Panamanian people temporarily defeat sale of Colon Free Zone land

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 25, 2012

Not even the heavy hand with which President Ricardo Martinelli governs Panama was able to stop The People there from protesting the sale of publicly owned lands. The strength of a movement supported by social and trade unions last week twisted the arm of the government and obligated Martinelli to reverse a law that sought to sell the lands over which Panama host its Colon Free Zone.

Panamanian authorities no longer promote the privatization of land in the Colon Free Zone (CFZ), which has offered trade tax exemption — the highest in America — for the past 43 years. The Colon Free Zone is  located in the strategic Caribbean end of the Panama Canal.

Despite the assurance from President Martinelli, who stated that Panama will not sell the lands, protesters decided to keep on watching any move that may hint the opposite situation from the part of the government. The protesters remain on the streets of the city of Colon, which is located 80 kilometers north of Martinelli’s offices. The strength of the opposition to the sale of public lands has already left three people dead.

A message sent through Twitter directly President Martinelli, attempted to ensure that the movement does not grow any larger, after protesters paralyzed the Free Zone in recent days. “If the people do not want the lands sold, the sale will be repealed,” wrote Martinelli on Tuesday night, after checking the ineffectiveness of the efforts of his ministers.

On Monday, part of the Panamanian cabinet failed in their attempt to negotiate with the protesters to stop violent clashes between activists and police. “Some people have died,” he said José Ricardo Fabrega, a Panamanian Minister when commenting on the impact of the conflict generated around the so-called Law 72.

Not even the curfew decreed by President Martinelli was enough to stop the people from showing their opposition to the sale in this port city, which is famous for its Free Zone, a market for foreigners in the middle of an environment of poverty that affects most of the the Panamanian citizens. As much as a third of the people in Panama are considered as living in poverty today.

Workers and residents shut down the dollars factory this week, which is a platform of foreign traders (Arabs, Lebanese, Indians and Venezuelans) who perform services for Colombia, Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean. The population of the Colon Free Zone knows of the coexistence with smuggling and that the biggest gains stay in private hands despite the fact that the economic activity in the region accounts for 7% of GDP.

Most of the 31,000 workers who run the Colon Free Zone come from the capital, but still defended it with ‘teeth and nails’. It was a chance to win a pulse against Martinelli and for that the people counted with the support from trade associations from all around the country. That support helped Panamanians succeed in the effort to avoid the acquisition of these public lands by foreign interests.

The 87 characters written by Martinelli, who was visiting Japan on the other side of the world, represent the surrender. This time it was not enough to have 42 congressional allies. Additionally, police repression and the use of military tactics did not work out either. In fact they only served to raise the anger of the protesters

The power of the business class became too small when compared to the popular response, which is driven by anger against the president. Some of the last polls show that as much as 75% of Panamanians believe that Martinelli is governing only for the rich classes and favoring foreign investors.

The damage done on Martinelli’s image is clear. The President is about a year and a half from leaving office, since the Panamanian constitution does not allow reelection. But despite the constitutional ban, builders’ unions and transporters, who are key parts of the Panamanian economy, remain alert.

College students went to the streets on Wednesday and blocked some major roads of the capital. Meanwhile, a new government delegation prepares to return to Columbus and negotiate with local protesters following the path laid out by Martinelli on his tweet.

The Free Zone was established in 1948 to commercially exploit the site of the Panama Canal. Since then, thousands of companies around the world have a base of operations there. The area receives over 250,000 visitors a year and has 1,751 companies.

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Japan is reeling between economic and nuclear crises

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 23, 2012

The earthquake that shook Japan last year is not the only origin of the shock waves the country is now experiencing. The economic crisis has also shaken the Asian nation. During the first semester of the current fiscal year, the Japanese had a historic fall in exports, which in turn resulted in the largest fiscal deficit.

The financial crisis in the Euro zone and North America, greatly decreased the amount of products that Japan was able to send abroad which together with the costly imports of crude oil gave the island’s economy a double punch right on the face. The explosion and collapse of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima complex not only caused the contamination of most of the food and water on the island, but also meant that Japan had to increase imports of oil to satisfy its energy needs.

In the period from April to September, the trade deficit in what is considered the third world economy, surged 90.1 percent year on year and stood at 3.22 trillion yen (31,200 million euros), the highest since 1979, when the Ministry of Finance began compiling the results of this indicator.

Behind this decline was the drop in exports, a pillar that supports about 40% of Japan’s gross domestic product and has been handicapped primarily by lower demand due to the global economic crisis. Japanese exports fell sharply especially in Europe, where they were down 16.1%, with significant losses in countries like the UK (-26.3%), Italy (-31.4%) and Germany (-11, 7%), and Japanese traditional sectors such as semiconductors, electronic devices or vehicles.

Japan posted its first trade deficit in this period with the European Union, which registered at 92,100 million yen (890 million euros), according to preliminary data released Tuesday. In the case of Spain, in the spotlight because of its debt crisis, Japan closed the fiscal semester with a trade deficit of 59.259 million yen (573 million euros), the result of a fall in exports of 19.3%, while imports increased by 13.7%.

To this scenario, Japan had to add the difficult situation with China, which is Japan’s largest trading partner. The two countries began a  territorial dispute that resulted in the worst bilateral tension in years and is reflected in the decline in demand for Japanese products in the Chinese mainland.

In the first six months of the current fiscal year, exports from Japan to the second largest economy contracted by 8.2% over the same period last year, while imports rose 2%. The consequence was a growing deficit of 1, 53 trillion yen (14,800 million euros). The drop was even more pronounced in the month of September, when the conflict with China escalated and there was a wave of demonstrations against Japan all over China. Some protestors even attacked Japanese-owned companies.

Sales for that month, which originated in Japan, suffered a setback of 14.1%, while imports increased by 3.8% over the same month of 2011. The general decline in Japanese exports was also influenced by the strengthening of the yen, which is seen by many investors as a refuge in times of economic uncertainty. The value of the Yen caused Japanese manufacturers to get a smaller return for their products.

The slowdown in exports stopped Japan’s economic recovery after the setback at the devastating tsunami and nuclear accident in March 2011. Imports from Japan increased between April and September by 2.6% year on year to 35.38 trillion yen (EUR 342.537 million), largely due to an increase of almost 10% on the purchase of energy resources.

Japan used to get around 30% of its power from nuclear plants, but after the Fukushima explosion, and with nearly all of its nuclear plants out of service, the country had to buy more oil to power up its thermal power plants. Crude oil imports increased by 8.3% in the first half of the fiscal year, while purchases of liquefied natural went to 24.3%.

Unfortunately, the crisis is all but ending for Japan. New reports as recent as last week, state that Unit 4 from the Fukushima Nuclear Complex, which currently holds more than 1,500 nuclear fuel rods, is near complete collapse. If the total decimation of the nuclear reactor is completed, the deadly radiation would make it imperative to evacuate the whole island. The amount of radiation could be so serious, that it could make much of the world completely uninhabitable.

As reported on NaturalNews.com:

“According to the Secretary of former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the ground beneath Unit 4 has already sunk by about 31.5 inches since the disaster, and this sinking has taken place unevenly. If the ground continues to sink, which it is expected to, or if another earthquake of even as low as a magnitude six occurs in the region, the entire structure could collapse, which would fully drain the cooling pool and cause a catastrophic meltdown.”

As it turns out, Japan’s economic problems are not necessarily what is attracting the attention of the country and the rest of the world.

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If no one believes in the recovery, why are Europe and the world Trying?

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 23, 2012

I don’t know you, but I’m sick and tired of hearing about the financial collapse. The financial crisis we are now in was predicted long ago, and those predictions were correct. So why hasn’t it happened? First of all, it is happening. In fact it began a while ago. While many people expected to have a sudden collapse, which dragged the world into a whole, the fall of the international financial system was not planned to take place that way. Second of all, the financial collapse was planned to occur slowly and painfully, not only because the elites that planned it are financial sadists, but also because that is the only way to carry out their plan successfully.

The slow financial collapse allows the perpetrators to slowly bite off pieces from the grand pie, inflicting lethal but manageable pain and damage into the world’s economic and financial systems. This tactic in turn prepares the field for further deterioration and acquiescence from the public and the governments who they control. The kind of financial terrorism carried out by the largest financial entities in the history of the world, which are controlled by the smallest amount of people ever, makes it possible to successfully materialize the elite’s dream to create the most powerful monopoly of money and resources while they present themselves as the saviors.

The truth however, is that they are not saving anyone but themselves. While they buy off politicians and buy up land and essential resources for pennies on whatever currency they want, governments continue to fail to hold them accountable for their crimes. In fact, the bureaucrats in governments are faithful accomplices of the elites. Only one country has been able to partially defeat these monopoly men, and that country is Iceland. After kicking the bankers out, Iceland is now racing on the path of recovery, with a growing economy that simply sparked to life after telling the bankers that the illegal debt they had put under Iceland’s name was not theirs.

Iceland did what no other country had the guts to do: let the banks fail. Four years later, the country is being praised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That’s right. One of the most important globalist organizations who are out to destroy countries like Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, congratulates Iceland for doing the right thing. The Icelandic people did not need to go through austerity programs, they did not lose millions of jobs and neither did they have their pensions or retirement accounts looted by the bankers. “The recovery has been quite impressive. GDP growth has picked up in the last couple of years and is now running around three percent a year,” says Franek Rozwadowski, a visitor from the IMF.

On the other side of the road there are countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, all of which chose to follow the bankers’ path to destruction. Spain has increased its debt dramatically in a supposed effort to curb the government’s deficit, imposed massive austerity measures, looted pension and retirement accounts, cut public jobs, accumulated a 24% unemployment rate, “rescued” its banks at least twice, adopted deadly economic policies as ordered by Brussels, but still is on its way to the financial precipice. The same model has been used by Greece, Italy and Portugal, who are following Spain on their way to social collapse. It is estimated that the Spanish debt will reach  23 billion euros by the end of the year, with no hope to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The main reason for this is that the pact completed between the Spanish government and Brussels never intended to take Spain out of the dark tunnel. As explained in the documents obtained from the World Bank, the collapse of most European nations is part of a well-crafted plan that the elite has applied over and over again throughout the world. It happened in small countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua, mid-size countries like Argentina, and now in larger economies like Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Greece and others.

As it turns out, the so-called bailouts are not such things. They are more like acquisitions. As explained by Journalist and researcher Greg Palast — who broke the story about the World Bank’s plan — the idea is to secretly repossess the assets of every country in the world. This is achieved through a bribery system in which the global bankers buy off the politicians in different countries so that they adopt IMF and World bank policies that intend to destroy their economies. Once the policies have been adopted, the bankers begin to slowly but surely subtract the resources of those countries unnoticeably, mainly through financial aid programs and trade agreements.

The mistaken belief that a recovery will come out of the current austerity measures and financial bailouts stems from the well engineered propaganda campaign orchestrated by the banking system and the main stream media, who have gone from denying that there is a crisis to accepting there is one and that the same bankers who caused it, who planned it, are going to be the saviors. Little do most people know that the kind of crisis we are now going through is part of the plant to carry out a planet wide extortion scheme through which the globalist banking elite once again walks away with significant amounts of resources.

The difference is that this time the looting is not limited to once small or mid-sized nation, but to several large countries in Europe and the world. Greek islands are now for sale to the best bidder, because the country cannot pay its debt. Guess who will come to the rescue? The monopoly men will come and buy the islands for cents on the Dragma. The same situation will happen in Spain, once Mariano Rajoy requests the financial rescue. So if you are asking yourself why is it that the economy isn’t getting better despite the continuous assurances that everything on the books is being done to get to that point, the truth is that the banker plan does not contemplate a recovery. At least not one where everyone will have the opportunity to thrive.

Read the complete interview given by Greg Palast after learning about and getting the World Bank’s secret documents that detail how the global financial entities destroy nations.

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European Union Sets Banking Takeover for 2013

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 19, 2012

The Heads of State and the Government of the European Union (EU) agreed Thursday to create a single banking supervisor. The entity should be ready next December and it will gradually begin its takeover of the banking system during 2013.

The EU leaders confirmed their commitment last June to create a bank union, which would work under the political framework of an agreement adopted back in late 2012. The announcement was made by EU spokesman Olivier Bailly, who posted a message on the social network Twitter.

Diplomatic sources explained that in practice this means that the complete takeover of the financial system by the European Central Bank (ECB) will only be completed in 2014.

With this agreement, the so-called European leaders solved the ‘differences’ regarding how to create and manage a banking supervisor. The disagreement between France and Germany stemmed from details related to the creation of the entity itself as well as the power it would have to manage all banking institutions in the old continent. While French president François Hollande pushed for its creation and effective activation for next January, German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued for delaying its implementation given the deterioration of her image at home and the coming German election.

Other diplomatic sources indicated that “Holland’s demands and proposals were simply unrealistic.” They added that even if the leaders reached an agreement by December, the process of creating such an entity  would not be completed before the end of the first semester of 2013, which means that the ECB would still require a minimum of 6 more months to fully implement its directives.

A few weeks ago, Merkel’s government questioned the schedule proposed by Hollande, while the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, added that the European Parliament would need a period of one year to adapt its structures to take on the task of supervising banks in the eurozone.

According to the European Commission’s plan, the centralized banking supervision mechanism will take effect in stages. The new system would only begin to be implemented on the first of January 2013 and initially affect banks that had requested or received public aid. The plan is to include all 6,000 banks that operate in the euro area.

The German delegation did not support the idea that the new supervising entity had the power to manage  all banks, especially regional banks.

Sources said that “the effective establishment of a Europe-wide monitoring system will take several months” from formal approval, as the ECB will have to hire some 1,600 “experts”, which in turn would further delay the possibility that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) directly recapitalizes troubled banks.

France, Italy and Spain went to the summit with the intention to push for a quick implementation of the banking supervising entity as it was proposed by the ECB, while Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden advocated delaying its implementation.

Some countries that have not adopted the common currency said that the proposal issued by the EU needed changes because in its current form it creates a competitive disadvantage compared to banks in the euro zone.

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Tokyo Injects Fiat Money while Beijing Talks about Bond Attack on Japan

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

The territorial conflict for the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands on the East China Sea have revealed two things in the last few days. First, China’s thirst to defeat its rivals in the region, despite American interventionism. Two, China will not necessarily use military weapons. Instead, it will use its economic might.

While the Japanese Central Bank announced it will follow on the steps of the American Federal Reserve and European Central Bank in flooding the market with money to keep its economy afloat, in Beijing the Communist Party led government is now considering attacking Japan by imposing sanctions on its main funding source: the sale of government bonds.

China is Japan’s main creditor today with holdings of over $230 billion in Japanese government issued bonds. This is China’s strongest weapon at the moment, or at least the one that the Chinese may use to obligate Japan to withdraw from the territorial dispute that has now called for the intervention of United States Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The most recent asset purchase program in Japan was extended by about 10 billion yen (€ 97,200 Mn), to 80 trillion yen (778 000 € Mn). In turn, the types of interest are maintained between 0 and 0.1%, a level at which they are since October 2010. The same policies are now being used by the United States Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, which continue to facilitate funds to large financial institutions while denying loans to small and mid-size entrepreneurs.

The Bank of Japan opted, just like the Fed, to inflate its currency, by printing fiat money into the banking system in an attempt to revive the economy. As seen for the past 4 years, the insane policy of creating fiat money out of nothing does not work. In fact, it only prolongs the crisis because governments are not doing anything to kick start their economies.

The decision has favored the Nikkei, Japan’s stock market. Transactions closed with a rise of 1.19%. Stock markets are another tool in the rigged game that governments use to paint a colorful picture about otherwise dying economies, because they do not represent the actual state of those economies, but that of specific sectors. Stock prices, as in the case of Facebook, can be manipulated to show whatever the manipulators want to show.

The fake snowballing effect of the fiat money printing mechanism reached Europe, where the local markets received the news about the Japanese Bank injecting the worthless money into the economy as a good sign, which helped lift the markets.

In the meantime, in China, Jin Baisong, a member of the Chinese Academy of International Trade wrote on the China Daily newspaper that his government should “impose sanctions on Japan in the most effective manner” to bring Japan to its knees. He said China should consider invoke the security exception to punish Japan.

Other Chinese media such as the Hong Kong Economic Journal published an article about China’s plans to to cut off Japan’s supplies of rare earth metals which Japan needs to produce high tech consumer goods for local and international electronic giants. The considerations to punish Japan through credit lending, imposing cuts of raw materials and calling on international trade organizations to sanction Japan are three of the first steps China is considering to tame down the country’s intent to claim the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands as its property.

In the last two days, multiple protests exploded all over China against the Japanese which prompted many Japanese companies to close their doors for fear of retaliation.

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