Category: Aggregated

In a long interview with CNBC-TV, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that his government will oppose a bail-in with all its force. In his broken English, Renzi said, “Italy is totally fighting for avoid bail-in because also soft bail-in could be a disaster for the credibility and for the confidence.” Renzi also said that the only solution for Italian banks is “growth,” and that how to achieve growth is “my dream and my nightmare.”

Well, now that he has violated EU rules on bail-in, Renzi should take the next step and violate EU budget rules in order to implement a growth program. In a discussion Tuesday morning, Lyndon LaRouche stressed that although this is not a national but a global crisis, Italy must implement a law for a national credit program for recovery, and European nations should cooperate for national self-defense. This will then “cause the whole [EU/euro] program to be re-examined,” LaRouche said.

Anything else is not going to work. Take the “solution” adopted for Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), which nobody is trusting. Monday and Tuesday, Italian banks, as well as other European banks, were hit by head-for-the-exits selling. Unicredit stock trading was suspended both days after having fallen almost 10% on Monday and 5% on Tuesday. The 70% discounted price for MPS’s non-performing loans has been seen as a benchmark for future deals, thus forcing other banks with NPLs to recapitalize.

The Financial Times published a chart with the loss in value of five major European banks since the stress tests results were published on Friday: Unicredit -15.9%; Commerzbank -11.2%; Deutsche Bank -6.6%; Credit Suisse -6.1%; Barclays -5.4%.

In the context of no economic growth and a zero/negative interest rate policy, there is no chance that any bank can recover. And now the ECB is also driving corporate finances into bankruptcy. Bloomberg has reported that the ECB purchases of corporate bonds are driving down yields, which last week were at an astonishing 0.7%.

Second quarter figures for Eurozone GDP show a 0.3% (non-) growth, while a review of public investment rates to GDP show a decline of greater than 1% in the 2009-2016 period. This means a loss of EU115-120 billion in investments.

The circulation this week of a videotape by “ISIS” promising attacks on Russia, and personally threatening, “We are coming to get you, Putin,” involves a greater danger than most “experts” realize, EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche said Tuesday.

“This is a shock,” LaRouche said. “Do they realize what and whom they are threatening? This is being deployed! This is not ‘ISIS,’ it is a Chechen-centered complex of terrorism groups and operations. And it was created and is used by the British, by Obama, against Russia, using Saudi Arabia as an instrumentality. Putin has been fighting this, successfully, for nearly two decades. Effectively this is Obama.”

LaRouche did not rule out that “this might lead Russia to respond, at some point, even strategically. It could contribute to world war!”

LaRouche’s extraordinarily prescient 1998 film presentation, “Storm Over Asia,” was produced to expose exactly this Chechen-centered terrorism as being aimed by London at the potential “Russia-China-India strategic triangle,” and carrying the threat of a thermonuclear world war. That was the point at which Putin took office and began the long fight which defeated the terrorists in Russia, and is aimed at defeating them internationally now.

Of the “ISIS” threat video against Putin and Russia now, LaRouche observed, “This is a shockingly irrational decision by some party, just when rational negotiations by Russia and America are needed to produce greater security in that area.”