic syntax. The Slog posted about this a fortnight ago, basing the piece on direct experiences of real people both high and low in Greek society. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the European Union is now relying on Fascist police repression to get its work done – the repression being carried out by the very group that most hates the EU and all its works.

What’s obvious now, however, is that the process of shutting down discontent in the eurozone is accelerating. In the last week alone:

* Two presenters on Greek State TV were censored for criticising the torture used by police (aka Golden Dawn).

* The journalist Costas Vaxevanis was detained by police for publishing the names on the norious Lagarde list of those in the Greek elite evading tax, and his trial for invasion of privacy will begin on November 1st (Thursday this week). He faces a year in jail and a €35,000 fine.

* The Troika of Technocrats agreed a deal with Yannis Stournoras a week last Sunday, reneged on it last Friday, and the EU’s FinMin will now discuss whether Greece gets a further bailout. Objections from Samaras about the double-cross were steamrollered, and he in turn drove another flattening vehicle over the boneless form of Venizelos. Not a single Greek elected representative has been allowed any say whatsoever in the process.

* Yesterday Greek police stood accused of using one protester as a human shield against rioting citizens.

* I am receiving increasing numbers of emails from Greek sources alleging that the EU is strongarming Government statisticians into falsifying figures – especially export figures. As fiddling numbers is a national pastime, I would imagine not that strong a twist on the arm was necessary.

Berlin-am-Brussels knows exactly what conditions it’s creating here. But it remains ruthlessly focused on The Great Project, and determined to drag everyone else along even if freedom dies during the journey. Now we have Prime Minister Antonis Samaras also stripped of the negligee of dignity that was his before all this started, the Greek coalition in disarray, politics veering towards the extreme edges, and every likelihood that – at the last minute – the EU FinMins will withhold the next tranche of aid – because the IMF insists the Greeks will need a third bailout by the Spring.

There are two conclusions any empiricist must draw from this sorry business. First, the Germano-Belgian-Goldman Sachs axis – the real Troika running the EU – has no respect at all for the Law, press freedoms, dire social consequences, politically neutral police, national sovereignty or democratic rights of its Member States or their creditors. While the bullying approach is well personified by the peevish frown Frau Doktor Merkel affects, the uncaring cold-fish bureaucratic crypto-Nazism of this forced march to the Fiskal Union of silk and money is most exactly reflected in the idiotically obedient features of Herman Van Rompuy.

A number of German commentators (and threaders) find my allegedly anti-German satire unattractive, but if the cap fits, then Berlin must wear it I’m afraid. What we are witnessing here is the brazen replacement of flawed democracy with a form of insouciant technocracy that would’ve rendered Reinhard Heydrich tumescent. The Germans are leading this charge, and a coterie of Belgian fools are their collaborators.

One wonders at what ‘stage’ David Cameron would deign to grant such a thing to we his subjects. But setting that aside as yet another imponderable in Camerlot, let me offer two consequences that are far from unseeable as a result of the Westminster and Whitehall determination to ignore the popular will.

First, the British Establishment’s continuing inability to see the ten-foot writing on this wall is now getting beyond a political issue and heading towards a constitutional crisis. This is because they too are choosing to ignore every last indication from opinion polls: surveys that consistently suggest a very clear majority in the Country for departure from the European Union at the first opportunity.

It seems that the Prime Minister is perfectly happy to grant a referendum to Alex Salmond about the break-up of the United Kingdom (I don’t see any sign of anyone consulting the rest of the Union about this, by the way) but unwilling to even countenance “at this stage” a plebiscite offering the plebs – if I may apply the Mitchellian argothere – the chance to say what they obviously will: leave the EU now before it’s too late.

Second, it is very clear to those of us playing with a full sack of marbles that, when (not if) the brutal insanity of the eurocrats finally delivers a Europe of scorched earth and drowned rights, the immediate effect upon Blighty is going to be a banking and fiscal disaster of near unimaginable proportions. There will be no shortage of people at that point helping shocked and impoverished knuckle-draggers to the conclusion that bonkers EU migration and currency hubris accelerated the demise started off by mad bankers.  Those same people will also point out that the entire British Establishment went along with all of it. Not only that, they actively colluded in using our money to save these dysfunctionally greedy institutions…and banning us from having a say in EU Membership….just as they banned our ability to influence a lunatic immigration policy before that.

Words like ‘traitor’, ‘coward’ and ‘corrupt’ will start being bandied about.

From Day One, the senior UK Coalitionistas have believed that EU membership was at best an issue to be avoided where possible, and at worst – God forbid – something that could split the Tory Party. They have never seen it as a game-changer. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

Related: The very small hop from Greek disaster to British meltdown.

Smoke signals

Lines on the digging up of Yasser Arafat. Arafat’s widow has finally persuaded the French government to undertake an official exhumation of the Palestinian hero’s remains in order to establish whether or not he might have been poisoned. The word is that they are looking for traces of polonium-210, a radioactive substance found in larger than expected amounts on his clothes.

Which government now stands to be impaled with the blame for such a monstrous act…the US? Israel? I hear that the fickle finger of fate is pointing at Russia. But behind Russia, urging the Kremlin to rid them of a troublesome priest, was one or more Arab countries and organisations. Syria, Libya and Hamas appear to be the favourites. Some in the French diplomatic service, however, are asking why France is suddenly so keen to spearhead the distinterrment…or indeed, why Mrs Arafat flatly refused an autopsy at the time, but now seems dead keen on one.

The Beijing Injection. No, not the title of a new conspiracy novel, but the question as yet going largely unremarked by the running-dog capitalist lackey paper tiger media in the West. The People’s Bank of China whacked yet another record amount of cash into the Chinese financial system today – roughly $55 billion worth. The purpose of this (Beijing claimed) was “to ease a cash crunch caused by banks’ demand for funds to meet end-of-month capital requirements”. Which is fine, except that it still leaves those of us capable of spotting bollocks wondering why such banks have menstrual pains in the first place.

Over the last year, three international credit rating agencies – Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s – have issued stern warnings about China’s banking system. The Slog has, after many abortive attempts, at last secured the Mole services of a reliable Shanghai source. His view is that more loans will turn bad in the near future…but that the focus has shifted away from local Party nutters wildly overspending to under-the-counter ‘shadow banking’ nutters wildly over-lending.

But the question is, who to? Perhaps Baron Green of Chinese-Whispers could enlighten us re this one.

The Democratic Party bogus votes thing.  Quite a few US pollsters and other right-wing members of the American commentariat are tonight suggesting a ‘surprise win’ for Mitt Romney. This is based on the perfectly reasonable (and previously tested) idea of voting commitment as a measure of the likely final relationship between stated intention and actual putting the cross on the ballot paper. It was the Georgian Josef Djugashvilli (aka Stalin) who first noted that “History is made by those who turn up”, and Old Joe was rarely more correct.

Thus might my prediction of yesterday be proved comprehensively wrong. But I have my doubts – and some of them are based on what American friends (plus my own studies) recognise as the intrinsic Boss corruption within the Democratic Party. Lest there be any doubters left, I would point out that JFK won in 1960 thanks to the largely dead nature of voters in a number of Chicago districts….raised from the dead by none other than Mayor Daley.

These are some of the figures doing the rounds: 100,000 bogus votes in Ohio, 50,000 in Wisconsin, 50,000 in Colorado, and 25,000 in New Hampshire. We shall see.

 

GENERAL HAM: The Pentagon’s ‘normal succession’ line simply isn’t kosher.

WHY  THE ROGUE BENGHAZI COMPOUND GENERAL WAS FIRED

Obama’s version of the Benghazi compound raid is going unchallenged. Why and how is he getting away with it?

On Monday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released the following statement to the Washington Times: ‘The speculation that General Carter Ham is departing Africa Command (AFRICOM) due to events in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012 is absolutely false. General Ham’s departure is part of routine succession planning that has been on going since July.’ The Slog thinks this is bollocks.

The story behind this one – as advanced in the blogosphere over the last few days – is pretty straightforward. I posted last week and earlier to the effect that there were doubts about a degree of ‘Fifth Columnism’ inside the Benghazi compound on the evening in question. It now seems possible that senior military on the spot were ordered by the White House/Pentagon to take no action: but one senior officer, General Ham, said nuts to that – and was about to launch a counter-attack when two of his junior officers arrested him for disobeying an Executive Order.

On first reading of this update, I was sceptical. It had anti-Obama right-wing conspiracy theory written all over it – a feeling that seemed confirmed by the Pentagon’s rubbishing of it. But just for the hell of it, I went to one or two Federal Government sites (you’d be amazed how dumb Washington can be about some cover-ups being left, um, uncovered as it were) and bless me, this is what I found:

‘SINDELFINGEN, Germany, March 9, 2011 – The Defense Department’s newest combatant command bid farewell to its inaugural commander here today. Army Gen. William E. “Kip” Ward passed the reins of U.S. Africa Command to Army Gen. Carter F. Ham after nearly three years at the helm.‘

Ham had thus been in the job just 18 months when the Banghazi demonstration raid hit. He’d been in the job just fifteen months when the Pentagon claimed that ‘routine’ succession planning began. There is no such thing as an ‘average’ length of assignment for a four-star general, but three years is closer to the norm. 15 months isn’t at all routine.

The Obama White House would be on safer ground here if it hadn’t systemically lied from Day One about what it did or didn’t know about the Benghazi compound attack, hadn’t then tried to dump the blame on Secretary Clinton (pretty successfully as it happens), and then stuck with the ridiculous idea that it was a revenge attack in reply to an anti-Islam movie. But then, rogue generals disobeying Presidential orders are more often the subject of Stanley Kubrick films than real life. Dig a little deeper, however, and now and again you find more….while bumping into the odd mole, about his merry business of scratching at the bullsh*t.

“I am committed to working with African partners to confront violent extremists and eliminate terrorist safe havens and support groups on the continent,” growled General Ham to Africom News (a Defense Dept magazine) earlier this year. He was so committed, in fact, he was already planning to retire. Two weeks ago US defence secretary Leon Panetta told the media that Ham would indeed be retiring forthwith. In fact, four years early.

“Ham was about as ready to retire as Warren Buffet,” says my Washington source, “He got retired is what happened. The guy made everyone nervous because he actually believed in what he was doing. That never plays well in this town”.

I’ve contacted this source many times; as usual, his asessment checks out. General Carter Ham is a hardline anti-extremist God Bless America gung-ho soldier. On June 25th this year, he told Defense News, “there are indications extremist organisations are seeking to coordinate and synchronize their efforts…. to establish a cooperative effort amongst the three most violent organizations, and I think that’s a real problem for us, and for Africa’s security in general. Al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram may be sharing funds, training and explosive materials. There very truly are those who wish to undermine the formation of [a post-Gadaffi Libyan] government,” he said. “And again, we see some worrying indicators that al-Qaida and others are seeking to establish a presence in Libya.”

Significantly, Ham talked about wanting “to map out what the U.S. assistance might be for Libya well into the future”. But of course, this is now revealed by the Pentagon as a cunning cover-story: clearly what good ol’ boy Carter really wanted to do was draw up a chair to some nice warm fire somewhere and dictate his memoirs.

On announcing the General’s retirement, Panetta said “The nation is deeply grateful for his outstanding service”, which is presumably why he abruptly pensioned the guy off….in favour of a bloke who is not at all at home with the media. My my, fancy that.

Ham’s successor David M. Rodriguez is also made of four-star stuff: but according to my Washington contact, “not media savvy at all. I think this is why he got passed over for the top job in Afghanistan. He’s only interested in soldiering, not selling.”

Equally clear, however, is that running Africom hadn’t been anywhere in his ‘planned succession’ intentions. For in July last year, he was sent back to Washington and a desk job. So after just eleven months of doing this, he is ‘routinely’ chosen to succeed a General – one who may well think, in private, that the President is a traitor.

It all smells, does it not? But here’s the rub: Romney should be all over this like a rash, yet he isn’t. Why?

It’s the same riddle that surrounds Hillary Clinton’s abrupt capitulation nine days ago on the issue of ‘responsibility’ for the US Amassador Steven’s death. In fact, that surrender to Obama gets curiouser and curiouser in the light of new evidence emerging over the last few days. Four days ago, Fox News (ok, ok, I know, suspect source – but hold your fire)  asserted that ‘Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before it was attacked where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Steven, were murdered by Al-Qaeda, but President Obama denied the request’.

 Best-selling author Ed Klein said the Clintons’ legal counsel had informed him of this information. Klein also said that  former President Bill Clinton has been urging his wife to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya – which would almost certainly result in Obama losing the election due next Wednesday.

Fox News or not, the story of Obama’s apparent betrayal of his Amabassador continues to gain traction. CIA forces in the compound apparently twice requested permission to help its embattled occupants, and were twice refused.

So, here we have Generals disobeying orders, the White House lying about everything, the Pentagon denying permission for aid to dying Americans, and Big Beast Democrats squabbling amonst themselves…but Mitt Romney – desperately in need of more help if he is to pull off an Election upset – sits on its hands.

Says The Slog’s source in Washington: “You have to remember that privately, Romney is an isolationist…especially when it comes to a deeper involvement in stopping the Islamisation of Africa. He’s more for rattling the sabre than using it to kill anyone. And he doesn’t think we should do anything beyond protecting energy supplies in North Africa. As much as he thinks about this stuff at all, I’m told he thinks that Boko Haram in Black Africa is a job for the Chinese.”

I happen to agree with Romney on that last point, in which case he just might be smarter than I thought. But American voter memories are short (and hazy about geography beyond the Atlantic). I think Obama’s challenger could’ve weighed in much more heavily on something as specific as one act of blatant Presidential treachery.

There’s more yet to all of this, primarily I suspect because it isn’t a conspiracy theory: the Obama side has clearly found something with which to shut up all the major antagonists – something so powerful that it’s quite happy to be loose about stopping a whole range of divergent stories from leaking out. There is no conspiracy here, only a riddle: what is the nuclear option that the Obama White House threatened to use?

See also: Death of an Ambassador

 

Cameronolopulous and Milibandakis on the parthenon to doom

I’ve been reading something sent to me by a regular Slogger yesterday. As a summation of Britain’s political dysfunction, it’s hard to beat. See what you think….

‘Hubris is the word used to describe when someone’s extreme arrogance leads to them losing touch with the world around them. An increasingly arrogant and out of touch political system and a population appeased by apparent prosperity…Cheap money papered over the cracks, the results of years of political, economic and institutional failure.

Socialists and Conservatives alternated in power. The two-party system that had dominated, and enjoyed roughly 80 percent of the vote in elections, engaged in a longstanding exchange of favours that involved public sector jobs and contracts being handed to party supporters. These political parties had become the main channels through which business was conducted. Their cronyism stretched its tentacles into the judiciary, the police, the armed forces and most other significant institutions.

Efforts to introduce structural reforms, such as an overhaul of the pension system, were repeatedly abandoned by politicians unwilling to confront the monsters they’d created.

Worse still, extra income was largely going towards boosting consumption.  The housing market also enjoyed a boom. To compound the problem, more money was being spent on imported goods….’

It’s all there: the arrogance of Blair, Brown and Cameron; the complete misfit between the political world and the real one; the appeasement of a banking system lending without restraint; the inflexible political duopoly, and its turn by turn infection of (and by) police, media and the Law; resistance on the Left to the slaughter of sacred cows; resistance on the Right to economic restructuring designed to boost exports; and the credit-card fest that exacerbated the problem by hoovering up hi-tech imports.

It is, in fact, a masterly summary. Of Greece’s demise. All the above extracts are from a speech delivered to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently by Nick Malkoutzis. An address entitled The Flight of Icarus, its primary theme is the lunacy of Greece being in the eurozone – and being granted entrance in the first place – in the light of recent Greek history. But replace that with ‘the lunacy of Britain staying in the EU’, and it would still be a perfect description of Britain’s post-war decline at the hands of corrupt power freaks dazzled by the false promises of The Common Market.

Hahahahahahahaaaa, but we are not Greece. Correct. We are in a far, far worse position than the Greeks:

1. There will be nobody to bail us out.

2. We have a population in terms of size and expectation that is a much bigger burden than Greece’s.

3. Our agricultural self-sufficiency and exports are minimal compared to that of Athens.

4. The Greek national debt is €300.8 billion, ours is almost six times bigger – at £1.8 trillion, not including public sector pension liabilities.

5. The Greeks have had austerity imposed upon them. It might not be enough for the headcases of Berlin-am-Brussels, but it is massive compared to our piddling efforts.

6. The Greek banking system is a basket case of known quantity. The British banking system is a mental case of unknown dimensions operating on a global scale second only to the US and China.

An eerie silence has settled upon EC-Athens-Troika communications over the last 24 hours. This is, I’m sure, to do with stalling until the US election is over and done with. Once the Americans have decided between Butterfingers and Sticky Fingers, the brakes will be off.

Hands up all those who think it will be worse for the Greeks than for us.

ANALYSIS: Why Obama is going to win

Mr Wiseass is going back to Washington

In a previous existence, I was a market researcher, and at University I studied psephology for a while. I’ve looked very hard at the US election, and if nothing changes between now and polling day, the Black Dude is going to win.

I will fess up here and now to the fact that I have thought Obama was a one-term no hoper since 2010. Thing was, I sort of expected the Republicans might come up with something better than Dick Martin as their candidate. Dick was the dumb one in Rowan and Martin’s laugh-in (left, on the right). He is also dead. You can see what I mean.

For around forty minutes since he decided to run, Mr Romney actually sounded like he might have the brains and balls to win…as opposed to having the two things the wrong way round anatomically. But that was it: Obama was rattled, and pulled himself together. Now – short of a major event to blow him off course – he is going to get the 270 electoral votes he needs.

But only just. For the first time since 1888*, the loser might actually win the popular vote. But if you tot up the Electoral College certs, and then drill down into the ‘swing’ States, Obama would still win.

Romney is showing very well in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina; but he must bag Ohio’s 18 electoral votes as well. Or rather, if he doesn’t, he needs to win all the remaining close calls. I doubt if he’s going to do that. Iowa and Wisconsin, for example, are moving briskly towards the President.

So what’s the call in Ohio? Five days ago, a poll showed the two candidates on 48% each, with a tiny 3% undecided. But last night, a new survey showed 49-48 for Obama. One can’t know for sure, but the swing to Obama was 3 points, suggesting that things are trending his way. If he wins Ohio, it’s an uphill struggle for Romney. Mitt knows this, and is now appealing directly to those who voted for Hillary Clinton there in the 2008 Primaries. He is also known to have money in his back pocket for a last-minute ad-blitz.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that nothing could stop Obama and hand the advantage to his challenger. Were today’s storm to hit New York and show the President to have been woefully unprepared, it might be enough to make a last-minute difference. If today’s FinMin meeting in Brussels goes badly for Greece (and it looks like it will) then financial contagion fears could push some folks Romney’s way as being the more savvy candidate to deal with it. And this coming Friday, there are some employment numbers about to break.

But for me, none of these is likely to swing enough votes away from Obama. He has already made a point of taking Storm Sandy seriously. Whatever happens in the EU this week, there’s unlikely to be a panic before November 6^th. As for the employment figures, their interpretation has been a complete travesty for over a year now: one more bit of hocus-pocus is unlikely to make any difference. Ironically, even bad figures might work for Obama: Romney’s history is more one of destroying employment rather than creating it.

One of Romney’s greatest credibility problems throughout the campaign, in fact, has been the leaden-footedness of his advisers. If he does lose this election, it will be because tentative advice took away his one potential claim: that he understands the very markets that are likely to do for America before too long. He should’ve flayed the Labor Department’s numbers alive for the dishonest confection they so obviously are, been prepared to talk tough on the banks, shown Obama up for the economics illiterate he is, and been unafraid of pointing at the eurostorm coming America’s way.

He was never going to do any of those, because campaign pros always argue against them….and he would have found it hard to raise funds if he knocked the interests he so clearly represents. Their mantra remains “the markets will sort everything out”. They won’t, but Romney is A Believer…in that, if nothing else.

As I said two months ago, this has been a fight between Mr Butterfingers and Mr Stickyfingers. It’s just a shame that there seems to be no place in democratic politics any more for Mr Openhanded.

 ————————————————————-

* Although many sources still insist that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, this is untrue: after the recount, Bush was narrowly ahead.

GREEK CRISIS: Now PASOK joins Souvelis in withdrawing Coalition support

Venizelos…squeezing out of the door

 Yesterday afternoon Pasok leaders told Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras that they will join the Souvelis-led Democratic Left Party in refusing to support any law giving way to the Troika’s demands for the repeal of labour laws, the marriage allowance, and government job cuts. I am also told that collective bargaining laws and an open MP veto of certain privatisations remain as sticking points.

Over the weekend, the Thursday IMF presentation to junior finance ministers was re-happened (in that the Commission stopped denying its existence). Somewhere along the line, however, there has been a degree of confusion about what the IMF would say – Antonis Samaras still claims he thought the presentation would be positive – and it remains obvious that Berlin and Draghi decided, during Tuesday, that they didn’t buy into the agreement.

“I think what happened was that the speed of events gave Berlin the jitters,” says one reliable source, “What’s not entirely clear is why that was”.

Other sources are clear about the why:

“The Troika was all smiles Sunday, but then went away and wrote up something completely different. What they wanted was for the progress to stall. This is all about waiting until after Obama gets re-elected before chucking Greece out of the eurozone”, said another.

I have to say, this theory doesn’t work for me: surely, if stalling was the game, you’d write an equivocal report now, and then a more damning one after November 6^th? Also -White House pressure or not – both Berlin and the ECB would greatly prefer a deal with Greece to a messy exit while we still have the Spanish crisis on our hands.

Either way – as I noted last Friday – within 24 hours Samaras may well lack the Parliamentary mandate to do any deal, good or bad. Brussels is losing control of this one, and I cannot see an easy solution to it.

Stay tuned.

At the End of the Day

The ampersands of thyme

Foreigners often ask me what it takes to look and sound socially smart in Britain: “What are the vital signs?” a Dutch lady asked me many years ago. I replied that genuinely upmarket Brits often display very few vitals signs at all, and that this probably had something to do with inbreeding. Needless to say, she had no idea what I was talking about: English remains an infuriatingly subtle and treacherous language for the outsider.

The very fact that they ask me such a question suggests they might be starting at the wrong end of the stick. I was born and brought up in a suburb of Manchester called Prestwich, where most people wanted to be socially accepted, but almost all of them were entirely unacceptable….and very often unexceptional with it.

I do however have some qualifications for answering the question, and the main one is that I was a marketing and advertising researcher and brand planner for three decades. If you take the preceding words from ‘marketing’ to ‘planner’ there, and simply replace them with ‘drunk’, you’d have a fair summary of what most of those thirty years were about, but in between lunch with creative people and dinner with clients, I did gain some insights into what positions a person as ‘socially smart’ in Britain.

“That sort of thing really doesn’t matter very much any more,” a deluded young man said to me last week. He didn’t seem to notice much as I recited stats about Oxbridge, Eton and hyphenated names in the upper echelons of politics and the Civil Service, but then I’ve noticed that sort of thing in young people before. That’s to say, I recognise it largely because it is a near-perfect reflection of what I was like at their age. Youth is only over when we stop equating what should be with what is and always has been. Some people have the secret of eternal youth in this respect, and it is astonishing how many of them come from a privileged background. Names like Harriet Harman, Tony Benn, and Nick Clegg spring to mind. Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and George Osborne often strike me as folks who skipped youth entirely, but therein lies another story for another day.

Having said all that, the names in that Hopeless Half-dozen have one thing in common: they may be clueless about how to behave in an ethical sense, but when it comes to being accepted in society, they know every last rule – and quickly recognise all the signals.

There are two particularly important must-haves in the lexicon of British social status, and they involve individuals and company brands respectively. First, it is vital to spell your name in a silly way. And second, the company simply must have two names in it – with an ampersand between them. Thus, a company called Ffetchlynge & Boliscroak stands every chance of success; but anyone hoping for an upmarket audience is getting off on the wrong foot by calling a gastropub venture Potter’s Bar.

Puns are a very bad idea when trying to invent a smart-sounding company, because everyone with any style in the UK thinks the practice quintessentially naff. Suburban and provincial hairdressers seem however unable to resist this temptation, and thus one finds Making Waves, On the Fringes, Final Cut, Headcases, Scissor Kicks and every tedious variation imaginable in most shopping precincts erected between 1960 and 1979. The only way to pun and get away with it is to pull off a melange of double-joke (satirising the preceding names) and witty use once again of the vital ampersand.

Thus one might try Shaughtbacke & Sydes or possibly Crewcutte & Orloff, but definitely not Wosh, Harecut & Blowave. There is a very fine line between wit and halfwit, and it is important at all times to be on the correct side of it.

If you are starting off on the quest to be smart – but lack the right sort of name – there is no need to despair. Changing the monniker by deed-poll is relatively easy these days, and there is a failsafe method for the choice of name. Simply adopt your middle name, and then suffix it with the name of your street. Aspirant lower middle-class mid-twentieth century parents always gave their children posh middle-names, as they lacked the self-assurance to use them as the main one; and all Victorian builders liked to attract buyers by giving the streets they knocked up a sense of elegance.

Thus my name is John Ward, which has about it the unmistakeable ring of solid yeomanry, but nothing more. Whereas adding my London street address to my middle name produces Anthony Narbonne. This is, without doubt, the sort of name you’d expect to see on the guest list of a premier-league society wedding.

Thus armed, I could move on to being in trade (a regrettable but necessary state for the contemporary nob) without any expectation of being asked to use the tradesman’s entrance, and that’s enough Oscar Wilde rent-boy sniggers thank you very much.

The following is a list of acceptable things to make and services to provide for those aspiring to the aristocratic rather than plutocratic image in the commercial space:

Furniture, clothing, eccentric inventions, cricket gear, tinned confit, curtains, blinds, crockery, bespoke kitchens, interior decor, shotguns, riding accoutrements, marmalade, fishing tackle, historic restoration, and – of course – fine wine and/or Scotch Whisky.

All you require now is the invention of a name either side of the ampersand suggesting that you first started up at some point before 1750 – or, for American readers, you had the Big Idea while biting into a worm-ridden biscuit during the voyage of the Mayflower.

Take my example from above of ‘Narbonne’. Narbonne is the name of a town in Abroad, and suitably redolent of Anglo-French aristocracy. At the peak of its imperial power, France tended to side with the Scots in their myriad attempts to undo the hated English, so the ideal combo here to provide the correct credigree* would be an auld alliance name. It just so happens that my first wife was descended from same, and thus born with the surname Butchart.

Butchart & Narbonne. Gunsmiths. Perfect.

In truth, the silly name-spelling plus ampersand strategy is obviously the answer to Britain’s export problem: as we have no future to speak of, the only option left open to us is the assiduous merchandising of an idealised past. I will therefore close this primer on the Class System by offering up some erroneous provenance dating from 2012. I would venture to suggest that, in the light of these confections, Abercrombie & Fitch are left sounding suspiciously arriviste.

Blakeley & Faraday. Purveyors of discreet lighting

Couper & Bynge. Wine merchants of distinction

Turpin & Kinnear. Master carpenters

Gainsborough & Nickleby Formalwear

Wimborne & Byckersdike. Angling supplies

Canteringge & Medweigh. Provisions & Preserves

Finally, I offer the following as the ultimate expression of either f**k-you confidence, or brainless indiscretion:

* On starting my own advertising agency Weinreich Walsh Ward in 1982, I suggested the term ‘credigree’ as the ultimate aim of every brand: credible pedigree. Clients coming to sample our wares generally reacted by saying it sounded like Sunday breakfast in a stately home.

 

The Sunday Splash

Ahergahergahergagerga…now then now then now then guys n gals it’s Jimmy Savile yet again with an’ another terrific edition of Crop of the Gropes ahegaahergaherga….

It’s a very light news day today, which leaves the Sundays free yet again to slobber all over the defrocked, unsainted, and ex-headstoned Sir James Savile OBE. This won’t be a popular view I know, but the coverage is beginning to disgust me even more than the hypocrisy (‘Esther Rantzen hands over dossier on top Beeb perverts’) and almost as much the original crimes. Savile – it seems highly likely – was a pyscho perv, and now he’s dead. That’s it. Now let’s move on. Like, maybe, find some of the hundreds of live ones still left?

But no. Top of the Cops as always is the Murdoch axis of peeping toms, which has a picture of Freddie Starr in 1974 doing an impression of Sir Jimmy. This is presented as prima facie evidence that later in the show, Starr allegedly groped a 14 year old girl. In the marginally more serious Sunday Times, meanwhile, the main headline growls ‘Savile trail leads to BBC boss’s office’, claiming that infamous arm-biter Mark Thompson was alerted several times to Savile’s Travels around the bodies of the young and innocent. No I wasn’t actually (says Thompson) but – covering all the bases – Roop’s vendetta continues on the inside pages with ‘Patten is fiddling while the BBC burns’. What, kiddy-fiddling you mean, fnar fnar?

People need to take a break from gorging on this story, and wake up to the utterly undeserved second chance it is giving to Newscorp, in its long-running bid to bribe, cajole and threaten its way into replacing the BBC. I sense that Murdoch won’t let go re this one, which is why The Slog is giving serious consideration over the next few days to running a Find the Sky Paedo competition. Everyone knows it’s one of three blokes regularly onscreen. So beware, o Digger Slimeball: We are Watching You. Just like your lawyers are reading this.

And so we say f**k off to Murdochania, and hello once again to the long-running Sarklays of Bark, the continuing sitcom about two fat twins who pay no tax, instead choosing to pay as many pipers as possible. It truly is a terrible edition this morning. There is, it headlines, a ‘Fight to save a third of Britain’s trees from killer fungus’ (which almost all the other papers have too), while  ‘Claims emerge Alps murder victim may have had access to part of Saddam Hussein’s fortune’ (also near-ubiquitous along the Street of Blame), and ‘Street lights turned off in their thousands to meet carbon emission targets’ is almost identical to the line in two other titles.

Over at The Observer meanwhile, Forest Ash disease takes deadly hold – yes, and it shows – while Max Clifford exclusively reveals that ‘celebrities are frightened about these paedophile revelations’. Mr Clifford does of course have the exclusive UK franchise rights to Keep Calm and Pay me Money, so he would say that. If only he were a paedophile, my cup would run over and spill everywhere….hopefully on this inflated, but initially enticing, piece of nonsense from the Guardian Group’s Sunday fare:

Jimmy Savile: BBC chief accused of misleading MPs

Blimey, you mean Jimmy Savile has come back as a hack and reported that Chris Patten lied to a Parliamentary enquiry? Er…no: ‘David Jordan told committee he had issued inaccurate statements concerning investigation’. David Who? And at the end of para three, ‘….he did so before he had been told about the true nature of the programme by its producer, Meirion Jones.’

Right. So a bloke we’ve never heard of told an enquiry what he knew. Bugger me. Sorry, perhaps that’s an unwise request to make these days…at least, not until Britain’s press media have got to the bottom of things. Sorry, sorry. What I mean is, let’s not to come to…sorry, sorry. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg.

Meawhile, in the real world where people die, there is only scant coverage of potentially one of the worst storms in US  history careering inexorably towards the north-eastern seaboard.

This is the little blighter on the left of your screen here, about to head north from the Bahamas. You wouldn’t know to look at it, but the so-called ‘Behemoth’ storm has had a sex-change, from Irene to Sandy. If it turns a little limp-wristed in the end, perhaps they’ll change the name again to Jules. Apologies to all foreign readers and young persons for that neolithic reference to the antics on Round the Horne during 1968.

Limp is, however, what Sandy is unlikely to be. But fear not America, because the Times of India reports that ‘President Obama is monitoring the storm’. This is more than you can say for the Sunday Express, which doesn’t mention the barnstorming behemoth anywhere, but does have no fewer than six separate Jimmy Savile shagged my hamster stories. It’s lead proclaims that ‘THE BBC was under ­pressure last night to increase the cash given to sex-abuse charities by Children In Need after Jimmy Savile’s crimes sparked myriad calls from victims.’ For what it’s worth, I rang the Beeb and they claim not to know WTF the story is on about. Their version is supported by the fact that thus far 0 (as in zero, no) readers have bothered to Have Their Say at the piece.

There is one piece of genuine news this morning, and as often happens these days, it’s in the Independent on Sunday. It is, of course, about Hackgate.

It seems that worried Trinity Mirror investors have produced a coruscating dossier accusing six hacks of, er, hacking – and that the practice was ‘on a “systematic” scale inside the company’s national titles’. The report says journalists on the Daily Mirror and People newspapers regularly accessed private mobile phone voicemails to obtain major stories, but the thing that makes this a really good story is the word ‘systematic’.

A few weeks back I posted briefly about the tricky situation faced by Uncle Rupert and his depraved Elves, in that Newscorp’s liability insurers have fired a shot across Murdoch’s bows, which is having an adverse effect on Murdoch’s bowels. The Sun headline is this: ‘Insurance giant warns Roop that proof of systematic hacking will nullify insurance policy’.

It’s great when two Evil Powers meet, innit? We all hate insurance companies and Newscorp, so one bombing the other is like a civil war where your hopes of mutually assured destruction at last stand a chance of being realised in full. But leaving that consideration aside, this is top-notch journalism from the IoS: the sting is in this tailpiece: ‘After being notified that they featured in the private dossier, the journalists said that if any of them are charged, they plan to cite “common practice” as their defence.’

So the insurers would drop the same bomb on Trinity. And that would probably bankrupt the Mirror Group. Major hat-tip here to reporter Margareta Pagano. Nice to see a Romping Arse feature shot in the piece, too: the net is closing, Piers old top: be very afraid.

OIL KILLING: Are we about to witness an era of gang warfare in energy?

News blackout on Belgian shooting can’t disguise signs of assassination

Hazy….the facts surrounding mob-style killing of Nick Mockford (left)

I wonder how many people reading the rapidly petering-out Belgian oil ‘hit’ story realise that the incident took place fifteen days ago. Although Belgian police insist that this is normal, it isn’t. That is, news blackouts about eurodisaster may be normal, but a ban on news about this serious a hit is about as abnormal as they come.

Death scene…the Da Marcello restaurant in suburban Brussels

Thus far, a near-Stepford Wife headline has appeared almost everywhere along the lines of ‘A British oil executive gunned down in Brussels could have been the victim of a targeted assassination’.

Sorry to be obvious here, but WTF else does anyone think it might have been….a deranged waiter who thought Mockford’s derisory tip was the last straw in a life going bad?

“It could’ve been a random mugging and car-jacking attempt,” Belgian police told a prominent UK news agency yesterday. As the two assassins ran away like the clappers in bike gear carrying crash helmets – having poured four shots into the bloke – I’m scoring this minus 53 on a probability scale of ten. Yesterday, Nick’s employer Exxon came out with this belter attempting to beat that with a score of minus 97:

“We were shocked by the tragic death of Nick Mockford, one of our employees a fortnight ago in Brussels. Mr Mockford was a department manager at our office close to Brussels, but we have no indication that the incident was work-related.”

Well hell, that’s the way it is in Brussels – it’s the Wild West out there guys, Abilene has nothing on your eurocrat suburb. Here are some equally relevant clues:

This is Nick Mockford, Aussie-rules star from Melbourne Australia. Nick is half the Belgian victim’s age, not entirely caucasian, 18,000 miles from the slaying, and still alive. Belgian police have ruled him out of their enquiries at this stage.

Should we all try and get real here? A senior Exxon executive goes out for dinner with his wife in a town where the most dangerous thing about the place is that it smells of chips. On leaving – and let’s be clear about this – he was shot to death by two blokes who had clearly taken the trouble to work out what he was doing there, and waited for him to exit the eaterie. They ran off. A news blackout was then declared for fully 240 hours. Are any of us (even people like me who dismiss 90+% of all known conspiracy theories) expected to believe that, on closer examination, this appears to have been an attempt to steal the guy’s company car? I sincerely hope not, as otherwise all hope for the human species has left the theatre.

Nichlas Mockford wasn’t just some two-bit ‘departmental manager’. He was the Head of Marketing for interim technologies for Exxon. For interim technologies read ‘Green=alternatives to oil=end of Texas, Middle East, East Med undersea’…..and indeed any region whose current or future wealth might be based on black gold. For example, Russia.

Or, for interim technologies read ‘Green=eco-warriors seeing him as an ‘earth-traitor’=possibly persons of Kiwi/Hard Left/libertarian persuasion’.

The escaping motor-cyclists so clearly hell-bent on nicking Mr Mockford’s car were described by witnesses as “looking East European”.

So there we have it. I’m hoping that tomorrow’s (Sunday) papers have some intriguing leads re this one, otherwise I’d be inclined to write off MSM journalism for good.

Earlier at The Slog: Why shiny gold is to have and to hold

THE SATURDAY ESSAY: For as long as it’s legal, gold is to have and to hold.

During the last 21 days the gold price has fallen around 7%, with only two short-term mini-rallies along the way.  There was another brief one Thursday and Friday last week, but this first morning of the weekend, as I write, the precious metal is just holding above the $1700 line.

Once again, with the advent of crafty Draghi predictions and more QE from Bernanke – and in the absence of any more certain data to go on – gold is heading down towards another low test.

But there is nothing sacrosanct about lows or highs: a single cataclysmic event can overwhelm every preconception to produce new parameters.

One of these took place yesterday, but bad stuff often slips under the Friday Not Interested net. As the smart folks watched the Greek chances of getting their next bailout shoot down a snake, the gold price shot from $1704 to $1717 – no doubt directionalised by early-morning New York opinion leaders. They then sold bigtime during mid-afternoon, leaving the suckers more or less back where they were the day before.

Gold is an athlete warming up off the track at the moment. The questions for investors now are, as the price pulls back, (a) at what point would the time be right to buy in, and (b) this time – if and when it sets off upwards again – will it break through the $1800 barrier – a very important psychological number for the market – and quickly onto, say, $1850?

This doesn’t represent financial advice on my part, merely commonsense observations. They are as follows:

1. Gold is a manipulated market, and has been for years.  So caveat emptor – although some forces are greater than central banks and Fort Knox. However, if the real, ‘natural’ price of gold starts to rise beyond a given rate, the US will sell bigtime (as they did in the 2007-2009 period) QE will be increased to keep stock prices up and thus discourage mega-piling into gold, and other central banks will sell too.

2. Nerves are more strained today than they were in the summer. If the price pulls back to $1680 this time, I will take that as a buy signal. Gold rises, generally speaking, on bad currency and stock market news, seasonal factors – and, more recently, the stockpiling power of China. Bad news is being held off until after November 6th, the European common currency project is in deep trouble, the Pound could soon be hit by more evidence of bank toxicity, and in the coming months Indian demand will rise as a reflection of religious decoration.

3. At some point, gold will shoot way beyond $1850, way beyond £2000, and quite possibly up to £4000. As always, it all depends on how bad the news is, whether central bankers have the volume selling spine to stop (or slow down) anything beyond £2000, and what China does. So the task at this point is to assess both the depth of politico-economic doo-doo and timescales involved. As I’ve opined before, this is something of a mug’s game….but it does no harm to be aware of the possibilities.

AgAgAgAgAgAgAgAg

Although there is less central control now, China is getting smarter about gold purchase: she buys slowly and in smallish quantities – and under disguised identities at times. Occasionally, a short shock is delivered by buying nothing. The obvious reason: don’t drive up the price of your favoured investment too much. At the moment, China is probably the second or third biggest buyer of gold, and has a rapidly expanding access to locally mined supplies – 84% in the last four years alone.

Outside China, sovereign wealth funds are also changing the rules - a Slogpost from early September looked at them going direct to the miners to ensure continuity of supply.

The scope for China to build on its gold mountain is absolutely enormous, the Beijing regime having unofficially more or less given up on America solving its debt problems. If China is buying and mining lots of something – but demand for it still exceeds supply in a rapidly enriching Asia – the only way for the price to go in the foreseeable future is sharply up.

The eurozone is melting down pretty much as advertised, with the course of fiat currency compromise being directed by Mario Draghi at the ECB. Germany must either leave, or accept it. Either way, the euro will be inordinately expensive to retain in its current form – and a write-off if Berlin does leave the currency.

Nobody is entirely sure, for example, where the Greek ‘Deal or No Deal’ game show is going. But while I find it ominous that Berlin is once again this week indulging in silly spin-games to appease its domestic voters, the reality (on my spread-sheet at least) is that it will need another bailout by the Spring – locked EU escrow accounts or not.

The zone’s banks (and at least five sovereign States) have insoluble debt problems exacerbated by insanely EU-created austerity. France is already infected by Greece, and almost certain to join the debt basket-cases during 2013. Germany has enormous debts too, but currently enjoys a healthy trade balance and a low cost of debt maintenance: yet it too faces a terrifying bank exposure to Spain.

When the solids hit the fan on all this, US banks will in turn find themselves in deep trouble…not least because a good 60% of the major Wall Street institutions are massively over-leveraged, unpredictably hedged, and hugely exposed to ezone debt. The same is true of UK banks.

Finally, we mustn’t neglect the SE Med to Middle East axis. Iran is in big economic trouble, the Syrian conflict is (predictably) leaking all over the place, Israel remains bellicose about taking out Iran’s nuclear capability, and Russian influence in Cyprus is increasing rapidly. The Americans and Europeans want certainty of oil supply until shale gas gets bigger, whereas the Russians would love to produce massive supply interruptions to escalate the value of their domestic product. The Middle East is usually on tilt to some degree, but conflicting interests tend to produce bigger armed conflicts.

In short, the portents are terrible for the world, but have probably never been better for gold. We just don’t know when the portents will turn into sh*t-filled fans.

Further, the human capacity for optimism exceeds even the Chinese appetite for gold. And (I’m sure) to keep panic under control while depressing the gold price, the Chinese themselves are playing on this denial.

On Thursday, China’s Ministry of Industry & Information Technology gave an upbeat forecast for Q4, pointing to improving PMI, monthly increases in output growth, and a rise in power generation to argue its case. I regard this as hype – PM indices are a measure of opinion not orders, and the weakness in China’s overseas markets, rising costs, financing strains and profit margins are as real as ever.

However, mugs everywhere believe this guff – or are directionalised by crooks into believing it’s reflected in market movements. So the exact point at which panic will overwhelm control remains an enigma.

There is one thing, and one thing only, that could spoil the party for the nimble-footed: if manipulative control turns into a ‘global’ ban on private ownership and selling for investment purposes. As The Slog revealed yesterday (to an accepting and largely unsurprised world) such a possibility is already being given serious consideration by the ECB’s Hobgoblins.

But the nature of Draghi’s examination of gold extends beyond control: it looks like the most powerful financial strategist in Europe is considering the positive application of this metal to sovereign debt policy. Smart commentators like Gillian Tett have been writing about this for a while now, and yesterday I posted about the (perhaps not coincidental) issue of Bundestag gold-auditing in Germany – plus Berlin’s decision to repatriate a lot of gold held by the US Federal Reserve.

I have one simple observation to offer here. Logically, if the eurozone turned to offering a guaranteed and allocated gold-backing for sovereign debt products – and other global regions took up the idea – then we’re going to need more gold. The ECB’s hope, I’d imagine, is that EU citizens would sell him what gold they have if trading in it were about to become illegal. Knowing the skullduggery of Signor Draghi (and the psyche of most mainland Europeans at the minute) my instinct is that the ECB is going to need quite a lot more bullion than it has at the moment….and a lot of EU citizens are also going to hoard it in everything from bedknobs to the Caymans.

AgAgAgAgAgAgAgAg

A large investment conundrum is thus taking shape here: most central bankers are no less crooked than any other form of banking lowlife. If the intention is to stockpile gold, then in their amoral decision system it would make total sense to manipulate the price down during the quietly-piling-up period.

On the other hand, once the pile is big enough, their desire will be to inflate gold’s value on the back of using it to guarantee paper debt. It is, after all, a First Rule of the governing elite that what makes them richer is fairly pointless if it doesn’t make us poorer.

Further, nobody knows – not even Supermario himself – what the start-point and timescales are for this.

And finally, if the eurozone were to lead the way with gold-backed debt – and be seen to be successful – then the debtor world outside Europe would pile in with a similar approach. (Thanks to the Scottish Cyclops, we here in Britain don’t have much gold left…..and even less money with which to buy it. That’s not important right now, but it is catastrophically important for anyone holding Sterling).

However, while the nature of how and when remains very blurred at the edges in relation to all this, some overriding factors cannot – in my humble, private and not professionally offered opinion – be ignored or altered:

i. China is mining and buying gold – and will continue to do so on the sound bases that it represents geopolitical power in general, and a hedge against Western fiat currency failure in particular.

ii. South Africa will resume its output soon enough…and be selling it to more people in more unusual ways than ever before.

iii. The current price of gold is in a holding-to-falling posture.

iv. While in the short to medium term it will probably be in Western sovereign debtor and Chinese interests to keep the lid on gold prices, in the longer term it won’t.

v. The window of opportunity for citizen gold investors may well close at some point in the next three to four years.

vi. The Middle East is unstable and holds the potential to interrupt energy supplies. Sovereign wealth funds in the region would I suspect pile into precious metals at the first major signs of that happening.

vii. Western stock markets are being held up by an injudicious mixture of QE and hope. These are weapons of finite effectiveness…and awareness of that reality will become mainstream to the point of near-unanimity in the next twelve months. One a massive flight to safety gets under way, if sovereign States keep selling gold to stem the rush, then the exit route of backing debt with gold will be cut off for them. The rush will become unstoppable at some point.

viii. Western fiat currencies face a future in which  – with the probable exception of the Swiss Franc – their value could do anything from decrease markedly to disappear.

We are already seeing the top-end ‘glitz bricks’ property sector zooming upwards in price. For me, once gold dips under $1680, that’s a signal to buy and keep all the way until the purchasing door is slammed shut. What you do is up to you – my own opinions are free and not offered in any shape or form as advice, he said – to provide a final legal cover for his backside.

Enjoy the weekend.