Probably many of us have seen these offers from the banks. They write in large letters 'YOURE PREQUALIFIED! and NO ANNUAL FEE! And the whole package is designed to make you feel 'ELIGIBLE'.. privileged.. special.. It's only in the very small print on the reverse side that you find the interest rate .. 28.5% !.
This is exactly how the nations of the world get sucked into a fiscal straightjacket. The EU, for example, will offer a struggling nation a deal that includes guaranteed investments in the country, infrastructure loans, and a new larger market for their goods. The problem always is the fine print.. once the nation comes on board they are no longer financially 'sovereign'. They cannot set their own currency rates to ensure foreign market trading favors them. They're stuck with a common currency - the Euro - whose rates are controlled in Belgium. And just like a credit card customer - once the loans come due - their overhead skyrockets and earnings plummet.
Joining the EU bankrupted Spain, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the other small nations foolish enough to come on board. So why do they? The comfort zone of belonging to something ‘bigger’ than yourself is one reason. I saw an astute writer name it the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ of nations. They may wind up oppressed, but they’re in good company.
I'll never forget my first trip to Spain in 1985 to study Spanish. My school tuition, room and board for an entire month cost me just $600. The next year Spain joined the EU. The cost of the same school program jumped to $1,200.. but that did not enrich the school.. They actually received more from sales as an independent nation, than they now did in the European Union.. which took its share of the proceeds in new taxes and fees.
That school in Spain closed a few years later. Being in the EU meant having to raise their prices so much to cover the new fees, that fewer people could afford the program. Their registrations fell, and they went out of business. This same template applies wherever a country joined the EU and faced the music called ‘austerity’. Meanwhile the bankers in Belgium got richer.
The OTHER reason they come on board is like the Mafia’s protection racket.. the strongman ‘NATO’ is now on YOUR side. Which is precisely why, Nato’s advertising budget includes the creation of threats, and the villifying of nations like Russia - (Which country, in the last 300 years - unlike the NATO nations - has never invaded anyone. (Please be astute enough to recognize that Russia is not the USSR - which Bolschevik totalitarian state - also occupied Russia)
When you study the crisis going on right now in Ukraine - (that is to say, if you study the crisis the right way, by following solid geopolitical analysts and economic professionals), you will constantly be reading about things 'economic' and see the word 'austerity' pop up a lot.
I saw 'austerity' SO much in fact, that I finally did some research on it. (I am not an economist - but I know a trail to follow when I see it).
It seems that just like so many other countries, Ukraine was offered the chance to join the EU in 2013.. except the 'austerity' measures would have been horrible. The president at that time, 'Yanukovych', wisely reneged on the EU's offer - turning instead to the better offer from Russia - including loans and grants that would actually benefit Ukraine and build their economy - (a nation more stagnant than any country in Eastern Europe save Moldova. From 1991, when Ukraine first became a country, it had been a continuous economic disaster.)
Yanukovych was worried that if he accepted the UK offer it would bankrupt Ukraine further than the poor economic condition it was already in, and that the resulting hardships would cost him his presidency.
It turned out that turning down the offer cost him his presidency anyway, because - when Ukraine did not climb on board as another vassal state under the EU's thumb, the US and UK reacted at once by arranging a coup d’ etat, by virtue of violent protests exploding in Kiev, that forced the president to flee the country.
An excellent insight into the economics and politics of the sequence of events in Ukraine is found in the book 'Flashpoint in Ukraine'. Though this digest of geopolitical analyst articles was compiled in 2014 - many of the different authors wound up predicting with startling accuracy the events we're seeing in Eastern Europe now. The book succinctly explains how engagements like Ukraine get started, by showing the templates that have been applied over and over again; Which template study also makes it possible to predict the outcomes - as these authors did - because all you have to do is take the template to its historic finish.
The thing is, just like the credit card offer above, the banks of the world love bringing customers on board for life. For this they crash economies and orchestrate recessions, impoverishing workers and/or nations to where they may then go in and offer 'financial assistance’ - be it credit cards with enticing wording, rebuilding loans; infrastructure loans, etc, all at high repayment terms.
You say, ‘but individuals and nations have to qualify for credit’, Yes. Which is sometimes overcome by banks helping someone to hide debt or improve their balance sheets. (As lenders did with mortgages in 2006 - or Goldman Sachs did for Greece when they sought to join the EU). At the end of the day, it’s about customers; for loans, and goods.
Then just like credit card holders, the nations who take up the lenders on their offers, wind up in their debt forever. Then when they reneg on their payments, which happens - (just like Ukraine is reneging right now to both bankers and Russia), the bankers come in and cash them out taking their natural resources, their copper mines, their oil wells, their land - whatever they have.
If this sounds like the story of Joseph in Egypt, the system that wound up making the Egyptian empire the wealthiest on earth in its day - you're right. That's exactly the template they copied to bring the entire earth under their control. Except in the case of Joseph - God meant it to save lives. These controllers are not magnanimous.
The system has been working well for a hundred years now. The bankers control the markets and the economies. They create the recessions so that land and resources are cheapened - then they buy. Later they create the bubbles and sell. Finally too, at the end of the day - they create the wars..
Wars are supremely profitable for the lenders, because arms are bought by both sides.. munitions, jets, HIMARS, Drones, bombs and more bombs, meaning capital is sought. Then when the dust settles on the conflict, the lenders go in to both sides with the rebuilding loans.
The banking cartel 'Rothschild brothers' mom once quipped 'If my sons didn't want war, there would be no war'.
So friend, you see, we are as borrowers, a microcosm of the world. When the banks make you an offer, the long term payoff might prove to include your house. But what if you're a sovereign country? The long term payoff could include everything within your borders.
They sent the credit card invitation to Ukraine in 2013 - but she didn’t sign up. The war that resulted in that - is just one more bankers war.
VJCB