Saturday 26 November 2011

The DSK Scandal

The downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is well on the way to becoming one of the great conspiracies de nos jours.  Apart from his exclusion from running for the presidency of France, his abrupt departure from the IMF has had untold repercussions on global financial affairs.

This account from the New York Review of Books, reported again in the FT this morning,  is detailed but contains nothing from DSK himself - who obviously knows what happened and why better than anyone else.  Continued attempts to associate him with sexual scandal suggest the rest of this unfinished story may be published during the French presidential campaign.

7 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

DSK clearly a thoroughly nasty bit of work, but someone has it in for him for sure. Will the thread lead back to the odious Sarkozy? As an side, how very quiet Monsieur Sarkozy is these days. Pourquoi?

Elby the Beserk said...

Off topic, HG, but the Slog, IMHO an excellent blog, thinks we are about to be stitched up big time by the EU. You might like to read

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/eu-crisis-bombshell-how-the-eurozone-plans-to-sell-us-out-to-the-banks/

and propagate it as you see fit.

hatfield girl said...

Thank you for the link Elby. It's me, no doubt, but I've read it twice and I can't discover how the stitch-up is to be done.

I understood, form talking to people here and reading the stuff circulating in the media and elsewhere, that there is to be a major revision of the Treaty sections on fiscal behaviour and monitoring which will be introduced like the Schengen agreements - join up or don't get the benefits. Effectively an inner Europe wholly different from the 'wider Europe' beloved of UK foreign policy, and much more complexly intertwined; with the political arrangements catching up with the effective intra-state rich economic zone of central Europe. No joining-in unless you're rich, highly developed, and willing to deepen political ties and integration.

The IMF is said to have 600 billion (euros I think) lined up to support Italy (which was welcomed in as a member of this core grouping last week) while it sorts out its bad bits, (and makes various adjustments to its constitution) which it should have by the time the elections are due.

I did wonder what Cameron was really discussing in Berlin the other week. And why he had to go to Berlin and not have the meeting in London. Germany has really had it with the old European 'project' to contain it, by the look of things.

Elby the Beserk said...

Well, for starters, where did those 600 million Euros come from? In the end, all the money used to bailout banks and countries, is our money, even that which is printed - we just have to pay for that a bit further down the road.

Impoverishment on a truly massive scale is heading our way; it has already hit the USA, which is heading at a rat of knots under Obama to totalitarianism (http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/congress-vote-next-week-explicitly-creating-police-state), and is marching steadily towards the rest of us.

Sorry. Very very gloomy at the state of affairs at the moment, and appalled at how totally useless the political classes are.

hatfield girl said...

According to Bloomberg, Elby,

"The IMF, ... had about $390 billion available for lending as of Nov. 17, according to data posted on its website. The Italian daily [La Stampa (and lots of generalised gossip) ed.] reported that the IMF had several options to increase its firepower, including coordination with the European Central Bank."

That'll be Mario Draghi's ECB, so that's alright then.

This morning's denials that there are discussions going on are in line with Berlusconi's statement that the IMF had offered and had been told it isn't needed; but that was then and things move fast, even if irrationally. Japan says the G7 is unaware of negotiations too.

The idea that Italy can't, all of a sudden, sustain debts it has carried at this level for years and years (with small ups and downs) or that its banks are ill-run or under capitalised (after all they have been under Draghi's tutelage for years and years too) is peculiar.

Why all this pressure? This is a very political stand-off going on.

Elby the Beserk said...

Indeed, politics, or to be precise, self-interest on a national scale is leading the parade. Still the pattern remains the same, where there is debt, resolve it by creating more debt. Until...

Anonymous said...

Here's the dance:

http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/strauss-kahn-stupro/dsk-la-gioia-degli-agenti-della-sicurezza-e-la-teoria-del-complotto/83235/81625