U.S. agencies and investors want to annihilate the Eurozone. So says Elmar Brok, German member of the European Parliament elected on the Christian Democratic Union ticket. Brok is known as an expert on U.S. affairs. He was interviewed by die Welt Online newspaper:
Welt Online: Herr Brok, what’s behind the Standard and Poor’s downgrade of several major Eurozone countries?
Elmar Brok: The downgrade is a targeted attack by the ratings agency on the Eurozone. There is no plausible basis for their decision to downgrade Italy, for example. The nation has a new head of government who is already instituting essential reforms. That’s also the case with Spain, by the way. And France shouldn’t even enter into the discussion. The downgrade is driven by self-interest. They’ve declared a currency war against the Eurozone. Ratings agencies are more crisis creators than they are early warning sirens.
Welt: The United States is waging a currency war against us?
Brok: There are powerful forces in the U.S., especially in the financial sector. They are acting for the sole reason of forcing Anglo-Saxon interests on Europe.
Welt: What sort of interests?
Brok: Financial interests. They want to annihilate the Eurozone for their own profit. That motive is, by the way, easy to verify. Just take another look at where the ratings agencies get their money: They get their money from the financial industry. They get nothing from the states, so they’re dependent on finance. As a result, they set a nation’s credit rating to coincide with the finance industry’s wishes.
Welt: But by damaging the Eurozone, doesn’t the United States damage itself as well?
Brok: The financial industry doesn’t care about that. The investors want to use the current situation in order to maximize their profits.
Welt: But doesn’t the U.S. also have a significant political interest in a strong Europe?
Brok: As with everything else, U.S. solidarity with Europe is always dictated by self-interests. Besides that, there have always been two factions within the U.S. government. The State Department favors a united Europe. Other governmental agencies pursue a policy of divide and conquer. They prefer a divided, less influential Europe.
Welt: You have doubts about trans-Atlantic solidarity then?
Brok: No, I have no doubts about anything. Washington no doubt has a significant interest in close security policy ties with Europe, but that’s only one side of the coin. I’m talking simply about the relationship between various things. Currently, there are clear anti-European sentiments in the United States, something that was recently shown by Republican Mitt Romney in the primary elections.
Welt: Where do those sentiments originate?
Brok: The United States has a totally false image of Europe. The American people can’t be blamed for that because the Anglo-Saxon press has been painting those pictures for them for years. There is no continental European view reported in the business press. European media play no role in the U.S. Americans get all their information from CNN, Reuters and from the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, a self-confessed anti-European.
Welt: Do you think Murdoch journalists are encouraged to convey a specific European image?
Brok: Murdoch himself makes no secret of that. In order to change that, German and other large continental publishing houses must get together and form a global English-language business agency to disseminate the European viewpoint. Then Mitt Romney wouldn’t be able to deliver disparaging speeches about “Europe the welfare state.”
Welt: What don’t the Anglo-Saxons know about European economics?
Brok: I’ll give you an example. At the beginning of this century, Germany was the “sick man” of Europe. It was only the miracle of German determination that permitted corporations to reduce costs and raise productivity so the German economy could begin growing once again. Labor unions worked hand in hand with management. That’s incomprehensible to Americans.
Welt: Will Europe survive the attacks of the ratings agencies?
Brok: I hope so. We have to work harder on our credibility. That means the Eurozone countries have to reduce their debt levels and institute reforms to promote growth. The next step in accomplishing that is the creation of the fiscal union.
Welt: The negotiations for that have supposedly bogged down. Is that correct?
Brok: No, we actually made pretty good progress in our discussions last week. The sticking points that need to be overcome are that indebted countries can sue in the European Union Court of Justice – and then there’s the recommendation of the European Central Bank (EZB).
Welt: And what are the recommendations of the EZB?
Brok: We have yet to look at the details. The EZB recommendations arrived exactly 10 minutes prior to the start of the last advisory session and no one had gotten a preview and that’s why the proposals couldn’t be taken up in that session. Just to be clear, everyone else had gotten their paperwork in by Dec. 29.
How shocking, Anti-European feeling in the US and there is NO Anti-American feeling in Europe?
USA don’t want to see the degradation of US Dollar because US rules/control the world with their Dollar, they print US dollar as many as they want And euro is the main competitor of US dollar.. Even Iran switch their reserves from US$ to Euro, and USA not like it. so that’s why USA want to collapse the European union & Euro.