Stephen Lendman

(Surveillance Chancellor...)

On September 23, Der Spiegel headlined "Word From Berlin: Triumph Confirms 'Era of Merkelism."

She "won a stunning victory. Conservatives (achieved) the best result in two decades. Merkel is at the zenith of her power."

Financial Times contributor Wolfgang Munchau headlined "Merkel's almost total political triumph," saying:

"Just a few votes shy of an absolute majority was the best conceivable result Angela Merkel could have had. It was an electoral triumph of the kind that are extremely rare in German politics. She has achieved all her electoral goals. She will stay in power - of that there was really never any doubt. But she also secured her other goal - to make it impossible for the three parties of the left to form a coalition against her during the next parliamentary term."

Germany's so called left is as pro-business/anti-populist as right of center parties. Munchau didn't explain.

"The CDU will always have a choice of coalition partners," (he said.) "While (he) disagree(s) with almost all her economic policies, (he) cannot hide (his) admiration for her political ruthlessness."

German newspaper Die Tageszeitung calls her "the worst chancellor in the country's post-war history." She's that and then some. Retaining her "is bad news for Europe." According to Berliner Zeitung, major domestic issues have been neglected. "Things can't stay as they are for another four years." Expect worse ahead, not better.

More »

Ulrich Rippert

The German elections last Sunday had many special features. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), which has consistently sat in the Bundestag (parliament), has been involved in government since 1949, longer than any other party, and which most blatantly represents the interests of finance capital, failed to clear the five percent hurdle required to enter parliament.

The new anti-euro party “Alternative for Germany” (AFD), founded just a few months ago, secured almost as many votes as the FDP and narrowly missed a place in the Bundestag.

But most striking was the victory of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The party whose brutal austerity measures have triggered violent protests and mass demonstrations in many European countries, was able, together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), to get nearly forty-eight percent of the vote.

In contrast, the parties which acted as a supposedly left-wing opposition were punished by the voters. The Greens and the Left Party lost significantly, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) received 25.7 percent of the vote, which despite a minimal gain was its second-worst election result of the Postwar period. The reason is not hard to understand: the SPD, Greens and Left Party are neither left-wing nor an opposition.

More »

KingWorldNews.com / Paul Craig Roberts

The Hindenburg Omen: a technical analysis pattern
that is said to portend a stock market crash. It is named
after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937, in which
the Zeppelin airship Hindenburg crashed and burned.

Today a former US Treasury Official warned King World News that the U.S. is now headed toward a terrifying collapse. He also cautioned that, despite mainstream media propaganda, the Fed and other Western central planners are now desperately trying to keep the current financial system from imploding. This is without question one of the most powerful interviews Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has ever done.

Eric King: “Obviously the big news this week, Dr. Roberts, was the Fed and how they shocked the financial markets with no tapering. Your thoughts?”

Dr. Roberts: “Here’s the situation for the Fed: All of the markets, and the solvency of the big banks, are totally dependent on the Fed buying the bonds. If they don’t buy the bonds, then the interest rates are going to rise, the prices of all debt-related instruments are going to go down, the insolvency of the banks again reappears, the bond market collapses, and the stock market collapses....

“So they can’t stop QE because the whole system is rigged-dependent on that (QE). The other part of the trap they are in is that the longer they carry on QE, the closer they get to the time when the rest of the world simply loses all confidence in the dollar because of the enormous rate at which new dollars are being created, and they bail out (of dollars). And when there is a run on the dollar the Fed loses control and the whole system blows up. So what the Fed is doing is preventing a short-term blowup with QE -- that is, with rigging bond prices, but the consequence is there is going to be a long-run blowup when there is a run on the dollar.

More »