New evidence
has been brought to light by the Corporate Europe Observatory about
the unprecedented, beyond doubt, conflicts of interests inside the EU
and the occupation of the European Institutions by the lobbyists. A
new report proves that the ECB has been literally occupied by private
financial institutions and actually impose ECB's destructive policies
in the eurozone members.
As described
in the report, from 2008, the ECB started undertaking initiatives
that went beyond its earlier remit, among them “Participation in
the Troika (along with the Commission and the International Monetary
Fund) which saw the ECB co-responsible for severe austerity
programmes in indebted Eurozone member states, as well as very
forceful direct, political intervention in countries such as Ireland,
Italy, and Greece.”
Recall that,
early this year, the former Greek minister of finance, Yanis
Varoufakis, revealed the way that the German Chancellor, Angela
Merkel, actually sacrificed
Greece to save the Franco-German banks. This new
report clearly shows why.
As described
in the introduction:
It matters
how the European Central Bank (ECB) makes its decisions, and it
matters who it considers its experts and advisors. Especially if
those advisors bear all the traits of lobbyists for the financial
sector, and not least when the ECB is becoming a more and more
powerful institution. In response to the financial crisis it has seen
its mandate and working area increased. Supervision of the biggest
banks has been handed over to the ECB, it is taking on a bigger role
in setting up rules and procedures for financial markets, it has
become co-administrator of debt ridden countries, and a series of
asset purchasing programmes have seen it spend trillions to boost the
European economy.
Yet an
incredible two thirds of the banks and financial entities under ECB
supervision hold 346 seats in its own advisory groups, and this is
just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conflicts of interest
between the role of the ECB and those whom it chooses to advise it.
Also:
The ECB
groups with private sector participation serve several purposes. They
provide platforms to explain the positions of the ECB to big players
in the market, as stated by the ECB, but their significance goes far
beyond that. That becomes clear when reading the mandates for the
groups and the minutes from the meetings. They are about gathering
information and exchanging views to ensure decision makers in the
institution are well informed ahead of political decisions. They
can be “either topic-based or open-ended”, the Chief Compliance
and Governance Officer of the ECB wrote to Corporate Europe
Observatory. In other words, they can deal with anything related to
the mandate and the activities of the ECB, and nowadays that is no
small matter.
The report
provides the 16 financial companies make it to the top 10 list of
those with most seats in ECB advisory groups. Below we see the top of
the table:
|
Rank
|
Name of company
|
No. of seats
|
|
1
|
Euroclear
|
23
|
|
2
|
Deutsche Bank
|
18
|
|
3
|
BNP Paribas
|
17
|
|
4
|
Societé Générale
|
16
|
|
5
|
UniCredit
|
15
|
|
6
|
Citi
|
13
|
|
7
|
Commerzbank
|
13
|
|
8
|
Clearstream
|
12
|
|
9
|
Crédit Agricole
|
11
|
Note
that, “In April 2012, Euroclear participated
in the restructuring of the Greek debt by swapping 41 billion euros
of Greek bonds, which represented about a third of the foreigner-held
Greek debt.”
Beyond that,
the Franco-German banking cartel dominates inside the ECB with 87
seats, or 42% of the total top 10 seats.
Full
report:
Comments
Post a Comment