Nyberg is correct that it wasn’t ‘criminality’ that caused the banking crisis. The financial sector largely formulates the rule book which notionally regulates that business and so it’s extremely difficult for them perpetrate an actual crime while they vandalize the entire global economy.

Nyberg is mistaken though if he believes that it was ignorance which led to the collapse. There was some ‘useful idiots’ at national level in political and regulatory positions which can be scapegoated but those at the top echelons of the corporate world knew exactly what was unfolding and the inevitable consequences from many years out.

This excellent documentary describes how the world’s central banks have deliberately engineered multiple financial & economic crises in order to further the interests of the 1% who benefit disproportionately in both booms and busts. This is starkly demonstrated in the current recession where the world’s billionaires have doubled in number since 2008.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY&feature=youtu.be

The ensuing crises are then used to enforce ‘structural reform’ which sees political, social, legal and economic concessions wrung from the victim nations for the additional benefit of the capitalist elite and at the expense of labour (the vast majority of us). The Fiscal treaty is a recent example of ‘structural reform’ which has transferred massive fiscal and budgetary powers from the elected governments of the nation states to unelected institutions of the EU.

The ECB’s deliberate role in the property bubble expansions and inevitable busts of Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece is addressed from 1 hour 20 minutes in. The ECB or any of the national central banks could at any time have restricted the credit expansion which fuelled the bubbles.
In this context, it’s no surprise that the ECB ‘does not see itself in a position to participate’ in the banking enquiry.

“The ECB’s deliberate role in the property bubble expansions and inevitable busts of Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece”….

Any chance I could borrow some tin foil from your hat to cover the Turkey on Christmas morning?

The tinfoil hats were right about Shannon and Torturing – funny how they keep getting proven the truthtellers and those who ridicule them the fools !

They were wrong about a lot of things too. Next you’ll be telling me how I’ve got 9/11 all wrong and you’ve seen a documentary that isn’t afraid to tell the truth.

Can we all just agree to take one side in these arguments. Either the political establishment are all incompetent buffoons or they are maniacal geniuses hell bent on making more money for themselves through bankrupting a nation.

I’ll give you either claim and debate that with you but I won’t stand for people arguing both at once.

Ciaran,

You may want to contact the man below about getting that tinfoil.

Professor Richard Werner is Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Southampton and author of two best-selling books on banking and economics. He is credited with popularizing the term ‘quantitative easing’ in 1994 whilst Chief Economist at Jardine Fleming Securities (Asia),following a spell as visiting research fellow at the Japanese Central Bank.

As he’s the one who had leveled those charges against the ECB in the documentary.
Or maybe you have a greater expertise in this area and can explain how grossly mistaken he is?

Ciaran I won’t tell you anything – you are, I fear, beyond my help !

Coddler – I wasn’t assaulting Mr Werner, he’s an excellent Economist, but let’s not paint him as a saviour just yet.

I was challenging the phrase you used relating to the ECB’s “deliberate role” in the crashes in Europe.

For example, I could buy coffee from Butlers every day of the week and when reporting on a story you can say, it was my deliberate actions which contributed to the closing of the Insomnia cafe around the corner. It’s not that it’s wrong, but they way you say it implies so much ruthlessness that I’d hate to see that much evil in everyone’s actions.

The ecb, federal reserve, imf, the bank of International Settlements, the bilderberg group, the trilateral commission. Basically any of the groups that make the decisions of sovereign states behind closed doors. They also have the power to issue currency at will, which is why they end up with all the assets, monopoly money in exchange for an actual physical asset, scam of the century.
Banking – the Greatest Scam on Earth: http://youtu.be/G9IH-XKQpOI

Paul, you know that quote is apocryphal. The correct quote has been reworked, refers to the British empire, and was apparently said by Nathan Rothschild. Interestingly, a 10 second Google search revealed that.

Irrelevant, would you like to dispute the meat of the argument rather than the first name of the author of a quote being incorrect?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8

the above should explain it for you Charles ……

No Paul, you open up with a misquote wrongly attributed and entirely out of context. The ‘meat’ as you call it will require more than 2 minutes watching youtube. Dismissing your inaccuracy as irrelevant seems odd – you did leave it as a punctuation to your first comment.
is there anything else you’ve gotten wrong?

No problem Charles, if you want to get hung up on a misquote, fine, don’t take the the red pill and continue living in ignorance, it’s your life.

Again, no Paul. I’ll do a bit of research and not look for ‘facts’ which confirm my own prejudice. Mind you once you start discussing red pills ill probably leave it there. Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise etc…

Thanks dermot

I presume you’re aware the red pill is from the movie The Matrix, he takes it in order to see the world as it really is, rather than the fabrication that he has believed up until then. I recommend watching Dermots link ^.

You’re welcome Charles – no probs !

There is no question in my mind that it was a Pyramid scheme played out not just in Ireland but a number of countries. Central Banking is a pretty small global club. The Central Bank of Japan deliberately created a lending bubble in the 80s which they knew was not going into productive investment, but asset price inflation (in property & land). We know this because commercial banks in Japan told their Central Bank that meeting the new lending targets (new money creation as loans) could not be met otherwise. (ECB and other CB’s didn’t issue ‘targets’ like the BoJ, but the point is that as the Bankers’ Bank, they have all the data and monitor banks’ lending activities.)

This led to Japan’s inevitable property bust & stagnation in the 90s, which thru’ flip-flopping periods of weak and incompetent (neo liberal) policy responses has largely continued to the present day. Tho’ Japan did at least manage to stave off a depression and mass unemployment on the scale of the present Euro zone mess. Two major reasons for this. Japan’s bust was mostly an isolated one (was it a trial run?), so it’s key export markets remained in operation. And they (rightly) allowed the Gov deficit & debt to climb to counter the loss of private domestic sector consumer & investor demand (spending).

(People should note that Japanese Gov debt is now over 250% of GDP, twice that of US, UK etc. but because they issue their own sovereign currency, bond ‘vigilantism’ has no power over interest rates, which remain near zero.)

Professor Richard Werner (Southampton University UK), formerly employed in Finance in Japan during the period explains the details in a long-ish but well worth watching video, recently released.

“Princes of the Yen: Central Banks and the Transformation of the Economy.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY&feature=youtu.be

Anyhow… there is no question whatever that other Central Bankers did not know what happened in Japan 25yrs ago, and precisely why. There cannot be any question (as Nyberg confirms) that they did not see that completely unsustainable asset price inflation was rampant in a number of Euro countries, and others like the US.

Even if the least plausible explanation, that they were simply (very highly paid!) incompetent fools is true, then there should be inquiries and mass sackings of senior officials in every major institution involved, including the ECB and EU Commision economics sections.

But was it all a Bankers’ conspiracy, as Paul suggests? That is certainly a possibility, but is hardly necessary to explain the kind of ‘Groupthink’ collusion that Nyberg suggests.

What the banking and wealthy elites have long, long, known is that instability and periodic booms and busts are highly profitable in +both+ phases for Capital owning classes who know when to get out of the losing plays in time. (Ask any Finance and Commodity trader, and they will tell you that ‘voltallity’ is their friend, number one, and number two, if they’re being honest, the game is rigged by the big players.)

Economic stability is in the interests of majority citizens, who need things like steady jobs & incomes to live.

But for the 1%ers, big Capital owners (not the small fry wannabe investors who often get burned), booms and busts are the way to hammer Labour’s share of productivity, buy up assets at bust prices & force juicy privatisations of public assets to gouge rents going forward. All exactly as we see happening these last years.

However, there is also another interesting aspect to this recent banking Pyramid scam, and that is the way that ‘risk’ in all the new ‘securitised’ products used in Finance was supposedly offset using special insurance type devices, like CDS (Credit Default Swaps) etc. These have two effects. One is to enable banks to leverage even greater lending (new money creation) into the system. The other is to ensure a perfect Domino system, so that any major default actually risks bringing down the whole system, in a way that is incalculable in any useful timeframe. With the result that bail-outs of their losses by public authorities are virtually guaranteed.

And what has happened since the 2008 crash to reform any of this, in Europe of globally?

Absolutely nothing…. that tells you all you need to know, really, about who owns our sham ‘democracies’.

Remember the highest dole and OAPs in Europe, remember the highest children’s allowance in Europe, remember the €6000 per year for each child under 6 for childcare costs, remember the low level of taxation,
I often read here of the bad memories of people regarding FF. the Irish people have very selective memories.

Kevin you’re also leaving out the fact that FF got lambasted by the opposition for not cutting taxes and giving back more during the boom years.Do you really believe the present incumbents would have behaved any different had they been in power during the years in question.

@Kevin.it was an extra one grand a year for childcare which would have been better spent on providing tax relief for childcare. Amazingly, this was paid even for children who lived outside the state.

Old Pathetic Fool.
A pitiful Yokel wheeled out by the vested interest to gibber espouse their propaganda.
A bought out pathetic forgettable old fool.

Bit angry are we E? Where were you between 1999 and 2008? What were you doing? How many holidays or weekends away did you have? If you did not have an easier life in those years you were doing something very wrong. Just because you dont like what Nyberg said does not mean he is wrong or bought. Plenty of people were saying the same thing in the lead up to the 2007 election and Bertie told them to go and commit suicide or grow bluebells.

Between the bankers and politicians they must have some amount of dirt on each other so its prob best for both of them to just bury this and move on..shower of corrupt w#nkers

Angry?
That I am not Tomas.
However I will not be told how I should feel, thank you.
Particularly how I should feel when corrupt/criminal governments and private banks are throwing around money that they knew couldn’t be paid back.