They are not tanks, are banks. Democracy is suspended when markets call to order

Yago Álvarez 

El Salto The industry has voted in the independence process began in Catalunya. The experience of other European states shows how democracy is suspended when markets called to order On October 5, just five days after the Catalan independence referendum, Banco Sabadell threw a bomb on the intentions of the proces. The fourth financial institution by assets moving out its headquarters to the city of Alicante. One day later, CaixaBank, the banner of the Catalan banking entity followed in his footsteps and moving the direction of its headquarters to Valencia. In this battle, the government wanted the blows were as fast and destructive as possible.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos, announced an express decree facilitating the change of registered office without having to convene to vote on at a shareholders ' meeting. CaixaBank needed and the race was not to wait. What riot, laws and threats had not been able to do what I was getting a change of address two banks: fracture the opinion independence.

Within a week, more than 500 companies took their head office outside Catalunya, the official record. Much of citizens supporting the independence process chanted phrases that sounded like surrender and sectors establishement of ancient CONVERGENCE did not hide his nervousness to the new situation. Triggering economic forces had opened a wound that could bleed the Catalan economy and dreams of independence.

political movement

Economist for the Catalan Sergi Cutillas, the flight of businesses is clearly a political movement: " They have tried to create a sense of capital flight, when there is such. There have been no production, the only thing that varies somewhat is the fiscal balance between communities. " The expert describes these movements as "a media campaign of fear to divide the block independence". This is not the first time Cutillas is facing a similar battle. In 2015, when the government of Syriza won the election , he was asked to join the Committee for Truth Greek debt. Asked about the similarities between the two cases, explains that

in Greece there were two clear sides: a left against austerity and European institutions. 

• In the case of Catalonia, according Cutillas, much of the independence movement is pro-European and Spanish and Catalan banking system is the same, so "if Draghi began to launch alarms on Catalunya, the banking system throughout the state would affected, which would force the European institutions to intervene as mediators ". For him, "this would legitimize the Catalan Govern and leave in a bad position to Rajoy".

Instead of intervening, the European Commission launched a message to the Spanish government just the day that newspapers around the globe opened with pictures of people assaulted by police repression the day of the referendum: "Violence can not be a tool in politics" . What it looks like a message for peace and dialogue, Cutillas

Former Minister Greek Finance Yannis Varoufakis, recounted in his book and the weak suffer what they must? (Deusto, 2016) negotiations with European institutions that they would not allow Greece to win the race to the capital. During the meeting with the Eurogroup, composed of the ministers of economy and finance of the eurozone and the representatives of the -BCE, European Commission and International- Monetary Fund troika, the German minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, made it clear to the Greek , with high and menacing tone that the economy was above democracy, "can not allow the elections to change the economic program of a member State".

For Cutillas, who lived from about those days as part of the audit of Greek debt, the German minister that statement corresponds to the design of a Europe that puts on the shirt the power of action of any democracy. 

• "The Nazis thought about very similar to what is now the European Union, with technocratic institutions that, by design, turn away the power and sovereignty of Europe's population," says the economist.

In the same book, Varoufakis explains his meeting at his ministerial office with the Dutch Finance Minister and Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem. At that meeting, while the Greek said he would not accept working with "men in black" as the directors of the Troika in charge of orchestrating the structural reforms and privatizations was baptized, Varoufakis watched out the window Syntagma Square and Parliament . 
As told in the book, watching the landscape full of protesters and where the Greek colonels gave the coup 50 years ago with Dijsselbloem sitting opposite thought: "In 1967 were the tanks. Now they want to do the same with banks. "

Treaties written by capital

Before the use of the controversial Article 155, the PP and used another article of the Constitution to intervene Catalunya, an article of an economic nature and had been amended at the request of the great financial power: 135. 
In the book's Dilemma: 600 days vertigo (Planeta, 2013), the former president of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero published a letter to the president of the ECB, Frenchman Jean-Claude Trichet, had sent him on 5 August 2011. in the letter, as well as ask for a hard labor reform and cuts, demanded that the autonomous communities began to publish quarterly accounts and the spending rule is applied in the future to all government subsectors.

• Just 16 days later, the PSOE and the PP jointly presented a proposal for reform of Article 135 of the Spanish Constitution. It was processed and approved by the emergency procedure. The imposition of the ECB to debt above all had sullied the document that until then seemed sacred and that, even today, has been used to intervene autonomy of Catalonia will be prioritized.

On 15 September this year, Montoro announced the intervention of Catalan accounts that are not "spend a single euro for illegal activities" , with clear allusions to the referendum. But the truth is that the announcement in the BOE was not talking about polls or crimes of secession. In 2012, six months after the change in the Constitution, and three since the PP reached the Government, the Ministry of Finance published the Organic Law on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability, known as the Law Montoro. In July of the same year the Regional Liquidity Fund (FLA) was presented. 

• E hese laws and mechanisms have modeled the requirements of the letter Trichet: put the debt above all, favor banks and centralize power that allows the central government to intervene who leave the marked path.

Union "market" European

Europe also tried to sneak surreptitiously supremacy of financial power in a democratic process. The move, in that way, did not turn out well and, once again, the bank won the battle off the ballot. In May 2005, a referendum in France told not to attempt to establish a European Constitution. A month later, the Dutch also refused. Proposed by the European elites project was slowed by democracy and sovereign decision of the citizens of both countries. Two years later, the Dutch and French Parliament approved the Lisbon Treaty, a text practically traced to the rejected Constitution which was to replace the Treaty of Maastricht.

"The approval of the Lisbon Treaty is the most flagrant violation of democracy I know, a betrayal of the opinion of more than 20 million French and Dutch who rejected the Constitution in a referendum that essentially was the same text" , says Jérôme Duval, coauthor of European construction at the service of financial markets (Icaria, 2016).

• Article 104 of the Maastricht Treaty is traced to Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty prohibits government funding through their central banks. The power of any economic policy lies with the ECB. The distribute, move and lend that money was in the hands of the private financial system.

• Financial elite obtained absolute control over the flow of the euro. Brussels institutions charged life and the power to punish the Member States to leave the economic corset designed were attributed.

For Duval, the fundamental reason that overrode the popular will was "not to delay the neoliberal agenda that marked the eurócrata elite and, among other things, to approve the 123 was necessary." The war was becoming totally unequal. The liberal outpost had the tools to overthrow any government and put an economic "dictator".

 Technocrats: presidents whom no one has voted

"I'm not standing for election, but did not rule rule again." These were the words of Mario Monti, technocrat Italian president commissioned following the resignation of Berlusconi in November 2011, when asked if he would stand for election at the end of the transitional government. The European Competition excomisario was chosen to be non - partisan. 
The thing was not about political parties. Nobody voted Monti, but he was named senator for life, a position that gives the possibility to be president not to attend elections. 
The first thing to get to his new office was autonombrase Minister of Economy and boot the agenda of structural reforms -always-cuts and privatizations dictated to him from Frankfurt and Brussels.
In 2011, the Greek Prime Minister Yorgos Papandréu's socialist, came up with the idea of ​​holding a referendum for the Greek people to decide whether the rescue plan and structural reforms linked to it are accepted. Troika pressures forced him to back down and resign. The proclamation of Lucas Papademos, former director of the Bank of Greece and vice president of the ECB, brushed surrealism. Clearly he told to leave the presidential palace shortly before being proclaimed president at a ceremony held by the Greek Orthodox Church: "I am not a politician."
These anti-democratic impositions from Brussels as "a temporary solution for the application of the adjustments that allow both countries to restore market confidence" is justified. Demonstrations in the two countries were never heard, were harshly repressed. There yes force was used.

• Structural reforms, cuts and privatizations could not wait for citizenship elect persons responsible for leading the country at the polls. Recover that market confidence was above democracy again.

Source: http://www.elsaltodiario.com/neoliberalismo/banca-democracia-tanques-golpe-talon