The renunciation of one’s own sovereignty costs a lot. If a country decides to join the Eurozone, it must accept that it will not be able to devalue its currency in the event of an economic crisis. The Italian Lega is now trying to fulfil its election promises, even though the state coffers are empty. The solution? A parallel currency.

The idea is nothing new. What Claudio Borghi, the economic expert of the Lega Nord, came up with was tried out by Argentine society at the turn of the century: in 2001 the government in Buenos Aires launched “cuasimonedas” to plug its debt hole. Each province issued treasury bonds to meet payment obligations. The most popular became the Patacones of Buenos Aires province, which were given mainly to those employed in the state sector and social recipients, but with which one could pay everywhere.

The introduction of Argentina’s parallel currency initially led to chaos in the country: the rich transferred their dollars abroad (a total of more than 100 billion), the poor and the middle class had no choice and immediately spent the Patacones they received in fear of them becoming worthless overnight. However, this spurred consumption and helped the economy to get back on its feet. The good 2002 and 2003 harvests and the rising commodity prices on the world markets also helped to ease the financial situation of this eighth-largest country in the world. Argentina survived the crisis because it was able to devalue its money and because it has the most fertile soil in the world.
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The situation in the Gulf of Oman is getting worse. After the attacks on two tankers, Khamenei said that he would never sit at the negotiating table with the US again.So Iran will continue its nuclear program till the Israeli strategists interpret its advancement as unacceptable and will have Iranian targets attacked. Up to this time a new tanker war is more likely than 30 years ago, of which Gefira warned already in autumn 2018. Our forecasts proved correct.

The attacks could indeed have been carried out by Iranians, and it is quite possible that they were a provocation of the Americans. Such a hypothesis is justified by the analysis of the history of the conflict between the Great Satan and Iran. In August 1953, MI6 and CIA overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq for wanting to nationalize the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). The company earned huge sums, of which Iran received hardly anything. The CIA’s Shah Reza Pahlavi, installed in place of Mossadeq, guaranteed the US that Iran would not cross over to the Soviet Union. With the help of the Americanshe founded the secret service SAVAK, which suppressed the population, tortured and committed numerous murders.The Americans were not bothered by this for decades, but today they are outraged by the violation of human rights in Iran: indeed by the violation of their interests in the region.
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“I request you to release of duty the head of security, the attorney general and the minister of the defence,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in his inaugural speech which he delivered on 20th of May. Were the head of security, the attorney general and the minister of the defence listening? Obviously they were and this might spring them into action. Is it only their posts that the new president is after? Or their heads as well?

While addressing both houses of parliament, Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to the deputies to have new laws passed abolishing the immunity of the members of the legislative and imposing severe punishments for those who have enriched themselves illegally. Ultimately, much to the disbelief of the present, the new head of state said he was dissolving parliament with immediate effect, which means that also the deputies have just lost their well-paying jobs.

Will a coalition form between them and the three ministers who already know they are not tolerated by Volodymyr Zelensky? Is what the new president said a show of political zeal for his so numerous voters (73% of the ballot)? Is he backed by such strong powers that he does not need to reckon with the consequences?

Pundits have been and are still pointing to the political inexperience of the new president. Inexperienced he might well be, but even so would he be acting so foolishly right at the start of his tenure, turning his potential allies and important figures into his bitter enemies? Or were they his bitter enemies anyway and Volodymyr Zelensky merely forestalled their insidious action that is brewing anyway?
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AN INTERVIEW WITH FRANCESCA TOTOLO

“Never before has a criminal phenomenon enjoyed widespread international support by governments, political parties, religious and civilian organizations, popular opinion, and never before has a sovereign state renounced to exercise control over its borders.”

These opening words by Gianandrea Gaiani are a fitting introduction to Francesca Totolo’s latest book Inferno Spa. Gaiani is no stranger to the business of illegal immigration, being an author of several books on the subject. He was interviewed by Gefira in 2017 when the Italian government was then still a center-left pro-migrants coalition. Totolo has agreed to an exclusive interview for Gefira and we recently met her in Florence, where she was presenting her new book.

Francesca Totolo is a freelance investigative journalist and collaborates with a variety of Italian and international press agencies and websites. Her investigations have been published both in Italy and abroad. We could easily call Totolo a diligent – and outspoken – journalist as her new book, which she wrote with Dante’s Inferno in mind, involves just that: solid, painstaking, diligent research and fact-checking. The result is the equivalent of an encyclopedia of who’s who in the business (Spa is the Italian acronym for joint-stock company, equivalent of the German AG) of the immigrants’ industry, an industry which moves an unending flow of human beings and money.
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Most economists are delighted with the situation on the labour market of the world’s largest economy and hardly want to hear about the vision of a recession. They believe that the unemployment rate below 4% (which has been around for over a year) and a sustained increase in new jobs are evidence of the strength of the economy.

They also rejoice because such low unemployment was achieved with moderate household indebtedness. Economists believe that the process if maintained should continue to encourage the optimism of most consumers and encourage them to consume. Until consumers fall into the euphoria of spending (which has always been a harbinger of a crisis or recession), there are still a few quarters of consumption growth ahead of us. The increase will not result from rising salaries, as at such levels salary increases are only possible at a moderate pace, but from the rising household debt, which would be willing to take out loans in such an economic environment.
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The EU elites pay homage to the laissez-faire of liberalism. They have been deregulating and “liberating” the market for 30 years. The Western governments also follow the philosophy and hardly intervene in the market. There is only one authority that can intervene effectively in the EU: the ECB. Globalisation since the 1980s, as well as the liberation of trade and human traffic, has enabled a violent increase in world GDP and the enrichment of corporations. For emerging economies such as India or China, this was an opportunity to get out of poverty. The liberals, however, who had a global village and human happiness on their banner, were basically interested in opening up the large Asian markets for their products. The tools of these elites, the World Trade Organization and the IMF, ensured that the middle class grew in emerging countries and thus the sales markets for European corporations. Their bosses would probably say: it is a pity that India and China are not allowed to join the EU.

Awesome! In any case, the West monetized Asia’s cheap labour in this way. At the same time, the middle class in China, India, South Korea and other tigers grew, but at the expense of the European workforce and middle class, which were virtually cut off from liberal profits. While corporate profits, and hence GDPs, skyrocketed, real wages did not rise and wealth was concentrated among elites and their lobbyists. This process was accelerated by the reforms of the 2000s: in Germany at that time the reforms of the left-liberal coalitions were supposed to create more jobs for people through unusual forms of employment (mini-jobs, temporary work, fixed-term contracts, etc.), which led to the fact that even today there are more and more people with low incomes in abnormal working conditions. “The middle class has shrunk from 48 per cent in the period 1995-99 to 41 per cent in 2014-15.

The latest SPD proposals (4 billion for housing, 5 billion for the long-term unemployed, etc.) will not stop this process as they propose redistribution in favour of the underclass. Macron, on the other hand, wants to tax the middle class even more and ignores its intelligent, healthy core – the teachers. Awesome! Meanwhile, the two states mentioned, Germany and France, are swimming in money according to mainstream media. In the USA, the incomes of the richest top class (1%) of society reached the level of 1929, the time before the great crisis. Continue reading →

Some are old enough to remember it, some will have known it from history books or documentaries: a Vienna meeting between President John Kennedy and the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, both in the company of their wives Jacqueline and Nina Petrovna. Those photos were shown in magazines and brought to every TV viewer, also in the country of the workers and peasants liberated from capitalist exploitation. One can only imagine how embarrassed the Soviet viewers then and in the decades to come must have felt: the simple-minded Khrushchevs, the Brezhnevs and the Chernienkos displaced the well-mannered Romanovs, the Gorchakovs, the Sheremetevs.

Never mind, the system made a statement for all to see. Look, here is the new normal. A descendant of worker class parents, initially a worker himself, leads a two hundred million strong union of nations, giving orders to scientists and scholars. The ideology triumphed. There they were, like Vera Mukhina’s impressive Worker and Kolkhoz Woman steel monument. With this difference, however, that the figures in the sculpture command respect due to the grace and beauty of their shapely bodies.

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