Agents Of Financial Oligarchy Seize Direct Control Of Greek and Italian Governments

Without any vote by the people of those countries, agents of the top levels of global finance have seized direct government power in Greece and Italy. Their resumes, proudly put forth in the corporate media as superior qualifications justifying their anti-democratic imposition on the people, in fact are damning evidence of just who they are and what class they represent.

In Greece, the political bosses appointed Lucas Papademos, the former vice-president of the European Central Bank, as Prime Minister. Papademos demanded, as conditions for his deigning to take over Greece without the approval of the Greek people (this lifelong elitist never had to be elected to anything in his life to weird  power) that he have a term of six months, thus cancelling the promised February elections (that’s the second canceled chance to vote for the Greek people, counting Papandreou’s promise of a “referendum” on the onerous “bailout” deal, a promise he reneged on just 3 days after making it), so that he’d have enough time to cram the “austerity” “medicine” down the throats of the Greek people; total control over cabinet appointments, and sweeping powers. Oh, and he acts like he’s doing everyone a favor by taking over.

According to the London Guardian:

“The appointment of Papademos, who has never been elected to any public office but is considered one of Europe's foremost experts in macroeconomics, was met with relief.

“Politicians, pundits, economists, business and industry leaders all expressed the belief that, liberated from the constraints of "political cost", Papademos was the ideal person to navigate the country away from the shores of economic disaster.

"’The new government is the last hope for the Greek economy," said Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who heads the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises. "If Greeks allow the new prime minister to work, if they overcome party politics … it can become a government of national salvation.’"

Who likes him speaks volumes. Papademos was indoctrinated in the U.S. In his “acceptance speech,” he called for “unity” and “consensus;” i.e. unity of the political elite behind his draconian plan to make the Greek economy scream to pay off the bondholders.

Meanwhile, in Italy, the President, an ex-Communist Party member (!) named Giorgio Napolitano, anointed another financial plutocrat, one Mario Monti, senator for life. This to pave the way for his appointment (again sans any input from the people) as Prime Minister to replace the absurd, corrupt lothario Silvio Berlusconi. This eminence is described as a “free market economist” by the Wall Street Journal, which of course approves. Monti is an ex-European Commissioner, that is, a member of the permanent ruling class in Europe (unelected of course), the capitalist nomenklatura, if you will.

The euphemism for these guys is “technocrat.” This is totally disingenuous, a disguise of their true nature. “Technocrat” implies, and the corporate media “news” reporting often states explicitly, that these agents are non-ideological, neutral technicians, like economic engineers, and “economics” is some value-free science, like physics or chemistry.

 In fact, what they call “economics” is mostly an ideology with a specific class bias. The “technocrats” are political agents who represent the transnational financial oligarchy. Far from being non-ideological, they have an agenda to defend the class interests of the top levels of finance capital. Their ideology, falsely put forth as neutral, objective reality, makes the economic interests of the financial oligarchy paramount over everything else. This attitude is a given, and is paraded under the false premise of economic reality, like rock strata in geology. But this is not science, and these class interests are not an immutable reality. And the submission of all other interests and values to their hegemony is pure and simply a policy choice, not an unavoidable imperative of reality.