Survey: 31% of Europeans blame economic crisis on Jews

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Anti-Defamation League poll conducted in seven European countries shows almost half of Europeans believe Jews more loyal to Israel than countries they live in, 40% say Jews have too much power Ynet Published: 02.10.09, 18:42 / Israel News

Anti-Semitic attitudes still prevail in Europe: An Anti-Defamation League report published on Tuesday showed that nearly half of the Europeans surveyed believe Jews are not loyal to their country and more than one-third believe they have "too much power" in business and finance.

The study further showed that 31% of the respondents across Europe blame Jews in the financial industry for the current global economic crisis.

The poll was conducted between the dates December 1 and January 13 among 3,500 adults in seven European countries: Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Overall, 40% of Europeans in those countries believe that Jews have too much power in the business world, with more than half of Hungarian, Spanish and Polish respondents agreeing with that statement.

The findings were similar to those of a 2007 ADL survey that found significant percentages of Europeans continue to believe in some of the most pernicious anti-Semitic stereotypes.

"This poll confirms that anti-Semitism remains alive and well in the minds of many Europeans," said ADL Director Abraham Foxman.

"It is distressing that there seems to be no movement away from the constancy of anti-Semitic held views, with accusations about Jews of disloyalty, control and responsibility for the death of Jesus," he added.
"In the wake of the global financial crisis, the strong belief of excessive Jewish influence on business and finance is especially worrisome," Mr. Foxman added.

"Clearly, age old anti-Semitic stereotypes die hard, particularly on a continent which is witnessing a surge in violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions following the war in Gaza."

'Jews talk about Holocaust too much'

A comparison with the 2007 survey indicates that levels of anti-Semitism have remained steady in six of the seven countries tested.

The United Kingdom was the only country in which there was a marked decline. Meanwhile, the percentage of those believing that Jews "have too much power in the business world" increased by 7% in Hungary, 6% in Poland and 5% in France.


Overall, nearly half of those surveyed in the seven countries believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country. A majority of respondents in Germany, Poland and Spain believe that this statement is "probably true;" in Spain, it is 64%.

Large portions of the European public continue to believe that Jews "talk about the Holocaust too much." Overall, 44% of those surveyed believe this statement is "probably true". A majority of respondents in Austria, Hungary and Poland believe it to be true.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3669706,00.html
 
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Lehman bankruptcy report exposes Wall Street criminality
Barry Grey

WSWS, March 15, 2010

A report released March 11 by a bankruptcy court-appointed examiner concludes that in the months leading up to its September 2008 collapse, the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers issued financial statements that were "materially misleading" and its top executives engaged in "actionable balance sheet manipulation."

The 2,200-page document details accounting fraud on a massive scale, involving secret transactions that enabled the bank to falsify its level of debt and conceal the scale of its losses from toxic mortgage-linked assets.

Lehman’s collapse on September 15, 2008 sparked a global crash of credit markets, which was used by the US government and governments around the world to justify the outlay of trillions of dollars in public funds to bail out the banking system. The financial crisis precipitated the deepest recession since the 1930s, wiping out millions of jobs. Now, governments are imposing brutal austerity measures to make the working class pay for the bankrupting of state treasuries for the benefit of the bankers and speculators.

The Lehman report demonstrates that workers’ jobs, homes, wages and life savings, as well as their access to health care, education and even such rudimentary necessities as light and heat, are being sacrificed to pay for the criminality of the financial elite, which has further enriched itself from the catastrophe of its own making.

In the wake of the report’s release, major Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have expressed shock over the Lehman revelations and averred that they never employed the accounting dodges used by their former competitor. One is reminded of the film Casablanca, in which Captain Renault declares his "shock" at discovering gambling in Rick’s casino.

All of the major banks employed intricate schemes, such as "structured investment vehicles," to shift their losses off of their balance sheets, and made billions by repackaging what they knew to be dubious sub-prime loans and selling them as "collateralized debt obligations." Lehman’s practices have been exposed only because it was the weakest of the big Wall Street firms and was forced into bankruptcy, in large part because its bigger rivals, smelling blood, took aggressive actions to push their struggling rival over the edge.

According to the examiner’s report, Lehman specialized in vastly overvaluing its mortgage-backed securities and manipulating its books to produce end-of-quarter financial reports that concealed its true level of indebtedness. As the author of the report, Anton R. Valukas of the law firm Jenner & Block, put it: "Unbeknownst to the investing public, rating agencies, government regulators, and Lehman’s board of directors, Lehman reverse engineered the firm’s net leverage ratio for public consumption."

The bank’s major accounting gimmick was known internally as "Repo 105." Repos, short for repurchasing agreements, are a standard practice on Wall Street. To obtain short-term cash to fund operations, a bank will borrow from another bank, giving that bank some of its assets with the stipulation that it will buy back the assets within a set number of days.

For accounting purposes, such transactions are recorded as financings, not sales, and the assets that are shifted, often overnight, remain on the balance sheet of the bank doing the borrowing. Lehman, however, valued its repo assets at 105 percent or more of the cash it received, and on that basis recorded its "repo 105’s" as sales―moving bad debts off of its balance sheet just long enough to doctor its quarterly financial reports.

According to the examiner, Lehman by such means shed $39 billion from its balance sheet at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007, $49 billion in the first quarter of 2008, and $50 billion in the second quarter.

The accounting scam was so smelly that Lehman was unable to find a US law firm that would sign off on its legality. In the end, it retained a British firm that sanctioned the maneuver as legitimate under British law. Lehman had to conduct its "Repo 105" operations through its London-based branch and shift funds from the US to Europe to carry out the deals.

Valukas asserts that CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. and three chief financial officers knew of and approved the shady transactions, and the bank’s auditor, accounting firm Ernst & Young, covered up for the executives. The examiner concludes that the four executives breached their "fiduciary duty" to Lehman’s shareholders and board of directors, and adds that there is "sufficient evidence" to support a legal claim that Fuld was "at least grossly negligent."

The examiner’s report further details the role of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in allowing Lehman to exchange worthless securities for public funds from March of 2008, when Bear Stearns collapsed and was taken over by JPMorgan Chase in a deal subsidized by the Fed, to September of that year, when Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection. The president of the New York Fed at the time was Timothy Geithner. Obama rewarded Geithner for his services as chief bagman for Wall Street by making him his treasury secretary.

Neither Fuld, whose compensation for 2007 totaled $22 million, nor any other Lehman executive has been prosecuted for their crimes. Nor has any other top executive on Wall Street.

In response to the greatest social catastrophe since the Great Depression, the Obama administration and the Democratic-led Congress have rejected any serious reform of the financial system. They have held no one accountable for plunging the US and the world into an economic disaster. Instead, they have devoted their efforts to covering the bad debts of the financial oligarchs and enabling them to expand their swindling and increase their wealth.

The Lehman story is not an aberration. Corruption, fraud, criminality are not simply the results of a few "bad apples," or merely the expression of the subjectively determined depravity of certain executives. The collusion of all official institutions―the White House, Congress, the regulatory agencies, the media―testifies to the systemic character of financial gangsterism.

The criminality of Wall Street is rooted in the crisis and contradictions of the capitalist system. Financial parasitism on an unprecedented scale, with all of its noxious corollaries―increasing social inequality, imperialist war and political reaction―is a manifestation of the putrefaction of the profit system, above all in its center, the United States.

The working class needs to draw the appropriate conclusions. The financial executives whose fraudulent practices played a role in precipitating the economic disaster must be prosecuted. Their ill-gotten wealth must be expropriated and used to provide relief for the unemployed ensure the provision of basic social needs. The banking system must be nationalized and run as a pubic utility under the democratic control of the working population.

It is not a matter of reforming the system, but building an international socialist movement to consign it to the dustbin of history where it has long belonged.

Barry Grey





:: Article nr. 64202 sent on 16-mar-2010 01:04 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=64202
 
Are these the same Europeans that American liberals are so excited about emulating?

No, I'm guessing that these are the hairless Europeans who wear jackboots and started two World Wars--you know, the ones who call themselves Conservatives. We have them in this country too, how many skinheads vote Republican? Around 103%. Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling...
 
of course. antisemitism is rampant among the left.

Got proof? Are you really saying that antisemitism ISN'T rampant in conservative circles? Hello? Call Glen Beck and let him tell you about them. The Jews murdered Jesus, and YOU claim to LIKE them?
 
Got proof? Are you really saying that antisemitism ISN'T rampant in conservative circles? Hello? Call Glen Beck and let him tell you about them. The Jews murdered Jesus, and YOU claim to LIKE them?

Glenn Beck is very pro Israel.

There are some groups on the right who are very anti Jewish though.

Arnold Murray of Shepherd's Chapel is a good example

In general though conservatives and "most" christians want to protect Israel even to the point of going to war with Iran or any of the eastern nations who want to drive Israel into the sea.
 
Glenn Beck is very pro Israel.

There are some groups on the right who are very anti Jewish though.

Arnold Murray of Shepherd's Chapel is a good example

In general though conservatives and "most" christians want to protect Israel even to the point of going to war with Iran or any of the eastern nations who want to drive Israel into the sea.

And liberals don't? Not that I'm aware of. So the white supremecists are not conservative? They sure aren't liberal. Maybe the whole con/lib is too simplistic a system in which to pigeonhole everyone, just like male and female are too few genders for reality.
 
And liberals don't? Not that I'm aware of. So the white supremecists are not conservative? They sure aren't liberal. Maybe the whole con/lib is too simplistic a system in which to pigeonhole everyone, just like male and female are too few genders for reality.

in the 60s lots of libs if not most were very pro Israel. That is changing. More and more libs are pro palistine and very critical of Israel.

There are still lots of left thinking people who support Israel but the really hard core left tends to lean to palistine. I have no idea why, Islam in general is not tolerent of anything they hold dear where Israel is.. so its really strange.
 
in the 60s lots of libs if not most were very pro Israel. That is changing. More and more libs are pro palistine and very critical of Israel.

There are still lots of left thinking people who support Israel but the really hard core left tends to lean to palistine. I have no idea why, Islam in general is not tolerent of anything they hold dear where Israel is.. so its really strange.

I suspect the gratuitous violence visited on the Palestinian people has something to do with it. The Hamas fighters hit Israel but all Israel can do is bomb the Palestinians and most of them are just civilians.

Israel has a right to exist, but so do the Palestinian people and right now they are getting the short end of the stick. Those people have been fighting and killing each other for centuries and I certainly don't know how to solve the problem.
 
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I suspect the gratuitous violence visited on the Palestinian people has something to do with it. The Hamas fighters hit Israel but all Israel can do is bomb the Palestinians and most of them are just civilians.

Israel has a right to exist, but so do the Palestinian people and right now they are getting the short end of the stick. Those people have been fighting and killing each other for centuries and I certainly don't know how to solve the problem.

I know of no one especially Israel who is saying they will drive palistine into the sea or off the map.

If Israel were saying things like that, I would not support Israel.

But more importantly, are you agreeing with me that many far lefties are more anti Israel and pro palistine? Your post almsot sounds like an explination for why the far left is more pro palistine.
Not that I consider you far left. I think you are mostly middle leaning left but not kook fringe :)
 
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