Systemic global crisis - 2011(Global Euro Anticipation Bulletin)

more:
http://www.leap2020.eu/geab-n-51-is-available-systemic-global-crisis-2011-the-ruthless-year-at-the-crossroads-of-three-roads-of-global-chaos_a5775.html

This GEAB issue marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin. In January 2006, on the occasion of the first issue, the LEAP/E2020 team indicated that a period of four to seven years was opening up which would be characterized by the “Fall of the Dollar Wall”, an event similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall which resulted, in the following years, in the collapse of the communist bloc then that of the USSR. Today, in this GEAB issue, which presents our thirty-two anticipations for 2011, we believe that the coming year will be a pivotal year in the roll out of this process between 2010 and 2013. It will be, in any case, a ruthless year because it will mark the entry into the terminal phase of the world before the crisis (1).

Since September 2008, when the evidence of the global and systemic nature of the crisis became clear to all, the United States, and behind it the Western countries, were content with palliative measures that have merely hidden the undermining effects of the crisis on the foundations of the present-day international system. 2011 will, according to our team, mark the crucial moment when, on the one hand, these palliative measures see their anesthetic effect fade away whilst, in contrast, the consequences of systemic dislocation in recent years will dramatically surge to the forefront (2).

In summary, 2011 will be marked by a series of violent shocks that will explode the faulty safety devices put in place since 2008 (3) and will carry off, one by one, the “pillars” on which the “Dollar Wall” has rested for decades. Only the countries, communities, organizations and individuals which, over the last three years, have actually undertaken to learn the lessons from the current crisis to distance themselves as quickly as possible from the pre-crisis patterns, values and behavior will get through this year unscathed; the others will be carried away in the procession of monetary, financial, economic, social and political difficulties that 2011 holds.

Which is not to mean I accept everything they say.

Frank Biancherri may be heard on an edition of Guns and Butter from last May here:

Guns and Butter radio program for May 5, 2010 - 1:00pm
http://kpfa.org/archive/id/60817



My notes from that:

The “Greek Crisis” Is An Anglosphere Attack On the Eurozone

At least, that’s the gist of a talk with Franck Biancheri of the "GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin"

(http://www.leap2020.eu/English_r25.html)

on KPFA’s “Guns and Butter” with Bonnie Faulkner.

Speaking on the eve of the British elections, he notes that Greece’s supposedly horrible debt-to-GDP ratio, both overall and for the current year of crisis, is actually less than Britain’s. But for months the Financial Times especially has had Greece on the front page as a timebomb that will destroy Europe, all the while ignoring the incipient British crisis that now must come into the open with the new UK government’s first budget proposals.

Biancheri sees this as a preemptive attempt to weaken the euro in advance of what he thinks is the imminent bankruptcy of the UK.

In support of his argument, he brings up a point that you don’t often hear: it may not matter what lousy risks Greece, or Dubai, or Ireland, or other small countries are, because they are small countries. Despite a high debt-to-GDP ratio, Greece has a low GDP and correspondingly low absolute debt. There is enough capital circulating around the world to easily cover Greece’s borrowing needs. By comparison, the far larger British and US economies have enormous borrowing needs, now in the trillions annually. Even if they are considered better risks, the capital may simply not be available for them to borrow, and they will be forced to print money. As Biancheri notes, now that even China is running a trade deficit (as part of a strategy to move off the dollar) it won’t be significantly raising its holdings in other countries’ sovereign debt.

He makes a bold prediction that the UK will go bankrupt this summer, and that this will serve as the “detonator” for the mother of all crises in the US at year’s end. This may be his own way of countering the anti-EU propaganda, his outfit supports the EU as Europe's necessary bulwark against American power. His argument: The Federal Reserve nearly tripled its balance sheets in 2008, relieving Wall Street of about a trillion and a half in toxic debt instruments that are now on the Fed’s balance sheets. Biancheri believes that when interest rates rise, the Fed will not be able to cover its obligations on these bonds and will have to either default or turn to the Treasury for its own bailout. The Federal Reserve is a bank and can go bankrupt like any other bank.

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Download this clip (mp3, 10.28 megabytes)
http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20100505-Wed1300.mp3

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In retrospect, his predictions of last May are clearly, at best, ahead of themselves. First, his point about there being too many t-bills for anyone to buy has already manifested, which is why the Federal Reserve is now buying more than half of the t-bill market under the excuse of "Quantitative Easing" or "QE2." I'd say if the rest of his scenario unfolds in the US: renewed crash coupled with austerity -- one should expect it in April (when "expenditures reform" will be the big item in the half-Republican congress).