Things are afoot in Italy. (A minor part of why I bought Italian wine, but it was in my mind at the time ;-)
Seems the “Right Wing” Government wants to abolish the Central Bank, toss the rascals in prison, and haul the gold back to The People’s Vault somewhere.
As Gail likes to rail against central bankers (and I’m slowly coming around to that POV… despite my Keynesian training…) it looks like she just might get a test case for her beliefs. Italy.
“EPS” is traditionally Earnings Per Share. That does, indirectly, drive markets, but it isn’t “markets”. I’ve bolded bits.
Salvini Calls For Elimination Of Italy’s Central Bank, “Prison Time For Fraudsters”
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/10/2019 – 19:56On Friday, in a moment of predictive insight, Bank of America correctly warned that the greatest threat to EPS – i.e., markets – in the next 3 years “is an acceleration of global populism via taxation, regulation & government intervention.” Just one day later, this warning to the financial establishment was starkly manifest in that ground zero for Europe’s populist revolt, Italy, where the country’s coalition government hinted at where the global populist wave is headed next when he slammed the country’s central bank leadership and stock market regulator, escalating its attacks on establishment figures ahead of the European parliamentary vote in May.
Matteo Salvini, the outspoken head of the anti-immigrant League party, said the Bank of Italy and Consob, the country’s stock market regulator, should be “reduced to zero, more than changing one or two people, reduced to zero”, or in other words eliminated, and that “fraudsters” who inflicted losses on Italian savers should “end up in prison for a long time.”
[…]
Saturday’s latest verbal crackdown targeting of the Bank of Italy comes after central bankers issued more pessimistic economic growth forecasts for this year compared with the numbers underpinning the government’s budget. As we reported last month, Italy entered into a technical recession in the second half of 2018, with the Bank of Italy cutting its GDP forecast for 2019 to 0.6% compared with a 1% forecast made by the government. At the same time, the European Commission slashed Italy’s GDP forecast from 1.2% to a borderline recessionary 0.2% for the full year, hinting that Italy’s budget deficit forecast will not only be missed, but could re-emerge as a focal point of renewed tensions between Rome and Brussels in the coming months.
[…]
As previously reported, in the latest anti-establishment shot across the bow, several days ago the government nominated Paolo Savona, a veteran economist and prominent Eurosceptic who had previously served as minister for European affairs, as the new president of Consob. Savona was last year been blocked as the coalition’s first choice as economy minister by Italian president Sergio Mattarella, following strong pressure from Brussels and a revolt in the Italian bond market.
I’d link directly to the Financial Times article they reference, but the FT is a bit of a PITA about letting you read articles and quote text, so no, no linky for the FT.
Salvini Proposes Seizing Control Of Italy’s Gold Reserves From Central Bank
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/11/2019 – 20:11
Italy’s populist de facto leader Matteo Salvini seems set on shaking Europe’s financial establishment to the core.One day after the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the League party, called for the elimination of Italy’s central bank and the country’s financial regulator, Consob, saying the two institutions should be “reduced to zero, more than changing one or two people, reduced to zero”, or in other words eliminated, and that “fraudsters” who inflicted losses on Italian savers should “end up in prison for a long time”, Salvini prompted fresh shocked gasps in Brussels and Frankfurt when he raised the possibility of seizing Italy’s massive gold reserves away from the country’s central bank.
“The gold is the property of the Italian people, not of anyone else,” Salvini said in comments to reporters on Monday, according to the FT.
The controversial comments, which were seen as threatening the “independence” of the Italian central bank, whose one-time head was none other than Mario Draghi, prompted Giovanni Tria, Italy’s economy minister, to defend the independence of the central bank.
Earlier in the day, Italy’s populists called on lawmakers to pass legislation stating that its gold holdings belong to the state, Bloomberg reported.
The gold ownership bill presented by euroskeptic lawmaker Claudio Borghi of the League adds to an already tense relationship between the Bank of Italy and the coalition government. It’s also sparked criticism from opposition politicians, and some national media argue that it may allow the government to raid the gold reserves to fund spending promises.
Borghi has rejected the accusation and said he’ll ensure Parliament has ultimate power. His concern is that ambiguity of ownership means that a victorious legal action against the central bank — for inadequate supervision, for example — leaves open the possibility of a claimant getting compensation in gold.
[…]
If Salvini is indeed serious to monetize its gold, it would bring in a healthy chunk of change for Italy’s populist leadership: the Bank of Italy has the third-largest central bank holding of gold reserves in the world after the US and Germany, owning 2,452 tonnes according to the World Gold Council, which at today’s prices would amount to just over $103 billion.Of course, even that amount pales in comparison with Italy’s total debt load of €2.35 trillion, which would suggest that if Salvini is indeed focused on tearing up the legacy constraints of his country with some financial establishment, the next step would be declaring the country’s sovereign debt “odious” or null and void, followed ultimately by the Italeave, and the the return of the Italian lira.
So looks like not just the UK in play and France in a mess, but Italy stirring the Bankers Pots of Gold too… ;-)
My but it’s fun to watch!
Another POV:
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201902131072371091-italy-gold-central-bank-salvini-europe/
Opinion
09:39 13.02.2019(updated 09:40 13.02.2019) Get short URL
2131Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who also heads the right-wing Lega Party, has called for taking control of Italy’s gold reserves away from the country’s central bank. Sputnik has discussed the possible reasons behind the proposal and its prospects with Andrea Trunzo, an economist based in the UK.
Sputnik: What is behind Matteo Salvini’s call to remove Italy’s gold reserves from Brussels?
Andrea Trunzo: There are a couple of possible interpretations. The first is that Salvini is voicing the concerns of some of his MPs, those eurosceptics that are trying to prevent a situation where any sort of residual national control over the gold reserves may be lost in the future.
The second is that this debate on the gold reserves is actually part of a broader and more domestic debate on the role of Bank of Italy, which — reportedly — they perceive as unaccountable, ineffective and having a questionable status.
[…]
https://sputniknews.com/business/201902121072338731-salvini-bank-of-italy-gold-reserves/
Business
12:31 12.02.2019(updated 12:34 12.02.2019) Get short URL
13504Earlier this week, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini called for the removal of the leadership of the Bank of Italy because they failed to prevent the country’s banking crisis.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who also heads the right-wing Lega Party, has called for taking control of Italy’s gold reserves away from the country’s central bank.
“The gold is the property of the Italian people, not of anyone else,” Salvini underscored.
READ MORE: Salvini Says Italy’s Deficit Will Grow in 2019, Even If Budget Rejected by EU
The comments came after he insisted that the management of the Bank of Italy should be “completely cleared out” because they failed to avert the country’s banking crisis.
“We are here because those who should have supervised didn’t supervise,” Salvini said, adding that “fraudsters” who inflicted losses on Italian savers should “end up in prison for a long time”.
[…]
So there’s some confirmation of the story.
It looks like the Rothschild’s set up the Central Banking system in many countries around the world. At the core of it is something I need to explore more. A Nation issues bonds to the Central Bank, who then issue currency. The Government must pay interest on those bonds that can only be done by using currency, so must issue more bonds… Rinse and repeat. It looks to me at first glance like there is an in-built escalator from which there is no escape. I need to spend an afternoon on a “Dig Here!” into that to be sure, but at first glance it looks a bit SCAM-ish.
Then there is the assertion that JFK was killed not just for the Bay Of Pigs and breaking a promise to The Italian Mafia (as did his Irish forefathers in the Irish Mafia – thus the Valentine’s Day Massacre) but also for having the audacity to print Treasury Notes, bypassing the Central Bank. In theory, JFK could have put The Fed out of business by doing that and broken the debt escalator.
So at present we’ve got one Giant Can Of Worms being opened in Italy. It is happening in the context of Supreme Globalist Power and Growing Nationalist Backlash, and with a history of probable “Assassinations for effect”.
Yes, I’m open to “Conspiracy Theory” on this one. Why? Because “conspiracy to FOO” is one of THE most prosecuted crimes in the west and because we have massive overwhelming evidence of Conspiracy FACT in the Soros Organizations, the UN “commissions” and “agenda”, and the Democratic Party of the USA (not to mention the Climategate Emails and more). There IS a point where it stops being theory and starts being fact, and for those it is way in the rear view mirror.
So is it time to start taking “3rd Party Life Insurance” out on Salvini?
Or time to start shorting Rockefeller Futures?
I have no idea.
What is clear, though, is that a wide spread Populist Nationalist Movement has started; that whole “eye opening” thing, and they do not like at all what they have seen. Macron needs to remember “The French Haircut”, just as the Dimocrats need to remember that threatening the Gun Owners Of America is a Very Bad Idea. America has more guns than people that are in the statistics so it’s pretty likely that there are a lot of pro-liberty voters…
The Rockefellers played a quiet slow hand for decades and got away with it. Soros in league with the Socialist / Communist folks went for aggressive usurpation of national authority. It worked for a couple of decades… Has Soros reached a “Jump The Shark” moment that will take down the Rockefeller system too? One can only hope so. And buy popcorn futures ;-)
Musings from the Chiefio 
I think the accusation that central banks “manipulate the currency” is far from a conspiracy theory — it’s more like the definition and declared purpose of such an institution. These banks are chartered as a response to the real problem of mismatch between commodity money supplies and every-other-kind of economic demands.
Once established, the human beings operating the machinery abuse it for other purposes. Again, that’s not an accusation of conspiracy. That’s recognizing human nature. No different than a chronic drunk driving his lawn tractor on the highway to replenish from the liquor store. People do what they can with what they’ve got to accomplish their goals — irrespective of design intentions.
I understand the temptation to remove the machinery. Go back on the gold standard, and make the drunkard walk. But I’m not completely convinced the old problems are actually better than the current, far from perfect, solutions. I’d like to hear about new solutions, too.
Two good reads on Central Banks and the post-WW2 World Financial Order. “The Battle for Brenton Woods” and “The Creature from Jekyll Island” Both can be found in pdf and info is available on youtube
https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8881-critics-blast-new-ecb-boss-eu-banker-coup-d-etat… re independence of Italy’s Central Bank, its former leader, Mario Draghi, is another member like George Soros, of Rockefeller’s globalist, guvuhmint- by – stealth Trilateral Commisssion.
Our banks are scary…..they can tap into “Crony Capitalism” on an impressive scale. Who can forget “Too Big To Fail”?
This country would be in a much better place if those huge banks had been allowed to fail and all those bank executives living in the Hamptons had been forced to sell their Renoirs.
The #1 crime that any government can commit is killing its own citizens. The #2 crime is “Crony Capitalism” otherwise known as robbing the poor to feed the rich.
At the time I said the businesses failing was not the problem it was the cure.
We would have been much better off if we let those businesses fail outright or at least take huge losses so they had a reason not to do it again. By holding them harmless you just encourage more of the same.
“Who can forget “Too Big To Fail”?”
Indeed.
Who can forget the line they gave when a bail-out of the little guy was proposed: “Can’t do that, they won’t learn their lesson!”. Until it became them that needed to “learn”, of course.
Larry & Kneel.
Right on! Capitalism works best when the gumment does not mess with it.
Unknown “European Financiers” funded the English Revolution & put the Dutch Captain-General William Stradholder on the English throne. They gained a charter for the Bank of England 1694.
This William borrowed £1,250,000 from the anonymous financiers & agreed a general taxation of the populace to repay the debt, an economic bondage. The Khazar Jewish moneylenders gained the power to issue & control the currency of the nation, so they cared not who made the laws.
They established the Gold Standard whereby the directors of the BOE could lend out £1,000 for every £100 worth of gold they held on deposit, charging interest on the full £1,000. This made a nominal interest rate of 5% an actual rate of 50%, the start of fractional reserve banking.
The Banksters founded, funded & fostered both Communism & Fascism.
The first known writing of Agenda 21 is Rothschild & 12 “pals” plan for global domination 1773.
Book, 1955, by WW II Canadian naval intelligence officer William Guy Carr.
Well referenced by chapter, no index.
Available free online via http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net using the search box.
The previous English money/taxation system was based on tally sticks & had worked OK for, from memory, 700 years: 3.5 hr youtube video BILL STILL MONEY MASTERS
John Doran.
OOPS, Carr’s book is Pawns in the Game.
I thoroughly recommend G. Edward Griffin’s book, mentioned above, The Creature From Jekyll Island. The continuation of the parasitic English banking system in the US via the Fed since 1913.
The Chapter summaries can be read in about an hour.The Bankster endgame is no less than a world totalitarian govt.
The Fed is the 4th US Central Bank.
Inflation is a stealth tax, punishing savers………
Well referenced by footnote, indexed, a bibliography & appendixed.
Griffin’s current free, anti-collectivist weekly news service is http://www.needtoknow.news
John Doran.
The Bankster system used to be fractional reserve = 10% lending & 90% fraud, IMHO.
Now it’s 100% fraud: even small banks making loans are doing so on 100% fiat money, created as debt, at the point of that loan agreement.
Prof. Richard Werner proved this by empirical research 2014 with a small German bank.
The bank directors were not aware of how their system worked. The big banks refused to participate. http://www.professorwerner.org/publications
Scroll down to: Can banks individually create money out of nothing……?
Prof. Werner is now involved in a small public bank in Southampton, UK.
This is the sustainable future, like the Bank of Idaho in the US.
About 97% of money in circulation has thus been created, as debt, out of thin air, to the enslavement of humankind & the vast profit of Banksterkind & their tame politicians etc, most of whom do not know what is going on. This system of ever more debt creation to both finance human enterprise & service existing debt is an unsustainable ponzi scheme, as you have noted, EM.
John Doran.
The Banksters know that their ponzi scheme is coming to an end: the value of the $US is down to less than 5 cents since 1913 & countries are setting up their own SWIFT systems & buying gold like crazy for when the $US crashes. Central Banks also are buying gold.
The big reset approaches: protect yourselves. Your bank deposits count as bankster assets, & are vulnerable to confiscation.
This is the origin of the fake global warming/climate change/impending climate/ecological disaster fraud: it is another flank attack of the Banksters to persuade people & countries that there is a global problem for which the only solution is a global govt. This fraud also is failing: in the UK recently, in desperation, kids were given a day off school & pressured into marching to protest climate change !!! A large majority of our dozy & greedy politicians are fully on board with the climate fraud, demonising CO2 as a warming pollutant not plant food. Only 5 of our 650 MPs voted against the disastrous Climate Change Bill. Countries are backing away as fast from the nonsense Paris Agreement as they are from the $US & its SWIFT system. BUT, & it’s a big but, the vast majority of people are just not convinced: poll after poll shows this scam at the bottom of most peoples’ concerns.
Researching Rothschild quote “indurated down to a fixture” I came across this, which I agree with about 95%: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/07/20/jewels-of-reality-from-our-foreign-occupied-paper-superpower/ which demonstrates the predatory Bankster attitude to debt.
John Doran.
Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball has realised that the warming/climate/environmental fraud is a Bankster strategy, though he has not figured the fiat money/debt fraud.
As a hardened veteran of court cases designed to impoverish & dispirit him, Dr. Tim knows he has to 100% back up his statements.
One therefore has to sit up & pay attention when he names the Bankster Rockefellers & their crony multi-billionaires like George Soros, Ted Turner & Maurice Strong etc
He names bent politicians like Al Gore & Tim Wirth.
He names bent “scientists” like James Hansen, Ben Santer, Michael Mann & doomsters like Obomboy’s science czar John Holdren & his depopulationist co-author Paul Ehrlich & the climategate shower at the CRU, Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
And many more.
He names the Rockefeller creatures the UN IPCC & the depopulationist UN Club Of Rome.
He correctly, IMHO, identifies the globalists’ motives: “to eliminate capitalism and its industrial engine while reducing world population.” Page 116.
He lays out both the fake & the real climate science.
At only 121 pages his book is a must-read:
Human Caused Global Warming, The Biggest Deception In History.
http://www.drtimball.ca
John Doran.
The value of all the gold in the world is only 8 trillion. The world GP is 78 trillion.
Gold’s value would have to increase a lot for the world to be on the gold standard.
And without credit, where would most of us be? Living in a mud hut, most likely.
jdseanjd says:
22 February 2019 at 10:26 am
Sorry to spoil your theory but it wasn’t Jewish bankers, it was Scottish bankers led by Patterson. The driving force though was the huge distrust of James the second and his catholic colleagues. The Book of Martyrs was still being read by a lot of the population, and James was an inept politician. The barbaric treatment of those accused of rebellion with Monmouth (3 years before) even if they were innocent of the charges arroused wide spread fear and anger.
The gold standard was introduced by Isaac Newton to replace the chaotic currency mess.
Yes, the tally stick bundles worked well but were cumbersome and required much storage.
https://invertedlogicblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/political-opinions-63-piigs-an-economic-pathology/
How about giving me a hint, intertedlogic.