Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Hockey gives London oversight of Australia’s ‘fixed’ financial system inquiry

Treasurer Joe Hockey is consolidating the push Paul Keating started to turn Australia’s economy into a financial casino, by giving oversight of Australia’s new financial system inquiry to one of the City of London’s leading financial gamblers and political insiders.

[Click here to see Hockey’s “Open for Business” policy in action.]

He has named British-Australian businessman Sir Michael Hintze as one of four leading international business people to oversee the so-called Son of Wallis inquiry.

The City of London financial centre operates as a lawless enclave in the financial world, a deregulated zone from where most of the world’s derivatives bets and speculative currency raids have been made. Ironically, its status is “protected” by the viciously anti-protectionist British governments of both political persuasions, who point-blank refuse to allow the City of London to be subjected to any of the reforms that have been proposed in Europe to rein in derivatives gambling.

Hintze is a big player in the City, being the founder and manager of a $12 billion hedge fund called CQS. It came under scrutiny in 2012 because it only paid £77 thousand in corporate tax, on a profit of £125 million. That year it paid salaries to its UK staff of £111 million. The 24 June 2012 Mirror News reported that Hintze’s UK businesses are ultimately controlled by a company registered in the Cayman Islands, the notorious British tax haven and hedge fund and money-laundering centre controlled by the Queen.

CQS is also suspected to be a major beneficiary of JPMorgan’s infamous “London whale” derivatives betting. The giant Wall Street bank announced a $2 billion trading loss in 2012 from illegal derivatives bets made in its London office, but the actual losses were much higher. CQS is understood to have been on the other side of the trades, but it is unknown how much it profited.

Hintze is a trustee and benefactor of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the British think tank set up by the pro-fascist, i.e. corporativist Mont Pelerin Society which indoctrinated Margaret Thatcher. The IEA boasted they weren’t “Thatcherites”, she was an “IEA-ite”, and it was their economic policies she used to de-industrialise Britain and unleash the so-called “Big Bang” frenzy of speculation and money-churning in the City of London in the 1980s, that led directly to the global financial meltdown two decades later. It was to the IEA in London in 2012 that Joe Hockey delivered his menacing proclamation that nations in debt must submit to the austerity diktats of their creditor banks, or face Adam Smith’s hidden hand formed into a “fist”.

The fix is in

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood charged today, “Hockey’s financial system inquiry is fixed! If it wasn’t already evident, Hintze’s appointment shows it.

“Hockey and Abbott have come into office with the British view that the City of London banks are a higher authority than democratic government, and it is their job to deliver the policies that the banks demand—a deregulation free-for-all, the mass-privatisation of public utilities and services, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) for the banks to profiteer from crucial infrastructure. They are annihilating productive industries, and turning Australia into a financial casino run by financial parasites.”

Isherwood concluded, “The solution, again, is Glass-Steagall, the principle of protecting the people by keeping all aspects of financial gambling completely separate from the real economy. I urge Australians to demand Abbott and Hockey dump this sham inquiry which intends to sacrifice the people to financial predators, and instead implement a full Glass-Steagall separation of investment banking from retail banking.

“The CEC is leading the fight for Glass-Steagall—join us.”

Click here for a free copy of the CEC’s new pamphlet, Glass-Steagall NOW!, which shows how Glass-Steagall is the only way to protect the Australian people and their savings from predatory banks.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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