Lara Merling — Germany Does Have Unfair Trade Advantages

While China is commonly accused of currency manipulation to provide cheap exports, the IMF has recently decided the renminbi (RMB) is no longer undervalued and added it in its reserve currency basket, along with other major currencies. However, an IMF analysis of Germany’s currency found “an undervaluation of 5-15 percent” for the Euro in the case of Germany. Thus for Germany, the Euro has a significantly lower value than a solely German currency would have....

The Minskys
Germany Does Have Unfair Trade Advantages
Lara Merling

Vyacheslav Scherbakov — Alternative for Germany

Although the “return to the German mark” theme was undoubtedly essential, the program’s developers sought to defend themselves from accusations of forming a “single issue party.” Therefore, they touched on a number of problems that, in their opinion, are troubling society. They included demands for a commitment to “A Europe of sovereign states” with a common internal market, demands for EU reform, and the “liquidation of the Brussels bureaucracy,” the strengthening of the democratic freedoms of citizens, and introducing a system of popular referendums along the Swiss model. The party also spoke out in support of families and especially pensioners and children: “Family solidarity support is an investment in our common future and an important part of inter-generational consensus.” An important component of such family support was determined to be an educational system including kindergartens, schools, and universities. At the same time, parents are to be responsible for the education and upbringing of their children and should be supported by the state. The situation with integrating immigrants had led to such programs so valued by AfG to be shut down. In a rather short section, special attention is devoted to the necessity of revising immigration laws. The immigration system of Canada is presented as one to be imitated: “It is necessary to put an end to indiscriminate immigration into our social system.”[6] On the same note, it is emphasized that persons persecuted on political grounds should be given priority right to asylum in Germany.…

Fort Russ
Alternative for Germany: The Genesis of a New "People's Party"? - PART 1

Alternative for Germany: The Genesis of a New "People's Party"? - PART 2
Vyacheslav Shcherbakov for Fort Russ - translated by J. Arnoldski

Catarina Principe — A New European Narrative

On Thursday, Germany refused any negotiations with Greece, and the European Central Bank (ECB) refused to accept Greek bonds as collateral (since there are no guarantees that the Greek government will carry out the “adjustment” plan). Although this does not amount to an immediate push to kick Greece out of the eurozone, it is certainly a threat in that direction. 

In order to understand the motivations behind this recalcitrance, and the competing interests at work, Germany’s special relationship with the euro must be understood. The eurozone’s stated goal was to create a currency strong enough to build a unified European financial bloc that could compete with the US and China. 

However, this was never the full truth. This “unified” bloc has always been composed of competing nation states, and the big, industrialized countries at the center have been keen on making the peripheral economies dependent on the core. 

With the introduction of the single currency, there was a devaluation of Germany’s deutsche mark in comparison to the other national currencies. This meant not only that labor value was diminished, but also that the country’s manufactured products became cheaper and more competitive in the world market. 

The resulting overvaluation of the southern countries’ national currencies solidified them as peripheral economies and established export markets for German products. Their productive sectors destroyed, the peripheral economies became dependent on imports, especially from Germany. 

Germany, then, clearly benefits from Greece’s presence in the eurozone; a Grexit is not in its economic interest. Nonetheless, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is sending a veiled threat that this is what might happen. Why?….

Analysis from the left.

Jacobin
A New European Narrative

Catarina Principe

Greg Palast — Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony

The horror of austerity is not the consequence of Greek profligacy: it was designed into the euro’s plan from the beginning. 

This was explained to me by the father of the euro himself, economist Robert Mundell of Columbia University. (I studied economics with Mundell’s buddy, Milton Friedman.) Mundell not only invented the euro, he also fathered the misery-making policies of Thatcher and Reagan, known as “supply-side economics” – or, as George Bush Sr. called it, “voodoo economics.” Supply-side voodoo is the long-discredited belief that if a nation demolishes the power of unions, cuts business taxes, eliminates government regulation and public ownership of utilities, economic prosperity will follow. 

The euro is simply the other side of the supply-side coin. As Mundell explained it, the euro is the way in which congresses and parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy. Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system. “Without fiscal policy,” Mundell told me, “the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.”…

Greece’s ruin began with secret, fraudulent currency swaps, designed a decade ago by Goldman Sachs, to conceal Greek deficits that exceeded the euro zone’s 3%-of-GDP limit. In 2009, when the truth came out, Greek debt holders realized they had been cheated. These debt buyers then demanded usurious levels of interest (or, if you prefer, a high “spread”) to insure themselves against future fraud. The compounding of this interest premium brought the Greek nation to its knees. In other words, the crimes committed to join and stay in the euro, not Greek profligacy, caused the crisis. 

The USA, Brazil and China escaped from depression by controlling their money supply, government spending and currency exchange rates—crucial tools Greece gave up in return for the euro. 

Worse, once the Trojan hearse of the euro entered Athens, tourism, Greece’s main industry, drained to Turkey where hotels and souvenirs are priced in cheap lira. This allowed Dr. Mundell’s remorseless wage-lowering machine, the euro, to do its work, to force Greece to strip all its workers of pensions and power. 

Greece fell to its knees, with no choice but to beg Germany for mercy.
But there is no mercy. As Germany’s Schäuble insists, democracy, this week’s vote, means nothing. "New elections change nothing in the accords struck with the Greek government,” he says. “[Greeks] have no alternative.”

Greg Palast

Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony

h/t Dan Lynch in the comments

Palast had already explained this in greater detail in Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro, linked to at MNE on June 29, 2012.

This is all by neoliberal design to bring Thatcherism-Reaganism to Europe and convert the welfare states there to market state like Thatcher's plan for the UK and Reagan's plan for the US. It would become more effective in the EU by denying currency sovereignty and making the EZ nations dependent on the new DM euro. The eurocrats knew exactly what they were doing — imposing TINA.

This is not conspiracy theory, but a an actual conspiracy as Palast explains.