E.I.R. GmbH

German President Wulff Targetted for Opposition to Bailouts?

The strategy of unlimited bank bailouts, although officially accepted, remains contested throughout Europe, and the next truly hyperinflationary phase through the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is running up against enormous resistance. Such is the background to an intense media campaign against leading bailout skeptics and critics in several European countries, such as Germany, Hungary and Switzerland (while not a member of the EU or the Eurozone, it is Europe’s second-largest financial center). Moreover, pro-bailout “regime changes” were carried out over the past year in no less than six EU countries (Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, Slovakia).

Since mid-December, German media have been hounding Federal President Christian Wulff, with one revelation after another on details of a past private loan, and of his relations to various leading industrialists and businessmen. The Frankfurter Allgemeine and the Financial Times Deutschland have called for him to step down, or face being removed by political pressure from the government and from the establishment parties.

However, a more likely reason why the European Establishment and the banks want Wulff out of the way or neutralized, is because they fear he might not sign the EMS permanent bailout fund, when the time comes. Indeed, in a widely-noted keynote speech to a Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, on Aug. 24, 2011, Wulff exposed the bankers’ hostage-taking of politicians and has addressed the issue since then in numerous public speeches.

In Lindau, Wulff said: “We're faced with a development which resembles a game of dominoes. First individual banks rescued other banks and then states rescued their banks, and now the international community is rescuing individual states. But the question that should be asked is: Who will ultimately rescue the rescuers?”

Further, he regretted that political leaders let themselves be “led around by the nose” by banks, rating agencies and the media. And he stated clearly that he regards “the huge buy-up of government bonds of individual states by the European Central Bank as politically and legally questionable.”

So far, Wulff has fought back, and he still has considerable popular backing. Helga Zepp-LaRouche intervened with a statement on Jan. 14, calling on him to stay in office - in order to continue his campaign for a fundamental change in financial policy, such as the one she herself proposes.

Elsewhere, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is under heavy attack for defying the ECB, the IMF and the EU, by putting through a law ending the “independence” of the Hungarian Central Bank and placing it under political control. Neither a series of punitive downratings of Hungarian sovereign bonds nor the suspension of promised IMF tranches have led Orban, who governs with a two-thirds majority in the parliament, to back down. Now, some Hungarian media, led by the economic-financial journal HVG, have begun to focus on President Pal Schmitt, the number two of Orban’s Fidesz party, charging him with plagiarism in his 1992 doctoral thesis.

But the Hungarians have decided to fight back: on Jan. 14, more than 10,000 of them took to the streets of Budapest in protest against the ECB, IMF and EU arm-twisting policies.

In Switzerland, the governor of the Swiss National Bank, Philipp Hildebrand, a prominent critic of the idea of too-big-to-fail banks who has endorsed banking separation, was forced to step down on Jan. 9 by a sudden, massive media campaign exposing a currency trading deal of his wife.

Weitere Meldungen

Top

Schiller-Institut e.V.

Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität

LaRouche Political Action Committe

EIR Online

Impressum