Since restrictions on the free flow of capital are forbidden by the EU Charter of fundamental rights, Cyprus is no longer in the same Europe with the same currency as the rest of the Euro Area members, its position in the Eurosystem is different, unequal. This also means that the single currency has already broken up, albeit on a small scale and in a way that has received little fanfare in the press. On the other hand this is probably the start of something bigger and not the end of the crisis. The break up of the eurozone could be 'sneaky' in just this way, the slow failure of 'peripheral' states and the implementation of capital controls, without changing the name of the individual currencies. This would still leave the larger (population size) nations in the main position of power.Short of revolution, the contradictions in treating a small country the same as a large one in terms of economic policy seems like it can never be overcome in Europe, or will take forever, because essentially it would mean the end of the national borders and the re-shaping of regions of more-or-less similar size, so that they become like, say, the 'counties' of the UK. Member states of a union can be different sizes, as in the USA, but measures are taken federally to relativize the effect of this. While the smaller countries are by necessity already more open in this respect to outside influences, the larger nations with the clout are more likely to resist, even though they are understood as the main motors of integration. The brings up the question exactly what kind of integration is being sought here? A democratic, relatively equalized regional unity? Or, one that has the largest economies with the biggest populations in the same positions of economic and thus financial power?...For example: the Greek GDP is roughly the same as that of the German state of Lower Saxony. Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) is the second largest in area in the country with 47,624 square kilometers, and is fourth in population size with 8 million people, while Greece has about 11 million citizens, so it is comparable, but eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains and it has the eleventh longest coastline in the world. When we compare these two, Greece no longer seems so bad in terms of productivity, yet the rhetoric of power is that Greece is the basket case of Europe because of its history of entitlement and state interference in the 'free economy'. In other words 'socialism' is blamed and more raw capitalist free enterprise is seen as the answer. Why is Greece focused on? Because in other nations suffering the crisis it was, in a big way, the major private 'free' financial institutions that blew up needing, you guessed it, public sector welfare, or in other words 'socialism for the rich'.
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Another day another scandal. Here we are reading about 13 banks who contracted with CPPGroup Plc to 'mis-sell' something dodgy.
The Guardian doesn't tell us the names of the people responsible, they almost never do when it's corporate malfeasance. These people are never held to account.
So the companies just carry blithely on with the routine slap on the wrist (for them) fine.
The corporate world just views these 'bumps in the road' as just a cost of doing business as usual. Here's an example:
" Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank."
" (some of HSBC's Saudi and Bangladeshi clients had terrorist ties, according to a Senate investigation)
This from Matt Taiibi's excellent blog in Rolling Stone magazine.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
The CEO of CPPGroup Plc since 2011 is Paul Stobart. Perhaps the Guardian might ask him to comment. And what about his predecessor?
The Group Chief Executive at HSBC is Stuart Gulliver. He has been with HSBC since 1980. I'd love to hear what he has to say. What's it like to be too important to indict?
Again from Matt's blog.
"Though this was not stated explicitly, the government's rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives from a "systemically important institution" in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. The New York Times put it this way:
Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system."
Ho-hum. Another day, another scandal.
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