David Folkerts-Landau, Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank, who has claimed that Scotland would have a “Great Depression” if independent, has a second home he bought for US $11.6 million dollars. His first home is in London – where he would have been well-placed to notice that Deutsche Bank was at the very heart of the LIBOR interest rate fixing scandal. Naturally neither Folkerts-Landau (he and his wife are friends of the Camerons) nor any other senior banker was jailed for that long term criminal illegality.
Folkerts-Landau must, you might assume, have great powers of economic prediction to have accumulated a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars from banking salary and bonuses. Yet he failed to notice that Deutsche Bank was running up 92 billion dollars of US sub-prime mortgage junk that would be written off in the actual great crash, in which Deutsche Bank was again in the centre. Why a man who failed to notice that his own work was contributing to an actual great depression, should be taken seriously in ridiculous prognostications of a new one, is rather beyond me.
It is interesting that Folkerts-Landau states that Winston Churchill’s return to the gold standard was a major cause of the great depression. From the German Deutsche bank, that dismissed its Jewish directors in 1933 and denounced Jewish employees, and received expropriated Jewish assets through direct cooperation with Hitler, this criticism of Winston Churchill might be thought culturally insensitive.
Folkerts-Landau is just another example of the super-rich who realise that the people-based movement for Scottish independence is currently the most potent threat to the neo-con hegemony that has resulted in the destruction of social-democratic society and the massive gap between the super-rich and real people. If you look at the other boards on which sit members of the board of Deutsche Bank, it reads like a catalogue of corporate dominance:
Coca Cola
Pepsi Cola
Microsoft
Accenture
IBM
Bayer
Daimler
EON Energy
Thyssen
XL Group
Alliance Trust
Bilfinger
BMW
That is an illustration of the fact that mega corporations are not really competitive, but part of an interlinked web of capital interests all sharing directors. Those interests have bombarded Scotland with apocalyptic threats the last few days. There will be a great depression, major businesses will leave, energy bills will go up, interest rates will go up, oil will run out, shopping bills will go up, call charges will go up, terrorists will run round unimpeded, Russia will invade. These nonsensical claims have been hammered home relentlessly in perhaps the most concentrated stream of mainstream media propaganda in history.
The extraordinary resilience of the Scottish people, in face of these ludicrous levels of threat and intimidation from “authority figures” like Folkerts-Landau, is something of which I am very, very proud.
Looking up Lord Kestenbaum earlier, I came across Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, ex diplomat.
His interests are extensive to say the least as well as membership of several committees in the HoL.
Professional life Job title Organisation Date
Deputy Chairman Scottish Power 2011-
Deputy Chairman Royal Dutch Shell 2005-12
Director Rio Tinto 2003-
Secretary-General EU Convention 2002-03
Director Scottish American Investment Trust 2002-
Permanent Under Secretary FCO 1997-02
Ambassador to the USA HM Government 1995-97
Ambassador to the EU HM Government 1990-95
Public life Post Organisation Date
President St Andrew’s Clinics for Children 2010-
President UK/Korea Forum for the Future 2007-13
Vice President European Policy Centre 2007-
Chairman Imperial College London 2005-11
Trustee Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland 2005-
Chairman Centre for European Reform 2004-
Trustee Fulbright Commission 2004-09
Trustee National Gallery 2002-10
Trustee Rhodes Trust 1997-10
Member’s focus
Policy
Education
Energy and environment
European Union
International affairs
UK
Scotland
World
East Asia
EU
US
Register of Interests
1: Directorships
Non-executive Director, Rio Tinto plc
Non-executive Director, Rio Tinto Ltd (Australia)
Deputy Chairman, Scottish Power plc
Non-executive Director, Scottish American Investment Co Ltd
Member, Campaign for British Influence in Europe Ltd
2: Remunerated employment, office, profession etc.
Member, Investment Advisory Board, Edinburgh Partners (fund management)
4: Shareholdings (b)
Royal Dutch Shell plc (oil & gas)
Rio Tinto plc (mining & metals)
Scottish American Investment Trust (global growth and investment company)
European Investment Trust plc
10: Non-financial interests (e)
Chairman, Centre for European Reform (London)
Vice President, European Policy Centre (Brussels)
Trustee, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (Dunfermline)
Committee Member, Bilderberg Association (registered charity)
Executive Committee Member, Trilateral Commission (fosters closer cooperation among core industrialized areas of the world)
President, St Andrew’s Clinics for Children (Glasgow)
Goodness gracious! Are there enough hours in the day to fit it all in?
Bilderberg 2014: George Osborne and the man at the centre of everything
After terrifying John Major, Sir John Kerr has moved on to well-connected boardrooms and the heart of Bilderberg
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/bilderberg-2014-george-osborne-john-kerr
2 June 2014
PS Paul Achleitner, the chairman of Deutsche Bank is referred to in the article above.
Well said.
I still fear that either the Scots will cave in under all the media and fatcat barrage of propaganda, or else the fatcats will find some corrupt way to fiddle the election result.
Bringing in the Deutsche Luftwaffe Bank is heavy duty and looking desperate. Obama has already weighed in. If the system will not tolerate Crimea, they certainly will kick up a lot more stink about Scotland.
Barcelona was full of independence seekers for Catalonia, though none showed up on British tv news. The Folkerts-Landaus of this world are watching a potential meltdown in front of their own eyes and I cannot believe they’ll stop at propaganda to maintain their status quo.
This assumption that a separate Scotland will develop into a Scandanavian style social democracy reminds me of the argument that 24 hour drinking would lead to a continental cafe culture. A number of scenarios are possible and pointing out the less optimistic projections does not make one a neocon supporter.
The monsters in these banks have committed massive crime, have bled us dry with bailouts and the quantitative easing scam yet continue to threaten and bully.
Scottish people. Do not bow down to them.
eg the ghastly Mail that the shill Michael White was quoting from on Sky News.
£17bn is pulled out of the British economy as experts warn Scottish independence vote could bring a new Great Depression
Report reveals investors removed £16.8billion from UK assets in August
Capital outflow is the greatest since the height of financial crisis in 2008
Deutsche Bank compares prospect of a Yes vote to the Great Depression
Scotland would suffer years of austerity after independence, bank says
Business leaders have repeatedly warned about the dangers of separation
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754453/Scottish-independence-referendum-17bn-pulled-British-economy.html
Deutsche bank provided the initial finance for the construction of Auschwitz. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/05/news/05iht-berlin.t.html
To be fair though it was DB’s own internally-appointed historian that uncovered these facts, which eventually became public. Pity it took half a century to come out though.
John Edwards
No doubt that is true – a number of directions are possible for an independent Scotland, including the neo-con one, although there is a powerful popular movement against that one.
But staying in the UK has only the neo-con option supported by all the three main Westminster parties.
At least the boss of Wetherspoons has said he sees a positive future for his business in an independent Scotland, so it’s not all bad.
Folkerts-Landau’s co-author of the report made the headlines last year when he predicted that only Jesus could save the Eurozone. Seriously.
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/14/only-jesus-can-save-the-eurozone-deutsche-bank/
Muz
Didn’t the Nat Scots try to forge an alliance with Nazi Germany?
Anon1
I think you are getting confused with the Daily Mail.
Anon1
No, they didn’t. You are thinking about the British aristocracy, I think. They most definitely did.
The taxonomy of the plutocrats will yield a monolith of interests that revolve around the exploitation of the masses through many constructs, chief among these the financial debt slavery, and returns on the constructs passed as “capital”.
The demise of the USSR saw a degree of transparency and reform, as the years of the disorder and chaos plagued the Eastern block satellite countries. The demise of the “capitalist” block has so far yielded no such transparencies, or reforms. Further any move by the masses has been based on their summation of their experiences of their interaction with the control constructs set in place by the said plutocrats to ensure the security of their model of indentured servitude by volunteer salve.
Therefore it should come as no surprise that suddenly those plutocrats and their appointees are engaged in pushing back the tide of the masses intent on freeing themselves from the indentured servitude system of governance, the best way they can; lie and tell more stories.
Fact that Germany is still under the occupation of the same forces that defeated it so comprehensively seven decades ago, is an all too apparent fact given away by the 92 billion dollars of subprime mortgage lending, that it had to buy! This was the same with other countries in the obit of the US empire, further fact that this empire is falling apart and disintegrating, is an all too apparent fact. this is made clear by the bum’s rush of the corporate luminaries, all playing Cassandra to the Scottish people; warning them, not to give up their status as serfs and slaves in their own lands.
The phoney forecasts of the calamities are getting more shrill by the hour, and Scottish people should have anticipated such an eventuality, these free loading “masters of the universe” are not about to let the Scots set a precedence for the rest of the planet, all too easily.
@Anon1
No, they did not in fact the ONLY MP interned during the war for Fascist sympathies was Archibald Ramsay a Scottish Unionist MP.
Craig,
I agree with most of the article, only the Nazi argument is really pointless in that case. It would be right to accuse the institution of Deutsche Bank, but in my opinion its employees should nevertheless be allowed to criticise whoever they want if they’ve got a rational argument, even if it is Winston Churchill. And even if they are neocon assholes like this specimen here.
I’m not saying his point is valid, actually I have no idea. You could state and explain that he made this or that error regarding gold standard and depression, or generally dismiss his reasoning on the grounds that it could actually be improved by using a crystal ball. But the Nazi argument seems completely inane here. What if I accused Churchill of baldness, would you then ask me what my great-grandfather did between ’33 and ’45? Your comparisons are worse than the Third Reich!
Leon
“What if I accused Churchill of baldness, would you then ask me what my great-grandfather did between ’33 and ’45?”
Probably! I am afraid to say that my generation will have to die off before residual feelings of distrust die away completely. In particular, I have always worried that Germany’s absolute uncaring attitude to human rights in Central Asia, where Germany has been the staunchest advocate of the Uzbek and other dictatorships and thwarted action against them in all international fora (because of the interests of Nordstream/Gazprom/Gerhard Schroeder), represented an inherent German failure to feel distaste for dictatorship or gross human rights abuse.
We now have a millipede leading the Labour Party courtesy of a bloc Union vote that favoured him over its brother, the david millipede, that has gone on to reveal its true colours, being currently groomed (by Kissinger no less) to take over from Dennis Ross as the next NWO stalwart. Yet we have this self-same millipede trying to destroy Union power WITHIN the Labour Movement itself! Is this the devil the captive Scottish labour voters want to vote in as the leader next year in the 2015 General election? A millipede that will lead the country to war, with exactly the SAME kind of crypto hollande socialist logic “that ISIL would not have arisen if we had bombed Assad in the first place” !
Good post Craig.I’ve quoted you with that last paragraph.
Pepe Escobar is in London,says the establishment are pulling their hair out.
Wayne Madsen says that the Fix will be in at the end to deny the obvious Yes vote their independence.
How are/will the votes be counted? I read in wings over Scotland months ago that he was asking for volunteers to join up for the count. Tony’s Poll shows a clear Yes vote,most of my FB friends in Scotland are for with a 70/30 split,however my family is split 50/50.
Seemingly there are big yes banners on farms between Cupar and St Andrews and quite a few of the hills.The decider is the Labour voters realising that their leaders are out of touch and sync with the mood of the people.
I’ll find out on Tuesday when I fly in.Can’t wait to settle down to a pint and guage the scene for myself.
Deutsch Bank is the walking dead of Banks.How they could try and lecture anybody on fiscal responsibility is a scream.
Can you believe what Alaisdair McKillop suggests in The Guardian – the OO might help the Yes vote without even mentioning its march and the impact of Paisley’ s death on the process!
The paper’s worst efforts in the campaign is its giving exposure to ignorant false prophets.
The falsehood at the Guardian starts from the top downwards – from the fake jet black toupe of rusbridger right down to the smelly socks of the rookie sports reporter.
Craig,
I feel our indifferent attitude to gross human rights abuse is not much worse than that of other European peoples, but then again the people I’ve met so far may not represent a random sample. Currently I’ve just given up counting on our coalition to stand in for human rights unless promised financial rewards, b u t that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t care. But when we are already discussing the past, let me remind you that in (Western) Germany one of the most consequential and best-remembered occasions of civil unrest occurred when in 1967 people were demonstrating against the visit of the Shah of Persia, whom they regarded as brutal dictator.
Re your para 2: why should the gentleman be in the slightest concerned that his organisation was helping to ruin the rest of us? He did well out of it. For the sort of people you describe, businesses are merely funnels.
Muz / Craig / Donald
Scots Nationalists did attempt to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. It was revealed in 2001 that British intelligence had intercepted correspondence discussing collaboration in return for a promise of independence in the event of a successful Nazi invasion.
Of course the idea that Scotland would have had any sort of independence under Nazi rule is pretty laughable, but so is the idea that they will have any under EU rule.
Anon1
Perhaps you could be more specific. Who was it, what position did they hold, what support did they have, what did the correspondence say? That there was an isolated nutter or two is very probable. But it is nothing compared to the links of the aristocracy and the mainstream media.
“Those interests have bombarded Scotland with apocalyptic threats the last few days.
I am not an eternal optimist. Can we expect the citizens of Scotland to brave the Neo-Con blitz without any backing from UK stasis?
In the final hours I believe our burden is clear. The prominent speeches, the supporting critique, the intention must exude their birth from outside Scotland.
Any less plainly would be selfish and without fail tilt the scales towards NO to an autonomous, self sufficient Scotland.
Craig, you first said it didn’t happen, now you talk of the odd “isolated nutter or two”.
The facts are that a group calling itself the Scottish Independent Movement sought an alliance with Hitler’s Germany, opened channels with Nazi diplomats and handed over intelligence on British infrastructure. Now I haven’t found anything to suggest these people were mentally unstable. Either it happened and the collaborators were quite sane, or it didn’t and the report was a fabrication (no doubt your third line of defence).
“Scots Nationalists”. It’s a bit of a wide net. I imagine if there was some (in any population you have a range of views ideas and agendas) they would have been least true or popular nationalists, and just the sort who are getting behind the no campaign. It’s just ‘natural’ isn’t it? to look after ‘ones interests’. If your that kind of dark hearted person.
But the critical area is the class aspect. I bet many made overtures to those who they saw possible benefit in. It doesn’t surprise me at all it happens in Scotland also.
PS, Equating Nazi rule with EU “rule”. I’m pretty bad with the f word but get real. It seems to me the EU did more good for us than our state would have otherwise.
Chamberlain found accomodation with the Nazi’s.So did Sweden in allowing them transit to Norway soemthing Norway will never forgive Sweden for.Vichy France goosestepped.Stalin had a treaty with Hitler.Many references in the history books to these collaborations.I have looked for proof re Scotland Anon but find only that MI6 made allegations.No mass arrests.No mass movement. Which proof do you have?-Is there?Please supply links,but not to allegations.There was no coup attempt.Scottish regiments were in the thick of all battles.Pretty loyal troops.
Seriously the main references to Scottish and Nazi involvement are recent ” allegations “.
Perhaps to paint the presentmove toward independence as fascist?
It would seem as if the establishment would prefer armed insurrection to the vote.A few thousand dead and wounded with much blood would somehow give independence the seal of approval.
Craig
“In particular, I have always worried that Germany’s absolute uncaring attitude to human rights in Central Asia, where Germany ….. represented an inherent German failure to feel distaste for dictatorship or gross human rights abuse.”
It sounds, Craig, as if you were with Professor Norman Stone, Lord Nicholas Ridley and the sundry other luminaries at that famous (or infamous) seminar called by Margaret Thatcher to analyse and understand “the Germans” and “the German character”.
Glad if you would confirm.
I’m utterly astonished at comments coming from Deutsche Bank, that Scottish independence could trigger a 1930’s still Great Depression. Along with other big business veiled threats, that they would pull out of Scotland,we can no see a clear picture of the Scots being bullied,coerced and financially threatened, into voting no.
http://order-order.com/2014/09/13/currency-options-for-a-free-scotland/#comments