Herr David Folkerts-Landau
Like the emperor alien in Tim Burton’s spoof sci-fi movie, ‘Mars Attack,’ a well-dressed, well-fed ‘spokesperson’ for the Deutsche Bank suddenly appeared on our television screens this week dislocating normal programmes. Unaccountably, he spoke to the bemused multitude in impeccable English, warning Scotland to expect a second ‘Great Depression’ should we exercise our right to full and frank democracy. [The bank has since revered that prediction entirely.]
My, my; glaringly obvious he doesn’t know who caused the first Depression.
The man who actually wrote the bank’s report is David Folkerts-Landau.
Herr Folkerts-Landau bought his second home in the US recently, for over $11 million dollars. Clearly, he is not a man who normally worries about Scotland’s health.
He is an economist for the bank, and chief executive, so expect him to be portrayed an ’eminent expert’ by the British press and media. Pity, because he and his bank are already charged with lying to the Bundestag over food price speculation, Germany’s constitutional and legislative body
His opinion of Scotland’s worth, his terse comments, are contained in the report’s foreword, NOT in the main body of the report which is concerned about the global economy, his words carefully lifted and presented to us by the British Establishment and its hard-working elves as if the entire report.
The opinions expressed are his personal opinion.
His comments are a an annoying mixture of conjecture, misinformation, and philosophical inconsistencies. Essentially, what he postulates is, the world’s economy is so shaky Scotland breaking away now could make it wobble even more. What power we have! Don’t take my word, you can read it for yourself. But consider this:
This year the German government passed a law giving workers a minimum wage of €8.50 Euros an hour. The only bank to resist the improvement in worker’s lives was … the Deutsche Bank. It tried hard to depict it as a ‘cataclysmic’ disaster. Herr Folkerts-Landau swore blind higher wages would ‘unravel’ the employment market. To understand his threat you must first understand he is a neo-con in the brutal mould.
Germany’s premier, Angela Merkel, ignored Herr Folkerts-Landau.
We should too. No disaster occurred.
Over one million of Scotland’s people live below the poverty line. Herr Folkerts-Landau is worried they might be given a living wage. There’s nothing like a gross multi-millionaire investment banker to tell the rest of us how poor we should remain. J. K. Rowling will be cheering in her leylandi fortified Scots castle in Edinburgh.
Deutsche Bank is stuffed full of toxic derivatives on its books. A bank to listen to with respect? Delusion comes in many forms.
Oh, by the way, vast new oil fields have been discovered off Shetlands – offering Scotland “trillions” of dollars for many decades to come, the words of the oil executives, not mine. Could the panic in Westminster’s breast have something to do with the distinct possibility a generation of Scotland’s oil wealth might be lost to squander yet again?
Post Script:
February 2015. The bank has done a volte face altering its opinion of Scotland’s economic health 180 degrees – here is its latest prognostication:
“European regions that could be better off going it alone
Scotland, Flanders and Catalonia are among the European regions that could be better off going it alone, says Deutsche Bank. (Telegraph newspaper 9 February 2015)
A bizarre turn of events? Well, now that Scotland is safe back in the bosom of the UK it’s also safe to be candid and admit it was, after all, a wealthy country better off independent.
Grouse Beater 
Deutsche Bank’s chief economist David Folkerts-Landau has form for serving up porkies to the Bundestag – why should anyone believe a word he says?
Lying to a parliamentary committee is a pretty serious offence.
In 2012 he told a Bundestag committee that speculation in agricultural commodities was not putting up prices and therefore not contributing to the spread of hunger and malnutrition.
But a confidential internal document produced by Deutsche Bank Research – the department of which he was in charge – stated:
“Speculation has also contributed to price increases.”
DB Research gave an express and unmistakeable warning of the consequences, “Such speculation can have grave consequences for farmers and consumers and is, in principle, unacceptable.”
Let’s be clear about what he was up to: he was using dishonest arguments to justify the use of financial products which bet on the prices of agricultural commodities – food in other words. In the developing world, people die of malnutrition because of this sort of thing.
And Cameron and his cronies have the nerve to frighten people with scare stories about food prices increasing in the event of independence?
http://www.foodwatch.org/en/what-we-do/topics/speculation-with-foodstuffs/news/deutsche-bank-and-allianz-warned-by-own-research-departments-of-grave-consequences/?sword_list%5B0%5D=folkertslandau
Funny how those who think we should vote no, are in fact self serving bastards.
Well said GB and so true jimnArlene.
Very well expressed and utterly true, sir.
Now why would deutsch bank comment on a back water vote on an irrelevant set of little islands off the north west coast of Europe? DB holds the largest derivatives book on the planet, larger than the GDP of the entire world. The tiny tremors from Scotland and each and every one of our tiny little votes are enough to collapse the entire financial system, when combined with the instability these bastards have propagated for the past three decades. They and their cohorts control every aspect of our paradigms of reality and they are shitting a brick. The markets reacted badly to the poll last Sunday and shook Sterling’s exchange rate, that’s why the big guns are out. Their near zero percent central bank lending rates are the equivalent of a life support machine for their continued survival and corruption. They don’t like things they can’t control, especially other groups of people wanting control of their own realities, determining their own sets of values, questioning the values they’ve been fed for decades and centuries, particularly the value of promises from people who print promises of value at an exponential rate, even easier with digibytes than mere paper. Our long overdue reality check has been postponed for six years, but it hasn’t gone away, it’s just got a lot bigger and it’s arrival maybe sooner than we think. It may be easier for a small country with its own resources to progress after the reset, sharing in new sets of values recognised and standardised with its trading partners, than it is for a larger country with limited resources, a much larger population and a much more deeply ingrained class system.
Since Deutsche Bank is exclusively a London Entity and has zero high street presence anywhere in the UK, his intervention was worthless. All it did was highlight Camero and Co are getting.