Bilderberg 2012

“all participants attend Bilderberg in a private and not an official capacity…”

Pete Baker on June 18, 2012, 6:41 pm

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As the Irish Times noted at the weekend, the Irish Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, has been providing written answers to the Dáil about his trip to Chantilly, and his attendance at the 2012 Bilderberg Meeting. Here’s his 13 June written answer on “Official Travel” Minister for Finance (Deputy Michael Noonan): I attended the Bilderberg meeting in Westfield Marriot, Chantilly, Virginia, USA, from 1 to 3 June 2012. I, like a number of my European colleagues (both Ministers and EU Commissioners), …

Euro crisis: “A fiat currency backed by heterogeneous sovereigns is irremediably fragile…”

Pete Baker on June 6, 2012, 10:05 pm

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The Financial Times’ chief economics commentator Martin Wolf was at the Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly this year too. And on his return, as spotted by the Guardian’s eurozone crisis live-blog today, he has had this to say. How much pain can the countries under stress endure? Nobody knows. What would happen if a country left the eurozone? Nobody knows. Might even Germany consider exit? Nobody knows. What is the long-run strategy for exit from the crises? Nobody knows. Given such uncertainty, panic is, …

Euro crisis: “Europe’s common currency is its formative element.”

Pete Baker on June 4, 2012, 5:32 pm

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The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, has a plan. Or, at least, a timetable. Herman Van Rompuy told a news conference in St Petersburg, Russia that, by the next summit of EU leaders at the end of June, he and three other EU officials would present “the main building blocks for this deepened economic and monetary union” and “a working method to achieve this objective”. “In those building blocks, banking integration is an important chapter… I will deal at …

Bilderberg 2012: “Like a corporate cross between Santa Claus and a big friendly squid.”

Pete Baker on June 1, 2012, 9:44 pm

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It’s just as well that Ireland said ‘Yes’ to the Fiscal Treaty. I can only imagine the embarrassed silences Irish Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, would have experienced this weekend if the result had gone the other way. Where is Michael? He’s in the US. Virginia, since you ask. In Chantilly. At the 60th annual Bilderberg conference… It’s quite a list of attendees. Some names you might recognise include Lord [Peter] Mandelson and US Senator John Kerry, as well as the chairmen …

Bilderberg 2012: “Are you here for the brunch?”

Pete Baker on May 30, 2012, 6:01 pm

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The Guardian’s Charlie Skelton is in Chantilly, Virginia, ahead of the, whisper it, annual Bilderberg conference – “a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced”. As he says at the Big G’s US News blog Everything’s set. The hotel is being primped and hoovered, the security is arriving, the press is nowhere to be seen, and I just had a really boring crab salad. It’s shaping up to be a vintage Bilderberg. …