As the coronavirus unleashes economic shockwaves across Europe, the European single currency, the most visible symbol of European unification, is facing collapse.

The eurozone — a monetary union of 19 of the 27 Member States of the European Union that have adopted the euro as their common currency — is being buffeted not only by the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession. Northern and Southern European countries are also feuding over possible financial support for Italy and Spain, the EU’s third- and fourth-largest economies, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus.

On March 13, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde dismissed calls by Italy for financial assistance to help it cope with the pandemic. After her comments rattled financial markets, Lagarde quickly reversed course and said that the ECB was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.” Italian President Sergio Mattarella replied that Italy had a right to expect solidarity from beyond its borders rather than obstacles.

On March 18, the ECB announced that, in an effort to calm sovereign debt markets, it would spend €750 billion ($810 billion) to purchase bonds issued by national governments. Lagarde tweeted: “Extraordinary times require extraordinary action. There are no limits to our commitment to the euro.” Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian newspaper, wrote that the ECB’s announcement was evidence that, without a massive support package, the eurozone was in danger of collapse:

“The situation is immensely more dangerous — both economically and politically — than it was when spiraling Italian and Spanish bond yields prompted Mario Draghi’s [President of the European Central Bank between 2011 and 2019] “whatever it takes speech” in 2012. With people dying in their thousands, borders closing and activity collapsing, the entire European project is at risk.”

On March 26, EU leaders, during a virtual summit held by video conference, were unable to agree on an economic response to the coronavirus. A day earlier, nine eurozone countries — Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain — called for a common debt instrument, called “coronabonds,” to mitigate the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis. “We are all facing a symmetric external shock, for which no country bears responsibility, but whose negative consequences are endured by all,” they said in a letter.

Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, dubbed the eurozone’s “frugal four,” rejected the idea of issuing joint debt to finance economic recovery in Southern Europe. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that issuing joint debt would be “crossing the Rubicon” because it would turn the eurozone into a “transfer union” in a way that was not foreseen by the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union and laid the foundation for the single currency. “I cannot foresee any circumstance under which we will change our position,” he said.

Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, in a letter to parliament, warned that coronabonds would introduce the threat of “moral hazard” by disincentivizing economic reform in debt-ridden Southern Europe. He also called on the European Commission, the EU’s administrative arm, to investigate why countries such as Italy and Spain have not made adequate economic reforms since the 2008 financial crisis.

A European diplomat quoted by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant describedHoekstra’s comments as a “serious insult” to Southern Europe. Another diplomat said that the comments were a “Dutch middle finger to the south.”

Southern European countries have the option of tapping funds from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the eurozone’s bailout fund, which lends money under strict conditions. Those countries are reluctant to use the ESM because they would be saddled with long term debt that would be hard to repay, and because the conditions would impinge on national sovereignty.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, correspondent Marcus Walker explained the dynamic:

“Northern offers of loans with strings attached strike the south as punitive and inadequate. Southern clamor to issue joint bonds sound to the north like a demand to use its credit card….

“The specter of a divided eurozone remains. Unless the economic shock of lockdowns is quickly overcome, Italy and Spain are in danger of emerging from the coronavirus crisis as poorer countries. A renewed depression in Southern Europe would also be bad news for northern nations, whose industries and banks profit from the overall health of the region’s economy.”

In other words, if the coronavirus crisis eventually causes Italy to default on its debt, the reverberations will be felt across Europe — and the globe. Italy, with a GDP of nearly $2 trillion, is said to be “too big to fail, too big to bail.” Desmond Lachlan, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted:

“Unlike Greece, Italy is too big an economy to fail for the euro to survive and too big and costly an economy for its European partners to save….

“In gauging Italy’s systemic importance to the global economy, one should bear in mind that its economy is approximately 10 times the size of that of Greece and that it is the eurozone’s third-largest economy.

“Equally important is the fact that after the United States and Japan, Italy has the world’s third-largest sovereign debt market with more than $2.5 trillion in outstanding government debt.

“It is difficult to conceive of a scenario where an Italian debt default would not trigger a European banking crisis. Were that indeed to occur, it must be expected to have global economic and financial market ramifications.”

The Associate Editor of the UK-based newspaper Independent, Sean O’Grady, wrote that the coronavirus crisis could catapult Italy into bankruptcy:

“Italy’s crisis is Europe’s. When Italy catches a cold, Europe will catch pneumonia. The euro cannot permit a major economy (Italy is the eurozone’s third-largest) to collapse in a disorderly mess.”

In Spain, which recently overtook Italy as the epicenter of the coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez committed €200 billion ($215 billion) — 20% of the country’s GDP — to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. When asked how he would pay for that amount of spending, Sánchez replied that he was counting on financial help from “Europe.”

Meanwhile, the coronavirus crisis is wreaking havoc across the eurozone, which suffered an unprecedented collapse in business activity in March 2020, accordingto IHS Markit, a London-based information provider. “Business sentiment about the year ahead has plunged to the gloomiest on record, suggesting policymakers’ efforts to date have failed to brighten the darkening picture,” it wrote. A survey by McKinsey & Company forecast that eurozone GDP will fall by 10.6% in 2020, and will not return to pre-crisis levels until the end of 2024.

On April 6, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire warned that France is likely to see its deepest recession since the end of World War II this year because of the coronavirus crisis. “The worst growth figure in France since 1945 was in 2009, after the great financial crisis of 2008: -2.2%. We will probably be far beyond -2.2% this year,” Le Maire told the Senate Economic Affairs Committee. “This shows the extent of the economic shock we are facing,” he added.

France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy after Germany, imposed a nationwide stay-at-home order since March 17. The lockdown will last until at least April 15. One month of confinement would cost France around 3 points of GDP over a year, and two months of confinement around 6 points, according to French Statistics Agency INSEE.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned his fellow EU leaders that the coronavirus outbreak risked undoing the bloc’s central pillars if they failed to show solidarity in this crisis. “What’s at stake is the survival of the European project,” he said.

Achim Truger, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, said that he believes that coronabonds are necessary to prevent a collapse of the euro:

“All countries in Europe are being hit by the epidemic — Italy and Spain particularly hard. All countries, including Germany, must therefore be able to make the necessary health expenditures and take measures to bridge the economic crisis. This is only possible through additional government debt, and this must be guaranteed to prevent another euro crisis. If the debt loads of Italy and Spain rise sharply, they will be pushed into budget cuts, thus economic, social and political crises, which would ultimately lead to a sovereign debt crisis and a collapse of the euro and the EU. Therefore, there must now be a joint, solidarity-based solution.”

Oliver Hartwich, a German economist and prominent commentator on European affairs who is the Executive Director of the Wellington-based think tank The New Zealand Initiative, summed up the European predicament:

“Today, not a single European country is doing well which means there is limited willingness for European countries to come to each other’s aid. They are busy dealing with their own crises. Just witness how Italy has been left alone with its crisis by Europe and now rather gets its medical support from China….

“An almighty economic earthquake is in the making. In a few weeks or months, several large European economies will require bailout and assistance packages. These will be several times larger than anything Europe has seen. Yet no country, central bank or institution will be eager or even able to provide them. Even the gargantuan sums on the table now will not be enough.

“Incidentally, forget about the International Monetary Fund. It was already stretched when it got involved with Greece last time. It cannot bail out all of Europe when the euro collapses.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15856/coronavirus-euro-collapse

Horrible scenes took place last Saturday in the Alsfeld allotment garden Beerenwiese (district of Vogelsberg): Ali B., a 37-year-old Algerian, allegedly killed 47-year-old Polish man Leszek M. after an argument. Two days after the crime, the shock sits deep in the small town.As the BILD newspaper reported, the victim Leszek M. had been the owner of the plot of land in the Beerenwiese for 15 years. About three years ago, Ali B. also became a member of the association, his plot of land was directly next to the Pole’s. “Ali B. had no real contact with anyone,” an allotment gardener told the BILD. Two years ago there is said to have been an argument between the perpetrator and the victim, Ali B. is said to have thrown flower pots at Leszek M. at that time.

Other gardeners had intervened to settle the dispute. The relationship remained tense. On Saturday, another dispute arose – the background to this is still unclear. “Leszek M. was already at home and then came back to his garden again,” BILD quotes a gardener in its article. Ali B. is said to have attacked the victim there with a hammer, beat him to death with it. The police arrested the Algerian on the spot. The Alsfeld criminal police, in cooperation with the public prosecutor’s office in Gießen, have begun investigations. Leszek M. is survived by two daughters.

osthessen-news.de

On Saturday, April 4, in the French town of Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme) an Islamist attack that left two victims dead, was not reported in the news.

Perpetrated by a Sudanese asylum seeker, and despite the obviousness of the religious motive and its multiple proofs, the mainstream French radio station still found it too difficult to recognize the real problem. And thanks to the Coronavirus crisis, the attack was decidedly under-reported.

A knife attack accompanied by cries of Allah Akbar was not characterized as “Islamist” by mainstream political and media elites. In the aftermath of the attack that marked the commune of Drôme, the Parisian morning show of France Inter kept their unshakable silence.

Journalist Gilles-William Goldnadel commented: “Ten long minutes of information: Situation in France and abroad. Not a second devoted to the Islamist attack of the previous day.”

The written section (with very few readers) of the public service information center, France Info, reported on the attack without mentioning the nature of the act committed the day before, and even seemed to find an excuse for the murderer: “The suspect was disturbed by the confinement rules,” and “very worried about his health,” said the article, without irony…

freewestmedia.com/2020/04/07/france-corona-crisis-an-excuse-not-to-report-islamist-attack/

By Ethel C. Fenig

While presidential wannabe Senator Bernie Sanders (supposedly an Independent from Vermont but really a socialist/communist who caucuses with and is allowed to run as a Democrat for president), Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (also a socialist-communist Democrat-NY) and others rhapsodize about “free” government health care for all, they neglect to mention some harsh realities of such a system that the New York Times (accidentally?) let slip Friday. 

U.K. Backs Off Medical Rationing Plan as Coronavirus Rages

LONDON — Denying lifesaving care to conserve public resources is nothing new for Britain’s National Health Service.

In expensive treatments for cancer and other diseases, the health service officially limits what it will spend to postpone a death: 30,000 pounds, or about $37,000, for each year of full “quality” life provided to a patient.

In the case of a pandemic, the public guidance from health officials for more than a decade has been that doctors should prepare to withhold scarce resources from the weakest patients in order to save more of the strong, especially with the use of life-sustaining ventilators.

Yet now that a pandemic has finally arrived, the health authorities this week balked at spelling out exactly how to make those agonizing choices, evidently for fear of a public uproar.

Wait!  What?  It is more important “to conserve public resources” than “to postpone a death”; a year of “full ‘quality’ life shouldn’t cost more than $37,000”?  What defines quality?  Does confinement to a wheelchair for an otherwise fairly healthy 75 year old reduce life quality if afflicted by Wuhan coronavirus? 

“Everyone matters equally, but this does not mean that everyone is treated the same,” the health department declared in ethical guidance formulated after the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic in 2009.

Oh.  As George Orwell wrote over 70 years ago in his satire on Communism, Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Advocates for the aged warn that older but physically healthy patients may suffer unfairly if doctors use age as a stand-in for resilience, and that decision-making may vary from one hospital to another. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity or other health risks might all be counted differently.

Ethicists warn that the poor would probably suffer disproportionately because they are more likely to have pre-existing health problems.

Undoubtedly the almost 56 year old Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, will be treated more equally than other British citizens, public resources be damned, during his (hopefully) short stay in the ICU after he was hospitalized in intensive care for Wuhan coronavirus.

What about the other middle-aged coronavirus sufferers in England? Or older ones?  Does the country have enough public resources to avoid extreme medical care rationing?  And what about those who need other medical care in the time of a pandemic?  Even a month and a half ago British doctors warned:

“We barely coped with a standard winter – which helpfully had an early flu spike, so everything didn’t hit at once – the idea that we can cope with a pandemic is nonsense.”

[One doctor] explained his own hospital plans included cancelling elective operations for things like hip and knee surgeries while taking over theatres and recovery areas to put ventilated patients adding the trust would “drop staffing ratios as low as we dare”.

Paging Senator Sanders, Rep Ocasio-Cortez for answers.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/socialized_medicine_in_action_in_great_britain.html#ixzz6IvQaqxp8

Tens of millions of face masks that could have been used to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic were destroyed in Belgium starting in 2015. The reason? They needed more room for migrants.

Maggie De Block, who is both Minister of Social Affairs and Health as well as for Asylum and Migration, has acknowledged that face masks were indeed destroyed, but she claimed that this was because they had already passed their expiration date and were no longer in usable condition.

But Marc Caekebeke, an Army adjutant who had been in charge of the stockpile, says that this is only partially true, according to a report by SCEPTR. The main reason they were destroyed was to make more facilities available for incoming migrants.

“That is not correct,” Caekebeke said in response to De Block’s assertion, according to a report by DeMorgen. “The warehouses were dry and closed. The boxes were not affected. The stock was in excellent condition.”

Virologist Marc Van Ranst acknowledged that the expiration date on the masks had passed, but explained that the date “mainly applies to the rubber band. We could indeed no longer have used them in hospitals, but they would have been very useful for the police, among others, today.”

63 million masks were ordered destroyed by the Belgian authorities between 2015 and 2018.

What is perhaps most striking, however, is the reason why the masks were destroyed. Caekebeke claims it was because they needed the warehouses where the masks were being stored to house migrants. According to the SCEPTR report, he explained:

It’s true that they were past their date. I believe the first masks that were destroyed in 2015 had an expiration date in 2010. The last pieces destroyed in 2018 had expired in 2015. But I think the main reason was lack of space. In 2015, the government decided that the Red Cross should use some of the buildings to receive refugees. More room had to be made. I certainly do not want to use this as a stone to throw at the aid organization or anyone else.

Even at the time, some wondered why a better use couldn’t be found for the masks other than simply throwing them away. Caekebeke recalls that a high-ranking physician had commented, “Why don’t we give these masks to Africa? They can always use something like that.”

The struggle over masks and other medical equipment has become a free-for-all as governments around the world scramble to obtain the limited supplies for themselves. Belgium in particular has a severe mask shortage. De Block was ordering masks for migrant centers in February while still telling the public that they weren’t necessary. De Block placed an emergency order for masks from Turkey last month which was paid for but then never delivered, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/04/belgium-face-masks-destroyed-to-make-room-for-migrants/

A 31-year-old African migrant was arrested by Dachau police officers for sexually assaulting and threatening a 15-year-old German girl last week, but the assault sparked further outrage after the Munich police department posted a stock photo of a white male to describe the crime.

According to the police report, the teenage girl said the African male first spoke to her at the Dachau train station at 10 p.m on a train headed for Munich.

After becoming uncomfortable with the encounter, she fled to another part of the train, prompting the Eritrean male to follow her. After sitting next to her, he began stroking her legs and tried to kiss her in her genital area.

She tried to flee again, but he grabbed her and reached under her T-shirt and pants.

She struggled free again, but he told her at the Röhrmoos S-Bahn stop that she should get out with him and threatened her. He then tried to grab her arm and took her cell phone.

When she refused to go with him, he threw her cell phone back on the train and fled from the scene. The girl then ran to another part of the train where another man helped her.

The good Samaritan got out with the 15-year-old at the Vierkirchen station and informed the police what occurred. In the vicinity of the Röhrmoos train station, Dauchau police officers apprehended the 31-year-old Eritrean suspect who lives in the Dachau district.

The federal police are investigating the Eritrean for sexual harassment and threats. The 15-year-old girl identified the suspect by sight after he was in custody.

Social media users express outrage of Munich police using white male in “symbolic” photo

The Munich police report and a subsequent post from Bavaria’s police department on Twitter sparked outrage from social media users over the police department’s choice of a photo.

One Twitter user said the photo simply did not reflect reality and police should have simply used a photo of an empty train. “It would clearly have been better to show another picture without people – maybe an empty wagon inside or a train outside. This “symbolic” image does not correspond to the long-term reality of sexual assault in the country and has misleading framing,” Twitter user @3epnm wrote.
 “Very nice photo illustrating harassment of a woman by someone from Eritrea!” wrote another user. 
 Daniela N. wrote, “Something is wrong with this stock image. But I can’t figure out what”. Some users pointed to the outrage that would have followed if the police chosen a stock photo of a black male for a crime perpetrated by a white male. “Clear case of racist whitefacing,” wrote one Twitter user. “I am missing diversity in the stock photo they chose,” wrote @Joe_Mei.

In response to the comments posted on Twitter regarding police using a white male for its crime report, the Bavarian police commented on the thread, saying they would discuss the matter internally.”Thank you for the numerous comments. We will discuss your comments and opinions internally,” the Bavarian police department commented.

rmx.news/article/article/african-migrant-sexually-assaults-german-teenager-munich-police-use-symbol-photo-of-white-male

Some migrants to Germany express gratitude for all they have received from the German government despite illegally entering the country and imposing themselves on the German Taxpayer.

Olaf Latzel (52 y/o) is a campaigner for the faith. The pastor of the St. Martini parish always has a crowded church for his controversial Sunday sermons. During the Corona crisis, at least 10,000 followers switch to his digital church services via telephone or Internet.

But especially in the left-wing scene the evangelical man of God is a source of controversy. For five weeks he has been massively stalked and attacked. Latzel: “Unknown persons have scratched my car on all sides. The display case and the church door have been smeared with left-wing symbols and hate slogans.” At the beginning of March, 50 leftist protesters disrupted a church service. They handed out fake forms in front of the church for an immediate leaving of the church. Latzel: “Many parishioners were afraid, felt threatened.”

And the terror continued. A full 10-liter yogurt bucket was thrown against the church door. A prankster ordered a car in the pastor’s name from a VW dealership. Especially bad: at Latzel’s digital live church services unknown hackers try to smuggle hate slogans and porn sites onto the homepage.

The preacher: “I wonder what would happen if our church was actually a mosque? We are defencelessly at the mercy of these hostilities. The police come quickly. But all proceedings have been dropped so far.”

https://www.bild.de/regional/bremen/bremen-aktuell/latzel-beschimpft-und-gestalkt-hass-attacken-auf-martini-pastor-69823986.bild.html?fbclid=IwAR3MD1JYuclU3SoO8HNNaH6T2giyiIgbEggC1hTeyH1MEPscJ2urCEcemwQ

Berlin’s Left-wing Mayor and Interior Secretary have both accused the Trump administration of “piracy” for allegedly “confiscating” 200.000 N95 masks ordered for Berlin police from 3M in China. When called out by the conservative opposition, the entire story turned out to be Fake News.

Berlin’s Interior Secretary Andreas Geisel confirmed his anti-American allegations to Left-wing Tagesspiegel newspaper, which ran with the story without waiting for independent confirmation or checking with US authorities.

“We regard this as an act of international piracy,” Geisel said.

“This is not how you treat your Transatlantic partners,” Geisel added while accusing Trump of employing “Wild West” methods.

Berlin’s Left wing-mayor Michael Müller then chimed in on the anti-American Trump-bashing, claiming “The US President’s actions are far from solidarity and responsibility. They are inhuman and unacceptable.”

Police commissioner Barbara Slowik told the Tagesspiegel they had ordered 400,000 N95 masks from a US manufacturer, 200,000 of which she claimed had been “confiscated” at Bangkok airport. “We have to assume this is a result of US export restrictions.”

City council leader Burkard Dregger (CDU) questioned the allegations, calling them “deliberately misleading”.

“The USA has no power to confiscate protective gear in a foreign country. The Senate is seeking a scapegoat to the pin the blame on for their own failure to stockpile enough protective equipment,” Dregger said.

The outrageous claim then began to fall apart almost immediately.

On Friday evening, manufacturer 3M told press agency dpa, they had “no record of an order for 3M masks from China by the Berlin police,” and “no indication that any 3M products were confiscated.” The White House similarly stated the US had not “confiscated” any PPE destined for abroad.

On Saturday, the Berlin Interior Department had to admit the order had been placed with the 3M affiliate in Germany, of which 200.000 masks had merely been delayed in Bangkok. The reason was unclear. The US government was not involved.

The Berlin Mayor or Interior secretary have yet to apologize. The US embassy protested on Twitter:

This isn’t the first time the German Left has tried to weaponize their hatred for Donald Trump during the Chinese COVID-19 pandemic.

In Mid-March, Angela Merkel’s flagship newspaper WELT accused President Donald Trump of trying to buy up German biotech company CureVac and secure a possible coronavirus serum “exclusively for the USA” – a story that turned out to be wholly fabricated.

US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell has been vocal in protesting rampant anti-Americanism in German Media, and erected a statue of Ronald Reagan on the roof of the Berlin embassy when the Left-wing government refused to grant a site in the city. The Left-wing Berlin government also refused landing rights to US Air Force veterans commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the Berlin Blockade in June 2019, after the 90-year old-vets had flown their vintage aircraft across the Atlantic for the event.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/04/fake-news-leftist-berlin-mayor-falsely-accuses-trump-of-piracy-over-botched-order-of-n95-masks/