Austria and Belgium May Follow Germany Soon, in Banning Short Sales

May 22, 2010 (LPAC)—The spreading European policy chaos was evidenced once again by the stonewalling which Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble ran up against in Brussels, when presenting his nine-point financial reform plan, which apparently was rejected mainly because it was a proposal coming from a country that has unilaterally decreed a ban on short sales. But that will backfire, because it will enrage the Germans even more, so that more of such unilateral decisions are possible and likely.

The German ban on short sales will, however, most likely be joined by similar steps of the governments of Austria and Belgium, and maybe also by the Netherlands—after the early elections there at the beginning of June. Some insiders have been assessing these developments as first signs of a kind of "d-mark bloc" forming inside the eroding system of the euro, since it is countries that earlier grouped around Germany at the time the d-mark still was the German hard currency. The Czech Republic and Switzerland are said to orient towards the same direction.

Meanwhile, rebellious momentum is building up in Germany also, in reaction to the scandalous majority vote in the Bundestag, the national parliament, on Friday, in favor of the EU's new super-bailout fund of EU750 billion. First of all, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government coalition lost 20 votes from their own ranks, which normally count 322 votes in the Bundestag, so that only with some votes from the opposition Greens, could the required minimum majority of 312 be exceeded by meager 7 votes, thereby passing the bailout with 319 votes. That vote has already prompted two legal complaints at the Constitutional Court: one by Christian Social Union Bundestag member Peter Gauweiler, the other by Prof. Joachim Starbatty—both of whom were plaintiffs in the case against the Lisbon Treaty a year ago.

And the rebellion is on also on the European Parliament level, where Cristiana Muscardini, deputy chair of the EP International Trade Committee, has drafted a resolution demanding a European complement to Glass-Steagall, for which she is certain to collect enough supporting signatures to table it for a formal EP vote. And—not surprisingly: the BueSo, and the LaRouche movement, is in the middle of things, on all of these fronts.