As Europe's leaders prepare to strip Britain of ultimate control over finance, insurance, and securities, defenders of the City have begun to talk darkly of the nuclear option – known in EU lore as the "Luxembourg Compromise". France's Charles de Gaulle was the last EU leader to opt for a showdown in the "empty chair crisis" in 1965, withdrawing his officials from Brussels after the commission pushed its luck too far. Britain cannot veto the massive shift in regulatory power to Brussels now under way. Internal market laws are decided by qualified majority voting (QMV), and London has few friends in this fight. What Gordon Brown can do at next week's EU summit it to play the Luxembourg card by invoking "vital national interest", if he is willing to risk a showdown with fellow leaders. This has no legal status. It is the political equivalent of a stamping bull, or a viper's rattle. It means back off, or we strike. "This is an extremely serious crisis," said David Heathcote-Amory, former Europe Minister and now a key Tory MP on the European Scrutiny Committee. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: Brussels is the bomb, baby.
Free-Market Analysis: Control of the worlds' single-most important financial center is shifting from London to Brussels. It's important, even if it is not getting a whole lot of ink. It was in London that one of the first central banks – now known as the Bank of England – refined what would eventually become the current system of paper-money creation. The bank was set up to fund ongoing wars of the Crown, and while Britain may have grown slightly less militaristic (debatable), the mechanism itself has turned, lamentably, into a global institution.
Let us delve a little further. Unlike, say Wall Street, the City of London is just what it appears to be – an actual entity with its own governance, like the Vatican. Here is how Wikipedia describes it: "The City of London Corporation (legally and formally known as the Corporation of London) is the municipal governing body of the City of London. It exercises control only over the City (the ‘Square Mile', so called for its approximate area), and not over Greater London. It has three main aims: to promote the Business City as the world's leading international financial and business centre; to provide high quality local government services; and to provide a range of additional services for the benefit of London, Londoners and the nation."
This entity that is losing power to the European Union has a whole set of rituals, ranks and costumes that go back hundreds of years. So … this is what Britain is losing: the prestige and power of a strange and ancient region within which most of Britain's largest financial shops reside, including the Bank of England. And here, in a further excerpt from the article above, is summated the true meaning of the loss:
"Once we lose control over the City of London we will never get it back, and the consequences could be catastrophic. I think we are in 'Luxembourg territory'. If the City was in Paris you could be pretty sure that French would fight like tigers to save it," David Heathcote-Amory, said. "The Continental countries have no interest in the health of the City, and some want to turn the tourniquet tighter. I fear the Commission is going to get its way since we have such a weak government," he [added]. Downing Street has given no hint that Mr. Brown intends to put up serious resistance. City leaders doubt he will go to the wall for the sake of detested bankers. It is easier to claim a cosmetic victory on fiscal sovereignty, letting the killer detail go through.
Strange and stranger. The majority of the British do not like the EU and do not want to be part of it. Yet the part of Britain that perhaps matters the most, the one square mile in the center of Britain, is basically seceding to the EU – with or without the rest of the country. We have a theory, of course. From our point of view, the EU is NOT annexing more powers. No, the City of London is merely joining up with the part of the British monetary elite that has already left the UK for the broader fields of Brussels.
Yes, to us it seems clear. In fact, it is why we can say with confidence that the Anglo-America axis (particularly Britain) dominates and controls the European Union – and that is why the shift to Brussels is no great inconvenience. Did you think it was Germany or France? Not a chance. Britain won World War II and the French would be speaking German if that country had not. There were only two countries standing at the end of the war – Britain and America, and for all intents and purposes the monetary elite that rides atop these nations is still in charge. Only now it will supervise from Brussels.
From all this we can make further predictions. The euro will likely continue to be promoted even though it is a ridiculous and repressive currency. The central bank of the EU will be promoted as well, perhaps at the expense of the Bank of England, which is likely not seen as so important anymore. We believe the same process is taking place in America, though with a twist, as there is not a larger entity to which the American monetary elites can migrate. No, the Americas have most certainly not kept up with Europe, and we need to await the next act of this shadow play to see how things will turn out.
Of course, the wild card is the Internet. The Internet has changed the rules of the game, made what was secret far more obvious and presented plans and strategies that, once revealed, are fairly predictable. The monetary elite seeks regional agglomerations of power, and lives to plan these shifts inter-generationally. But life offers us no guarantees. These projects are proceeding with more and more resistance both in Europe and America. Smooth sailing was never a possibility and with the new communications technology it is even less so.
Powerful sociopolitical tectonic plates that are shifting beneath the feet of Western citizens – especially those who reside upon Anglo-American real-estate – grinding away even while they watch their soaps and MTV. Yet you can hardly find the story, except on the 'Net. Unfortunately, this is not exactly a new trend. The media and Western citizenry are similarly uninformed about gold and silver, about the slow turning of the great business cycle and, generally, about the world that is shifting round them beneath them at an ever faster rate. You are different, of course. You are reading the Bell. And you know full well that if you want to find the future, you will follow the money, or its trail, anyway.
