By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 16, 2016
Mark Carney, BOE Governor, Testifying Before Parliament
If you think that a referendum vote on June 23 by UK citizens on whether to withdraw from the European Union (called Brexit, short for British Exit), is simply a proxy on whether the UK should dislodge itself from the edicts of Brussels, think again. It’s morphed into a much broader debate on whether citizens worldwide should surrender their right to a participatory democracy in order to further the interests of multinational corporations, secret trade agreements packed with secret court tribunals, global banking hegemony and central banks attempting to keep all these balls in the air for their one percent overlords.
One particular central bank is sure to come under fire today. Members of the British Parliament have been warning Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England (BOE), to not engage in political lobbying on the issue of Brexit, which he is perceived to have been doing for months. Carney is already the subject of skepticism in the U.K. He’s a former Goldman Sachs executive, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the first foreigner to run the BOE in its 300-year history. (This is reminiscent to many of how Stanley Fischer, head of Israel’s central bank from May 2005 until the end of June 2013 and before that a Citigroup Vice Chairman who was born in Zambia, is now Vice Chairman of the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve.)
Continuity government at central banks, like continuity government in the Oval Office, helps to ensure the perpetuation of a positive unified message on globalization as the realities of an institutionalized wealth transfer system to the one percent comes into ever greater focus by those paying attention.
Carney appears to have spit in the eye of Parliament again today with the release of the BOE’s Monetary Policy Committee statement, which was filled with a litany of horrors on what could happen if the UK leaves the European Union. The statement said in part:
“In the weeks since the May Report, an increasing range of financial asset prices has become more sensitive to market perceptions of the likely outcome of the forthcoming EU referendum. On the evidence of the recent behaviour of the foreign exchange market, it appears increasingly likely that, were the UK to vote to leave the EU, sterling’s exchange rate would fall further, perhaps sharply. This would be consistent with changes to the fundamentals underpinning the exchange rate, including worsening terms of trade, lower productivity, and higher risk premia. In addition, UK short-term interest rates and measures of UK bank funding costs appear to have been materially influenced by opinion polls about the referendum. These effects have also become evident in non-sterling assets: market contacts attribute much of the deterioration in global risk sentiment to increasing uncertainty ahead of the referendum. The outcome of the referendum continues to be the largest immediate risk facing UK financial markets, and possibly also global financial markets.
“While consumer spending has been solid, there is growing evidence that uncertainty about the referendum is leading to delays to major economic decisions that are costly to reverse, including commercial and residential real estate transactions, car purchases, and business investment…
“A vote to leave the EU could materially alter the outlook for output and inflation, and therefore the appropriate setting of monetary policy. Households could defer consumption and firms delay investment, lowering labour demand and causing unemployment to rise. Through financial market and confidence channels, there are also risks of adverse spill-overs to the global economy…”
There is no question that mega banks and stock markets controlled by the mega banks’ financing of margin loans are throwing a Brexit tantrum in much the same way they threw taper tantrums when the U.S. Federal Reserve hinted it would be ending its previous Quantitative Easing program, i.e., buying up their piles of toxic debt. Global banks are accustomed to cracking their whips and throwing market tantrums until they get their way. Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase even had the temerity to visit the U.K. earlier this month and threaten his workers there with job losses if they voted in favor of Brexit. JPMorgan’s frequent partner in crime, Citigroup, has also warned workers of job cuts if the Brexit vote succeeds.
As if on cue, U.S. mega banks have been selling off as polls show voters planning to vote in favor of leaving the EU have taken a six-point lead. This morning in New York markets, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are all trading in the red. Bloomberg News is reporting that two large European banks, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, which also have a heavy footprint on Wall Street, have slumped to all-time record lows this morning.
Other central bankers are also doing their part to shore up the scare campaign. Yesterday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen along with the heads of the Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan and Swiss central bank all alluded to disruptions to the global economy if the U.K. leaves the European Union.
What these central bankers and mega banks really seem to be saying is that referendums where citizens actually get to vote on shaping their democracy and economic destiny don’t fit neatly with our plans for the new world order.
