Throughout the entire Greek crisis, German Finance Minister Schaeuble has been front and center in trying to hold a hard line against the Southern European country whom he believes should be given no mercy for the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loans that went into the coffers of his and other banks, and not the Greek people. In fact, the majority of the money Greece owes to creditors was not through any fault of their own, but as a result of a forced bank bailout made to institutions outside of Greece.
Including Germany’s own Deutsche Bank.
So while the German Finance Minister continues to pretend to be the arbiter of fiscal responsibility for Europe, on July 16 three new investigations began against Germany’s largest bank, which pertain to money laundering charges that have arisen amidst the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia.
German banking giant Deutsche Bank is now undergoing three investigations into possible money-laundering at its Moscow branch after Britain joined the United States and the lender itself in probing suspect trades.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Britain’s financial watchdog, suspects the bank carried out so-called “mirror” transactions in Moscow and London in order to help Russian clients move money out of the country, the Financial Times newspaper reported earlier this week.
According to the Financial Times, the transaction involved saw Russian clients buy securities in rubles through Deutsche Bank in Moscow while simultaneously the bank bought securities for similar amounts in euros and dollars abroad.
Earlier this week news agency Reuters reported that the New York State Department of Financial Services had launched an investigation into Deutsche Bank for possible money laundering in Russia.
According to Reuters’s sources close to the matter, the value of the suspect transactions could exceed $6 billion in total. - Russia Today
Greece was allowed into the Eurozone because of manipulated accounting tricks created by Goldman Sachs back in 2001 that hid debt ratios that should have kept them out being allowed to use the Euro within the European Union. And since the beginning of the century, Greece has become a dumping ground for the big banks to take on their toxic bond debts, while at the same time funneling loans meant for the Greek economy back to themselves as a bailout for their bad speculative bets.
Both the IMF and the ECB have stated in just the past few days that Greece’s debt is unsustainable, unpayable, and requires a haircut which both institutions are in favor of. However, Germany is not interested in any relief for Greece because the resulting actions would place their own banks in jeopardy for derivative debts that Greece had nothing to do with.
The end result is that this crisis has never been about saving Greece, but about saving an insolvent banking system for the rest of Europe that came about through fiscal irresponsibility and the same speculative bets that led them to be bailed out by the U.S. and Federal Reserve seven years ago. And in the meantime, new investigations against Germany’s largest bank for money laundering shows Europe that Germany is in no position to stand on the high ground, and should be removed from the bailout negotiations since their only interest is protecting their own criminal and insolvent institutions at the expense of Southern Europe.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com, Roguemoney.net, and To the Death Media, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Wednesday afternoons giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.
