Ramanisblog

Tag: International Monetary Fund

  • Borrows Heavily From Banks To Destroy Banks!

    Seems a good idea to rob a bank to Rob Banks further.

    Takes Loans to Destroy Banks?
    Takes Loans to Destroy Banks?

    Sounds Funny?

     

    This is exactly what anti-capitalist campaigner Enric Durán borrowed €492,000 ($642,306) from 39 different financial entities with absolutely no hope or intention of paying it back. But—as you might expect from an anti-capitalist campaigner—he didn’t spend it all on diamond kitchen knives and luxury frisbees. Instead, he ploughed it into a number of unspecified anti-capitalist causes and spent the rest on Crisi, a free newspaper that detailed how he’d done what he did and urged others to do the same. ‘

     

    In the absence of inaction by the Governments against the thieves of Corporate Sector,this seems to be best method.

     

    Beat the system by being a part of it.

     

    That’s what I always say to my son whenever he wants some things in the System is to be corrected.

    ”

    VICE: Hey Enric, what exactly happened with your trial?
    Enric Durán: The court accepted my lawyer’s resignation on the February 13th, then they told me I had to come to court again on the 18th, but I didn’t go to that. And now it’s not that clear if they can go on further with the case because I haven’t got a new lawyer, so it would be against my rights if they were to continue.

    I see. Let’s go back to the start. You got into activism in 2000. What sparked your interest in the financial system?
    Well, back then I was part of the anti-globalization movement. By 2005, I’d started reading about the energy crisis, which was related to the financial system. I realized that, not only was the system unwanted, but that it couldn’t keep going on as it was. That’s what sparked the idea of this act of disobedience—to retrieve money from banks and invest it in anti-capitalist projects.

    In a way you anticipated the link between the financial system, politics, multinationals, and governments when it still wasn’t clear to a lot of people. What made you realize that it wasn’t only one part of the system failing, but a global thing encompassing all of those aspects?
    It was in 2000, when we were fighting against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that we started realizing it was a global thing. What wasn’t clear to us was that the system would fail on its own. We thought we had to make it fail, we didn’t realize it would fall apart naturally.

    Was taking out all those loans a demonstration of how you could take advantage of the system?
    It was various things, but there were two main goals. One was to denounce the financial system as something unsustainable, and the second goal was to show that we can be disobedient, brave, and that we can empower ourselves. When I started with all of this I was inspired by historical characters like Gandhi, and I thought it was important to bring actions like those back to the 21st Century. We wanted to use the money for a project that could prove how methods other than capitalism were possible.

    What was the day-to-day process of going to banks and asking for credit like?
    It was between the summer of the 2005 and the spring of 2008—nearly three years. I learned about how the loaning system worked and the information banks relied on to grant them. I learned about the holes in the system and how to move around them. At first, I’d get one loan granted out of three requests, and by the end I was getting nine out of ten requests granted. For instance, one loophole in the system was that the Bank of Spain shared the loan information with other banks, but only for loans higher than €6,000 ($7,833). So I only asked for loans under that amount for two years, moving funds without having the Bank of Spain controlling my actions.

    Did it get to the point where you thought, ‘Holy shit, I have a lot of money’? Or did you just invest it on the go?
    The money was invested. I never had more than €50,000 ($65,275) at any one time. It was all spent on various projects.

    You haven’t revealed any of the projects you invested the money in, but are you aware of any of them being subjected to legal action because of your investment?
    Not at all. In fact, it’s pretty clear that banks weren’t interested in where the money had gone. There haven’t been any investigations and, as it was a political action, they only wanted to repress me, not the collective. They didn’t want to make it a bigger deal of it than it already was.

    You published your own newspaper, Crisi. Why did you want to diffuse your message through that and not use the regular media channels?
    I spent a long time figuring out how to get the story into the public domain. I wanted to get it out to as many people as possible, but I was worried about being repressed. So we decided to use some of the money to print the newspaper, and I think it was one of the best decisions we made. The media understood that this newspaper was being distributed on the street and they didn’t want to be left out of something that was being talked about, so publishing our own newspaper actually helped to get the message in the mainstream press.

    http://m.vice.com/read/spains-robin-hood-prefers

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  • List Of Swiss Account Holders,Greece Editor Arrested

    Indian Government has the List of Indians who have stashed money in Swiss Banks, no action.

    One redeeming feature is , no one has been arrested..as yet!

    ATHENS — A former Greek culture minister, several employees of the Finance Ministry and a number of business leaders are on a list of more than 2,000 Greeks said to have accounts in a Swiss bank, according to a respected investigative magazine. The Greek magazine, Hot Doc, published the list on Saturday, raising the stakes in a heated battle over which current and former government officials had seen the original list passed on by France two years ago — and whether they had used it to check for possible tax evasion….

    Hot Doc said its version of the list matches the one that Christine Lagarde, then the French finance minister and now the head of the International Monetary Fund, had given her Greek counterpart in 2010 to help Greece crack down on rampant tax evasion as it was trying to steady its economy. The 2,059 people on the list are said to have had accounts in a Geneva branch of HSBC.

    Questions about the handling of the original list reached a near frenzy in Athens last week as two former finance ministers were pressed to explain why the government appeared to have taken no action on the list. The subject has touched a nerve among average Greeks at a time when the Parliament is expected to vote on a new 13.5 billion euro austerity package that could further reduce their standards of living.

    The publication of the list is likely to exacerbate Greeks’ anger that their political leaders might have been reluctant to investigate the business elite, with whom they often have close ties, even as middle- and lower-class Greeks have struggled with higher taxes and increasingly ardent tax collectors.

    Hours after the magazine hit newsstands, Athens prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of Kostas Vaxevanis, the owner and editor of Hot Doc, “where names from the Lagarde list have been published,” the Athens police said in a statement on their Web site. They said he was sought on misdemeanor charges; the Greek media reported that the charges were related to violating the privacy of those on the list.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/world/europe/list-of-swiss-accounts-turns-up-the-heat-in-greece.html

    The following is a list of 2,059 names of Greek citizens that have bank accounts with HSBC’s branch in Geneva, Switzerland.  The list was originally published by a Greek magazine called Hot Doc on October 27, 2012 resulting in the arrest of its editor Kostas Vaxevanis for “breach of privacy”.  These scanned images of the magazine were originally posted on the website of the Greek television program Zougla.  We have taken the images and converted them into a PDF file for easier viewing.  The original scanned images of the magazine are also available in a ZIP archive.  Thanks toDarker Net for pointing out the scanned images.

    LagardeList1-730x1024.jpg
    Swiss Account Holders’ List, Greece.
    http://publicintelligence.net/lagarde-list/Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Greeks Furious, Beggars can’t be choosers

    Greece which is undergoing severe financial crisis reacted sharply to IMF and EU’s  criticism on its state of Economy.

    First came Venezulaquit

    Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, Internat...
    Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    e some time back.

    More recently Ireland.

    The funny side is that all these overspending Economies including the US are in the same boat, only difference is that they are politically influential and militarily strong(at least on paper)

    The whole mess is because of Keynesian Economy-Spend more, save less.

    ‘

    It’s not often that world markets react to pre-election political surveys in countries the size of Greece. But on Monday, investor relief appears to be widespread at reports that support for pro-austerity parties in Greece is rising ahead of general elections scheduled for June 17.

    According to the polls, an increase of support for the center-right party New Democracy could give it enough seats in parliament to team up with the Socialist PASOK party, both of which support pursuing the austerity policies handed down by the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for massive bailout aid. The anti-austerity party Syriza is likely to come in second. The new elections became necessary after results from the vote on May 6 made the formation of a governing coalition impossible.

    Despite the temporary market respite — following last week’s freefall on fears of a disorderly Greek exit from the euro zone — tempers remain on edge in Greece. And over the weekend, much of the ire of the country’s political elite was focused on IMF head Christine Lagarde.

    In an interview published Friday in the British daily Guardian, Lagarde blasted Greeks for not paying their taxes. “As far as Athens is concerned,” she said, “I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.” Just to make sure her message was getting through, she added: “I think they should also help themselves collectively … by all paying their tax.”

    Elsewhere in the interview, she said that she thinks more about children in the African country of Niger than she does about Greeks. “I think they need even more help than the people of Athens,” she said.

    Germany Losing Patience

    Reaction from Greece has been prompt and furious. “The last thing we need is sympathy from Ms. Lagarde,” said Alexis Tsipras, head of the leftist Syriza party. He added that the great majority of Greeks pay their taxes.

    Giannis Michelakis, spokesman for the conservative New Democracy, said: “I don’t understand what she meant. It is as if one is blaming the patient after giving him the wrong medicine.” Evangelos Venizelos, head of the Socialist PASOK party called on Lagarde to reconsider exactly what her message was and to withdraw her comments.

    Still, Lagarde isn’t the only leading official who appears to be losing patience withGreece. In a Saturday interview with the daily Leipziger Volkszeitung, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich hinted at his country’s growing frustration. “We’re not willing to pour money into a bottomless pit,” he said after assuring the paper that Germany was happy to help Greece help itself. “Anyone who wants to see help and solidarity from us has to accept that we expect from that country a certain amount of seriousness and a certain amount of reasonableness.”

    While Friedrich has long been a leading critic of Greece in Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s cabinet, the comments were likely an attempt to highlight to Greek voters just what is riding on the outcome of the June 17 vote. Tsipras, who looked recently as if he might emerge as the winner of the elections, has said he would like to abandon austerity, though he still wants to continue receiving assistance from the European Union bailout fund.’

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greeks-furious-with-comments-from-imf-head-christine-lagarde-a-835559.html

  • Curious case of Strauss Kahn.

    The IMF CChief  Strauss Kahn was charged with rape in a Hotel room and was later let off on bail.

    Now the case of the prosecution seems to be collapsing according to the New York Times with doubts being expressed over the credibility of the maid who leveled charges against him.

    ‘Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself….

    Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to people involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering…’

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html?_r=2&hp

    I fail to understand as to how this affects the allegation which is found to be true.

    Watch this Hotel Security Cam recording.

    Look at what Pakistan Observer has to say on this. case

    ‘The cat is now out of the bag, Empire building conspiracy is soon going to meet its natural death. It seems that all accusations against the former heads of the IMF Mr. Strauss- Kahn could come to nothing in the coming days because the creditability of the lady who was accusing him of rape

    seems to be questionable after her contacts with criminals became public and she was caught receiving considerable amount of money in her bank accounts. It seems the whole story was a plot hatched against Mr. Strauss-Kahn who is known to be a firm defender of the Euro and was on his way to negotiate details of a bail-out for Greece when the accusations hit him. Well, Europe has managed the bail-out of Greece without Mr. Strauss-Kahn who lost his job in this ghastly story. The Euro is rising and plans of those who may have had sinister designs with regard to the European money that is challenging the world-wide lead of the dollar seem to collapse.’

    http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=100928

    Irrespective of  her antecedents Strauss Kahn’s offense in very serious.

    Seems to confirm the  view that Justice system is skewed.

    Read my blog on ‘European Justice system skewed,India is catching up’

  • The U.S. Dollar Needs To Be Replaced As The World Reserve Currency.

    US economy has been on the slide for quite sometime now.

    High inflation,printing of paper currency indiscriminately to fight inflation,living on plastic money, unnecessary military expenses,unmanageable imports and living beyond means through credit cards are some of the reasons for this stste of affairs.

    Read my blogs under economy and US for more.

    The IMF is trying to move the world away from the U.S. dollar and towards a global currency once again.  In a new report entitled “Enhancing International Monetary Stability—A Role for the SDR“, the IMF details the “problems” with having the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the globe and the IMF discusses the potential for a larger role for SDRs (Special Drawing Rights).  But the IMF certainly does not view SDRs as the “final solution” to global currency problems.  Rather, the IMF considers SDRs to be a transitional phase between what we have now and a new world currency.  In this newly published report, the IMF makes this point very clearly: “In the even longer run, if there were political willingness to do so, these securities could constitute an embryo of global currency.”  Yes, you read that correctly.  The SDR is supposed to be “an embryo” from which a global currency will one day develop.  So what about the U.S. dollar and other national currencies?  Well, they would just end up fading away.

    CNN clearly understands what the IMF is trying to accomplish with this new report.  The following is how CNN’s recent story about the new IMF report begins….

    “The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”

    That is exactly what the IMF intends to do.

    They intend to have SDRs replace the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

    So exactly what are SDRs?

    Well, “SDR” is short for Special Drawing Rights.  It is a synthetic currency unit that is made up of a basket of currencies.  SDRs have actually been around for many years, but now they are being heavily promoted as an alternative to the dollar.

    The following is how Wikipedia defines SDRs….

    Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are international foreign exchange reserve assets. Allocated to nations by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a SDR represents a claim to foreign currencies for which it may be exchanged in times of need.

    The SDR is a hybrid.  SDRs are part U.S. dollar, part euro, part yen and part British pound.  In particular, the following is how each SDR currently breaks down….

    U.S. Dollar: 41.9%

    Euro: 37.4%

    Yen: 9.4%

    British Pound: 11.3%

    Now there are calls for other national currencies to be included in the basket.

    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has publicly called for the national currencies of Brazil, Russia, India and China to be included in the SDR.

    In January, the Obama administration said that it fully supports the eventual inclusion of the yuan in the SDR.

    So yes, it looks like we are definitely moving in the direction of the SDR becoming a true global currency.

    But is this a good idea?

    Globalist organizations such as the IMF say that having a true global currency would facilitate world trade, it would make currency wars less likely, it would stabilize the global economy and it would make the rest of the globe less reliant on what is going on in the United States.

    In fact, there is a lot of discussion in international financial circles that oilshould be traded in SDRs rather than in U.S. dollars.

    In a recent interview, IMF Deputy Managing Director Naoyuki Shinohara even suggested that the IMF may actually consider issuing bonds that are denominated in SDRs.  Apparently the goal would be to promote the use of the new “currency”.

    But once again, it is important to remember that the IMF does not see SDRs lasting forever either.  Rather, the IMF considers the SDR to be an “embryo” from which a true global currency could emerge.

    An IMF paper entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability” that was published last year even proposed that a future global currency be called the “Bancor” and that a future global central bank could be put in charge of issuing it….

    “A global currency, bancor, issued by a global central bank (see Supplement 1, section V) would be designed as a stable store of value that is not tied exclusively to the conditions of any particular economy. As trade and finance continue to grow rapidly and global integration increases, the importance of this broader perspective is expected to continue growing.”

    In fact, at one point the IMF report from last year specifically compares the proposed global central bank to the Federal Reserve….

    “The global central bank could serve as a lender of last resort, providing needed systemic liquidity in the event of adverse shocks and more automatically than at present. Such liquidity was provided in the most recent crisis mainly by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which however may not always provide such liquidity.”

    Yes, unfortunately this is what the IMF really has in mind for all of us.  A one-world economic system with a one-world currency and a one-world central bank.

    Is that what we really need?

    A “global Federal Reserve” that dominates the currency and the economy of the entire planet?

    At least with the U.S. Federal Reserve there is hope that someday the American people can convince Congress to shut it down.

    A “global Federal Reserve” would not answer to anyone.  Individual nations could attempt to pull out, but then they would potentially be isolated from the rest of the globe and potentially cut off from world trade.

    That may sound very far-fetched now, but that is the direction we are headed.

    And shifting away from the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world would be disastrous for the U.S. economy.

    Right now the fact that the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world is one of the only things holding it up.  If you took that support away the U.S. dollar could end up collapsing quite quickly.

    Let us hope that the American people wake up and start insisting that we want no part in a global currency.  If we ever allow a world currency to start replacing the U.S. dollar to a large extent, we will lose a great deal of our economic sovereignty.  Not that we haven’t lost most of it already, but at least if we are still using our own national currency there is a greater chance that we can reclaim it.

    What the IMF is proposing right now may seem very innocent, but the long-term consequences of going down the road they want to put us on could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.

    The American people need to send a very clear message to their representatives in Washington D.C…..

    #1 We do not want a one-world economy.

    #2 We do not want a one-world currency.

    #3 We do not want a one-world central bank.

    http://current.com/1s5gh4c