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Greece In The Grips of Economic Depression
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
The suicide rate in Greece jumped 40% year-on-year in first five months of 2011. Dually the number of young people without a job outnumbered those with one.
This past Wednesday a 77-year-old man took his own life in the busy Syntagma Square in central Athens, the scene of several violent clashes between anti-austerity protesters and the police in recent months. Nearly one thousand people gathered for another rally Thursday in Syntagma Square, which was largely peaceful apart from a few scuffles between small groups of protesters, Athens police said.
Retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas shot himself with a handgun amid the morning rush hour, in what was apparently a protest over the financial crisis gripping the nation.
Apostolos Polyzonis 55 businessman set himself on fire outside his bank last year after falling into financial woes.
This is not just regional to Greece but Geo-economically systemic as many other European Countries own Greek Debt like Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom. Elsewhere in the world Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, United States, Chinese Taipei, Singapore also own Greeks toxic debts sold through derivatives or credit default swaps by the IMF World Bank along with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
With ever-growing unemployment, scarcer and fewer jobs available an Economic Depression has now thoroughly entrenched the Grecian people.
Economist Max Keiser of the “Keiser Report” met with Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine last June 2011 in an International Chamber of Commerce meeting while in Greece. Steve Forbes reportedly said to Keiser, “this is an amazing opportunity we are going to buy the airport and other properties for pennies on dollar.”
Greece’s economy is estimated to have shrunk by a about a fifth since 2008, when it plunged into its deepest and longest post-war recession. About 600,000 jobs, more than one in ten, have been destroyed in the process. A record 1,033,507 people were without work in December, 41 percent more than in the same month last year. The number in work dropped to a record low of 3,899,319, down 7.9 percent year-on-year.
“Despite some emergency government measures to boost employment in early 2012, it is hard to see how the upward unemployment trend can be stabilized in the first half of the year,” said Nikos Magginas, an economist at National Bank of Greece.
Pressured by its international backers under the terms of a planned European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout, the country’s second since 2010, Greece last month slashed its minimum monthly wage by about a fifth to about 580 euros ($760), gross, to encourage job growth.
Congress asks Jon Corzine “Show me the Money”
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
Last Thursday under the order of one of three Congressional Subpoena’s filed against former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine he came to sit before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee in Washington D.C. for questioning on the whereabouts of the over 1 billion dollars in vanished funds.
Corzine is trailed by reporters after testifying about the MF Global bankruptcy during a hearing before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington
A primary goal of the this first round of inquisitions were to reveal where the misplaced customers segregated accounts went. The amount missing is purported to be anywhere from 1.2 billion to almost 3 billion dollars in holdings which disappeared from the investment banking firm that was MF Global.
When Jon Corzine was asked as to where the missing funds in question may be he replied,”I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” he told the House Agriculture Committee, adding that he was “stunned” when he heard of the missing funds. United States Lawmakers were not digesting any of his clueless replies in regards to where the money had gone.
Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., said “it was the height of disbelief to think that Corzine a former senator, a former governor and the former head of Goldman Sachs knew nothing about the $1.2 billion.”
“We’ve got to get better answers from you because you were the CEO,” he said.
Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Ill., said that “people who live in the real world have “suffered dramatically from MF Global’s downfall” and he asked Corzine “whether he’d be willing to pay back those people with his own personal fortune.” Jon Corzine evasively steered away from the question saying, ” The funds will eventually be found.”
Jon Corzine said “he couldn’t account for the missing 1.2 billion in individual accounts.” “There are… many transactions that occurred in those last chaotic days,” Corzine said. “I am not aware of all those, nor do I have all the information to be able to look at all those transactions. As a consequence, it would be very hard for me to speculate as to where or why that shortfall in customer accounts took place.”
Lawmakers continually hounded Corzine as to whether or not he authorized the use of customer funds for proprietary investments. Corzine said again and again, “I had no intention of moving customer money to proprietary accounts.” “There is no intention, under any context that I can think of, that I was authorizing tapping into segregated funds,” he said.
James Kobak, a lawyer representing the trustee for the liquidation of MF Global said “The MF Global records are a mess.”
Commodities Futures Trading Commission commissioner Jill Sommers added, “I think that we can’t over-emphasize the size of the books and records of MF Global…The amount of accounts and transactions are enormous.”
Public Servants Insider Trading in Congress
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
Jon Corzine MF Global CEO and former Govenor of New Jersey alongside President Obama
In the last couple of weeks MF Global financial investment firm gets away with extorting anywhere from 1.5 to just shy of 3 billion dollars of clients segregated accounts including Gerald Celente’s account. Gerald Celente is the founder of TRENDS Research Magazine of trendsresearch.com. One of the more ethically questionable international investment banking firms JP Morgan will be absorbing the dissolving MF Global company’s LME (London Metal Exchange) holdings. The majority of the at least 1.3 billion of which they cannot locate of people’s individual accounts in silver and gold ETF’s may not even be reimbursed to the understandably agitated investors according to JP Morgan.
The House Ethics Committee stated in a memo ” Members of Congress may be liable as insider traders, whether they obtain non-public information as part of their official duties or outside of them.”
Interestingly ironic is that Jon Corzine is a recent U.S. Governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs in 1999 and then MF Global in 2010 which is now at the center of the congressional insider stock trading legal debacle. Financial regulators Monday banned the kinds of sweet insider trading deals that may have contributed to the bankruptcy of MF Global and the downfall of Jon Corzine. Today Tuesday the 6th of December 2011 The House Financial Services Committee will commence a hearing on such purported trading within the very halls of U.S. congress. A public servant of the United States main motivation should be to protect and serve the people from threats both foreign and domestic instead of lining their pockets with greenbacks. This espouses a financial collusion against not only the citizens of America but any global free market society.
A recent “60 Minutes” piece focused on financial transactions involving House Speaker John Bohner (R-OH), Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL). Each of them deny any unscrupulous actions were committed.
Just when you think Occupy Wall Street is beginning to lose gusto as cities like New York or D.C. are increasing the rhetoric against the peaceful protesters who speak out against just this kind of extortion. This is just the news needed for the 99% to fuel the couple month long grassroots activist movement further. It has been revealed JP Morgan has been at the forefront of funding New York City Police Department’s oppression of peaceful protests via doling out N.Y.P.D. holiday bonuses for law enforcement. Just like separation of Church and State there should be a separation of Investment banking firms and State.
A Latin saying that always gives me hope Veritas Vos Liberabit, The Truth Shall Set Us free.
