Europe's 10 most dangerous politicians

Der Spiegel has published an article about Europe's 10 Most Dangerous Politicians although some of those names are certainly interesting choices up to you to decide if more worthy names deserve to be in this list. Let me know what you think!

Top 10 List

1. Markus Söder, Bavarian Finance Minister: The politician from the Christian Social Union, the conservative sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, is known for his tub-thumping rhetoric and has stepped up a gear in the euro crisis with vitriolic comments about Greece. "An example must be made of Athens, that this euro zone can show teeth," he told the Bild am Sonntag tabloid newspaper this week.
2. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greece's leftist Syriza party: In his latest proposal, Tsipras argues the Greek government should refuse to talk to the so-called troika comprised of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He wants to "criminalize" the privatization of public enterprises. He has been labelled the "most dangerous man in Europe" since he became leader of the radical left and has been pressuring successive governments to abandon austerity measures that underpin Greece's continued access to international aid.
3. Silvio Berlusconi, entrepreneur and former Italian prime minister: His Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) party supports current Prime Minister Mario Monti but is secretly preparing for Italian elections next year. Berlusconi wants to win a fifth term as prime minister with the help of populist anti-euro rhetoric. He recently said the Italian central bank should simply print more euros to avoid instructions from Brussels. He has also threatened to reintroduce the lira.
4. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National in France: The populist politician campaigned in this year's presidential election by warning about the supposed might of the EU. "Frau Merkel and her friends, Van Rompuy and the European Commission are in the final stages of creating a European Soviet Union," she thundered. "We are about to lose our status as a free nation."
5. Timo Soini, leader of the True Finns party and a member of the European Parliament: Since the election, Finland has demanded that Greece provide collateral in return for Finnish aid. Soini wants that aid to stop. "Not a penny more," he says. "We've paid enough."
6. Alexander Dobrindt, general secretary of the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU): "It's the end of the line for Greece," Dobrindt said recently. Previously, he had demanded that the Greek government should no longer pay its civil servants and pensioners in euros but in drachmas.
7. Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a member of the European Parliament: Farage is the man who can cause an uproar in the otherwise dull European Parliament, where he called the Lisbon Treaty "the most spectacular, bureaucratic coup d'etat that the world had ever seen." He has described European Council President Herman Van Rompuy as having the "charisma of a damp rag."
8. Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ): Strache claims that the permanent euro bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), will destroy "not only our state, but also our democracy and constitution." He says the ESM is tantamount to an ´Ermächtigungsgesetz, an allusion to the 1933 German law that allowed Hitler to rise to power.
9. Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV): Wilders wants to see the return of the Dutch guilder and described the ESM as "a dictate from Brussels."
10. Viktor Orbán, Hungarian prime minister: Orbán's statement that he would bow to Brussels' power but not to its arguments created considerable irritation.

Great Depression 2.0

FDR Memorial Site, Washington DC

Yesterday in my post after hearing the declaration of Prime Minister Berlusconi I wrote my conclusion that Italy had lost effectively sovereignty becoming a protectorate of the ECB.
Today we have even an official confirmation that Italy is now administered by the ECB under mandate of France and Germany which are the new masters of the country and will dictate to Trichet (then Draghi in October) what he has to order Italian politicians to do.
This is major news which has been reported so far by only one Italian Newspaper Repubblica.
EU president Van Rompuy and EU Commissioner Olli Rehn contacted Berlusconi and made clear that either Berlusconi follow orders or it is the end game.
It has been confirmed that France, Germany and the USA have reached the conclusion there is no other solution than seizing power in Italy and run the country as they see fit in order to prevent its default and an economic armageddon.
Both the EU and Washington have decided with the "Washington Consensus" that unreliable governments will fall under protectorate rules, bailout money provided only if following orders.
Berlusconi and the entire Italian political class will be mere puppets who will enforce any order they receive regardless of the electorate opinion. After all, the current state of Italian politics is perfect, Italian voters are currently unable to decide the name of the person they elect, they can only decide which party to vote, the name of the elected MPs are decided by the party, this is causing a major disconnection of responsibility toward the electorate which favour the implementation of blood and tears austerity measures.
Italian MPs do not have any allegiance to their voters but only to their party and their boss and therefore will not have any constraint in following the lead when requested to.
Berlusconi has been forced to accept the dikat but if with his collapsing popularity both among the electorate and with other coalition parties he will be able to implement it, well this is a different story.
Tremonti is right when he said yesterday that this week the world has changed forever, we are in uncharted territory and following US credit rating downgrade we are on the verge a major financial breakdown. Even China's traditionally diplomatic aplombe is being tested with furious official attacks to the US Government.
Events are turning sour fast and the choices left to solve the Global Crisis are getting worse every day.
News from Germany today are complicating things even more: Der Spiegel anticipated today
that Germany is opposing any EFSF increase and any bailout of Italy, it appears it is opposing also ECB purchase of Italian bonds and it is pretending harsh cuts in Italy regardless.
According to Daiwa's Head of Economic Research, Grant Lewis, the increase of the EFSF should reach the astonishing amount of 3.5 trillion euro this is the only act that could convince financial markets of euro area resolve to save Italy and Spain. Lewis says: "France, Germany contribution to EFSF’s capital would increase to 80% if Spain, Italy had to drop out of guarantee structure. France, German contingent liabilities would be > 50% of GDP if EFSF expanded; added to France, Germany current debt it may trigger downgrades to both countries."
There is no safe option anymore if the debt crisis spreads to France as it is becoming probable given the exposure of France to Italian Treasury bonds for over 25% of its GDP, the bailout system will become useless, if they pursue harsh austerity measures in Italy the country will start to paralyse ending like Greece and given the size of the Italian economy effectively pushing the global economy in Depression zone.
If Germany is successful in blocking both the EFSF increase and the ECB purchase of Italian bonds, the Eurozone is dead and will break apart.
Even if the Italian government has agreed in principle to the enforced austerity will face a revolt both from the opposition, the unions and the Italian people whose patience with a rotten and corrupt Berlusconi's government was reaching boiling point already before this last crisis.
The amount of things that can go wrong and turn into a Black Swan are too many at this stage to discard a possible incoming Great Depression. Brace yourself!

Greece sovereignty massively limited by EU following bailout

The 5th bailout tranche to Greece, has now been approved.

From Reuters:

"Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Saturday to disburse a further 12 billion euros to Greece and said the details of a second aid package for Athens would be finalised by mid-September. After a conference call, the 17 euro zone ministers agreed that the fifth tranche of the 110-billion-euro bailout agreed with Greece in May 2010 would be paid by July 15, as long as the IMF's board signs off on the disbursement. The IMF is expected to meet on July 8 to approve it. The payment will allow Greece to avoid the immediate threat of default, but the country still needs a second rescue package, which is also expected to total around 110 billion euros and which will now likely only be finalised in September. Between now and then, finance ministers will work on the "precise modalities and scale" of the private sector's involvement in the second aid package, which Germany hopes will eventually total around 30 billion euros. Greece said it expected a final decision on a second bailout programme by mid-September to keep the country financed.


The question is how long will the money last, 1-2-3 months at best and then we are back again to square one.
Greece has 18.2 bn in debt payments in August, 12 billion clearly are not enough to cover the shortfall, where will they get the rest?


As if it was not enough 1 hour ago a new warning has been issued by the Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker. He warned Greeks that help from the EU and International Monetary Fund would have unpleasant consequences.


"The sovereignty of Greece will be massively limited," he told Germany's Focus magazine in the interview released on Sunday, adding that teams of experts from around the euro zone would be heading to Athens.
"One cannot be allowed to insult the Greeks. But one has to help them. They have said they are ready to accept expertise from the euro zone," Juncker said.
Juncker also said Greece must privatize on a scale similar to the sell off of East German firms in the 1990s.
"For the forthcoming wave of privatizations they will need, for example, a solution based on a model of Germany's 'Treuhand agency'," Juncker said, referring to the privatization agency that sold off 14,000 East German firms between 1990 and 1994.
Athens must sell off 5 billion euros in state assets this year alone or risk missing targets set under its EU/IMF program, which could cut off its funding needed to keep the government running and avoid a debt default.
"The current package of measures, which Athens has agreed to, will bring a solution to the Greek question," said Juncker. However, he added that the Greek tax collection system was "not fully functional."
Financial markets still see an 81 percent chance that Greece will eventually default, and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Der Spiegel in an interview that Berlin was making preparations for such an event -- even though it does not expect it to happen.