ECB adopts zero rates: EU leaps toward corporate fascism

(TRUNEWS) In a major step toward corporate fascism, ECB chief Mario Draghi announced that benchmark interest rates will be slashed to zero, quantitative easing (QE) extended, and EU corporate debt bonds would be eligible for purchase.

In Draghi’s plan briefed to the 25-member Governing Council in Frankfurt, refinance and marginal lending rates were dropped 5bp to 0.00% and 0.25%, deposit rates dropped 10 bp to -0.40%, QE stimulus was boosted by €20bn to €80 billion per month, four new Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO) each with a maturity of 4 years were introduced, and for the first time in ECB history investment grade (IG) euro-denominated debt bonds issued by non-bank corporations were listed with assets that are eligible for regular purchase through the QE Public Sector Purchase Program (PSPP).

BREAKING: ECB stimulus package is “comprehensive” and will spur growth, Mario Draghi says https://t.co/CX4iuZQPCS https://t.co/458PrNVTQ1

— Bloomberg Business (@business) March 10, 2016

ZeroHedge pointedly summarized Draghi’s announcement  this morning as what they called potentially the last speech delivered by a developed market (DM) central banker that doesn’t amount to ‘mea culpa’, or a statement in which you say that something is your fault.

• ECB will accelerate return of inflation to price stability
• Comprehensive package will exploit synergies of tools
• ECB stimulus package is ‘Comprehensive’
• Stimulus will reinforce momentum of recovery
• ECB QE will run until at least end of March 2017
• ECB raises issue share limit on QE bonds to 50%
• ECB will issue four new 4-year TLTRO programs
• EUR hits fresh low under 1.0830 as ECB plan detailed
• ECB has no requirement for mandatory early TLTRO-2 repayment
• ECB rates will stay at current or lower levels for extended time
• ECB rates to stay low ‘well past’ QE horizon
• ECB doesn’t see any need to reduce rates further
• ECB rate path stance could change based on new facts
• ECB doesn’t anticipate more rate cuts based on current view

These moves are reminiscent of steps Germany took in the 1930’s to lift themselves out of their depression, by allowing direct collusion between the government and major businesses in the form of bond and debt purchases by the state, as well as ‘sweetheart’ production contracts. This eventually translated to full blown corporate fascism, as the companies shifted their focus to predominately supporting the Nazi war machine.

Those companies were:

Kodak - German branch used slave laborers from concentration camps and several of their other European branches did heavy business with the Nazi government. Wilhelm Keppler, one of Hitler’s top economic advisers, had deep ties in Kodak. When Nazism began, Keppler advised Kodak and several other U.S. companies that they’d benefit by firing all of their Jewish employees. (Source: The Nation)

Hugo Boss - In the 1930s, Hugo Boss started making Hitler Youth, storm trooper and SS uniforms after he himself had joined the Nazi party and secured the exclusive and profitable contract. Boss got the contract just eight years after founding his company, and from that infusion of business he was able to develop the infrastructure which made the brand a house hold name to this day. To keep up with demand, Boss even brought in slave laborers from Poland and France to help out at the factory during the war. In 1997, Boss’ son, Siegfried Boss, told an Austrian news magazine, “Of course my father belonged to the Nazi party. But who didn’t belong back then?” (Source: New York Times)

Volkswagen - Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of both Volkswagen and Porsche, met with Adolf Hitler in 1934, to discuss the creation of a “people’s car,” interestingly translated to english from the German word “Volkswagen.” Hitler told Porsche to make the car with a streamlined shape, “like a beetle,” hence the genesis of the iconic car, the Volkswagen Beetle. Porsche even had a direct connection to Heinrich Himmler, one of the leaders of the SS, to directly request slaves from Auschwitz. Sources say that as many as four out of every five workers at Volkswagen’s plants were slave laborers during World War II. (Source: The Straight Dope)

Bayer - Originally a division of a Germany company named IG Farben,  which turned the single largest profit from work with the Nazi’s during World War II. The company helped manufacture the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi gas chambers during the holocaust. IG Farben also helped and funded Josef Mengele’s “experiments” on concentration camp prisoners. After the war the company was broken up, and Bayer became its own entity. Bayer did not however fall far from the tree, evident in their anti-Semitic views regarding the withdrawal and denial of credit to their jewish employee Arthur Eichengrun, who invented their ‘cash-crop’ aspirin. Bayer to this day officially gives credit to an aryan man named Felix Hoffman, refusing to admit they are kept in business by a product produced by a jew. (Source: Alliance for Human Research Protection, Pharmaceutical Achievers)

Siemens - This company took jewish slave laborers and had them construct gas chambers used during the Holocaust. In 2001, Siemens attempted to trademark the word “Zyklon” which means cyclone in German, for a new product line including gas ovens. A week later, Siemens withdrew the application after several watchdog groups pointed out the insensitivity of naming a gas oven after the Zyklon B gas used to kill jews during the Holocaust. They Siemens to this day maintains they never drew the connection. (Source: BBC)

Coca-Cola and subsidiary Fanta - Coke produced soda for both the Nazi’s and the Allies during World War II, until in 1941, their German branch ran out of syrup due to America’s wartime restrictions. Using an alternative sweetener, Coke created Fanta to be specifically sold and drank in Nazi Germany. (Source: New Statesman)

Ford - Henry Ford was Hitler’s most famous foreign backer. In 1939 on his 75th birthday, Ford received a Nazi medal, designed for “distinguished foreigners.” Like Coke he profiteered off both sides of World War II, by producing vehicles for both the Nazi’s and the Allies. (Source: Reformed Theology)

Standard Oil - The Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gas for their war planes, and being one of only three companies that could manufacture that type of fuel, Standard Oil traded vigorusly with the Nazi’s during the War. Upon dissolution, Standard Oil’s monopoly was broken up into BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil, who carried on their parent companies policy to lobby, fund and support war efforts around the globe. (Source: MIT’s Thistle)

Chase bank - During World War II, many banks sided with the Nazis, Chase being one of the more prominent institutions which provided banking services to Germany. They also facilitated the Nazi’s crackdown on European jews by freezing their accounts. (Source: New York Times)

IBM - in 1933, when everyone saw Hitler as a menace, IBM’s President Thomas J. Watson, engineered a strategic business alliance between IBM and the Third Reich which carried through to the end of World War II. IBM produced custom-built machines for panopticonic surveillance by the Nazi’s, which allowed them to track everything from oil supplies to train schedules into concentration camps, they even produced every unique series of punch cards utilized by Germany during the war, including those used to catalogue holocaust victims.

Watson’s deep relationship with Hitler was evident in IBM’s reaction to Germany’s invasion of Poland, that the New York Times reported would see over three million jews immediately removed and likely exterminated. In an internal memo circulated that week, IBM advised that due to that “situation”, they really needed to step up production on high-speed alphabetizing equipment. (Source: CNet)

Random House publishing - Their parent company, Bertelsmann A.G., published propaganda and the book  “Sterilization and Euthanasia: A Contribution to Applied Christian Ethics” for the Nazi’s during World War II. Random House specifically drew controversy when they made the decision to expand the definition of Nazi in Webster’s Dictionary. They added the neutered definition “a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.” (Think “Soup Nazi”.)

The Anti-Defamation League adamantly condemned the redefinition as well as the involvement of a company with Nazi ties in the addition, saying it “trivializes and denies the murderous intent and actions of the Nazi regime, it also cheapens the language by allowing people to reach for a quick word fix [and] lends a helping hand to those whose aim is to prove that the Nazis were really not such terrible people.” (Source: New York Observer, ADL)