...from KWN...Jim Rickards Interview excerpt...The 4th Reich Conquers Europe

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/7/28_Jim_Rickards_-_Germanys_Fourth_Reich_Has_Conquered_Europe.html

With fear escalating around the financial world as the US debt ceiling deadline draws near, today King World News interviewed Jim Rickards to get his take on where things stand. One of the things KWN was surprised to learn was that while everyone has been focused on the US’s debt problem, the Germans with the cooperation of their political and financial foot soldiers have essentially conquered Europe.

Jim Rickards explains this extraordinary conquest, “It became more and more clear that there was no good way out, in other words you could just have an outright Greek default, which would be highly disruptive or Greece could have left the Euro and that’s another bad outcome. Not so much economically, but politically, Germany and France don’t want that because it would lead to the unraveling of the entire Euro project which has been going on since the early ‘50s.”

Rickards continues:

“So finally Germany did what everyone thought they would have to do at the end of the day, they stepped up and they have created this new facility (European Financial Security Facility or ESFS). But they have given it (the facility) vast new powers...In Europe for over ten years you’ve had the European Central Bank, which is the equivalent of the Fed, but they did not have the equivalent of a Euro Treasury.

So the best way to understand the ESFS, for the first time we have a European-wide Ministry of Finance. They don’t call it that, but that’s what it is, and it’s run by the Germans. So in effect Germany will be dictating fiscal policy to all of the Euro system from here on out. I think that’s what the Greeks haven’t realized at this point.

They (the Greeks) like the fact that their banks are being propped up, they like the fact that the austerity budget is not going to be as bad as it was. I think in the short run this is very positive for Greece because they won’t have quite the austerity straight-jacket that they would have otherwise been wearing. It’s probably a positive for Greek growth and it’s less disruptive to the market, so that’s the good news.

The bad news at least if you’re Greece or Italy or Spain or Portugal is that from now on your fiscal policy is going to be dictated by Germany. So this is what I call the financial ‘Fourth Reich’. Germany has accomplished financially what it has never been able to do militarily since the days of the Holy Roman Empire, which is to basically gain control over Europe.”