European Central Bank in Frankfurt

As for the economic meltdown, look around you. It’s here anyway, is Europe going to rescue us from the global mess created by the bankers? How, by handing total independence to the bankers? By allowing the banks to operate without the fussy interference of our (allegedly) democratic representatives?

The European Central bank as our salvation? I’m a little dubious. Lisbon serves this institution the monetary policies of all the European nations on a platter (silver, no doubt) once it is ratified. Then it disconnects the bank from any possibility of external influence, say for example the will of the people or other such potentially irksome distractions. Is this a good thing? Oh indeed, the experts will tell you, because if incompetent politicians are allowed to intervene in monetary policy they’ll go and spoil everything! The whole economy could collapse as a result, don’t you know?

We are told we need central banks, they are essential, economies can’t work without them. In the modern world that might even be true. But that’s never the main issue. Accountability is the key. This European Central Bank will end up accountable to nobody bar itself and we should be very worried about that, even if we don’t hear much about it on the TV.

Concerns have also been raised over the Lisbon Treaty which, like the European Constitution, will make the ECB a formal institution of the EU and which does include – contrary to what is often said – an article ensuring the bank’s independence (article 282 (3) TFEU). – Wikipedia

If the European Central Bank is anything like its American cousin, the Federal Reserve, then we are in for a whole lot of trouble. Any nation that hands control of its money to a small, invariably self-interested group of individuals, as is the case with the Federal Reserve, ends up being directed by that minority group. As Mayer Amschel Rothschild boasted, “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.” Whatever could he have meant, nothing bad I hope?

Yes we get flags and blue and yellow bunting and a new president and a human rights charter we can wave around furiously as we lose our jobs and homes. But how close are we to losing what little control of our money we have left and what sort of people are we handing this control to?

The politicians, you know – the people who work for us, won’t say. Perhaps they don’t know. Perhaps they have fallen in line with what seems to be an emerging pattern in our modern democracies, the willingness to sign now and read later.