Quote:Poland’s Leaders Move to Weaken Currency, Then Die in Plane Crash

April 10, 2010 by flatcap

There’s no telling if the two events are connected, but their timing is mighty interesting.

The Polish government and the National Bank of Poland, in a “rare moment of unity,” agree to weaken Poland’s currency, the zloty, in an act that would benefit Poland’s exporters at the expense of Poland’s trading partners—that is, the European Union, among others. Then, the next day, Poland’s president and the president of its national bank die in a plane crash.

From the Wall Street Journal in an item dated April 9, 2010:

In one of those rare moments of unity, the National Bank of Poland and the Polish government agreed on the need to weaken the Polish zloty, which over recent weeks has rebounded close to its pre-crisis strength. The currency’s strength is now seen a possible threat to economic recovery. After several verbal interventions over the past few days, the central bank intervened with real money Friday, for the first time in more than a decade.

The bank followed through on its Thursday warnings that it is “technologically and psychologically” prepared to enter the currency market to prevent “excessive strengthening of the zloty.” Government officials also said earlier this week that the “strong zloty” is damaging growth and, after Friday’s intervention, said they fully back the central bank’s move.

In moving to weaken the zloty, Poland’s leadership was placing the interests of the people of Poland ahead of the interests of the European collective known as the European Union.

Then, the next day, the president of Poland dies in a plane crash along with numerous other top leaders, including the president of the National Bank. From the Mail Online:

Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria have been killed after their plane crashed on approach to Smolensk airport in western Russia.

Russian news agencies reported at least 87 people died in the crash near Smolensk airport in western Russia, citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry. They reported 132 people were aboard the Tupolev Tu-154.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Franciszek Gagor, National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were on the passenger list.

Poland has been dragging its feet in adopting the euro and joining the European Union, having pushed back its target date for doing so until 2015. Here in the U.S., we might say that Poland is not a “team player.” In the New World Order, bad things tend to happen to leaders who aren’t team players.

Quote:There is growing recognition that the post-Soviet economies were structured from the start to benefit foreign interests, not local economies. For example, Latvian labor is taxed at over 50 per cent (labor, employer, and social tax) – so high as to make it noncompetitive, while property taxes are less than 1 per cent, providing an incentive toward rampant speculation. This skewed tax philosophy made the “Baltic Tigers” and central Europe prime loan markets for Swedish and Austrian banks, but their labor could not find well-paying work at home. Nothing like this (or their abysmal workplace protection laws) is found in the Western European, North American or Asian economies.

It seems unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that large sectors of the New European population can be made subject to salary garnishment throughout their lives, reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage. Future relations between Old and New Europe will depend on the Eurozone’s willingness to re-design the post-Soviet economies on more solvent lines – with more productive credit and a less rentier-biased tax system that promotes employment rather than asset-price inflation that drives labor to emigrate. In addition to currency realignments to deal with unaffordable debt, the indicated line of solution for these countries is a major shift of taxes off labor onto land, making them more like Western Europe. There is no just alternative. Otherwise, the age-old conflict-of-interest between creditors and debtors threatens to split Europe into opposing political camps, with Iceland the dress rehearsal.

Until this debt problem is resolved – and the only way to resolve it is to negotiate a debt write-off – European expansion (the absorption of New Europe into Old Europe) seems over. But the transition to this future solution will not be easy. Financial interests still wield dominant power over the EU, and will resist the inevitable. Gordon Brown already has shown his colors in his threats against Iceland to illegally and improperly use the IMF as a collection agent for debts that Iceland doesn’t legally owe, and to blackball Icelandic membership in the EU.

Confronted with Brown’s bullying – and that of Britain’s Dutch poodles – 97 per cent of Icelandic voters opposed the debt settlement that Britain and the Netherlands sought to force down the throat of Allthing members last month. This high a vote has not been seen in the world since the old Stalinist era.

Carsten Wiethoff Wrote:

Charles Drago Wrote:There were two airports with in-alignment runways no more than a kilometer apart.

The polish plane attempted to land four times on the northern airport, which is Smolensk airbase.
From Wikipedia:
Smolensk Military (Russian военный аэродром "Смоленск-Северный", military aerodrome Smolensk-North) is an air base in Smolensk Oblast, Russia located 4 km north of Smolensk. It is a small mixed-use airfield with a remote revetment area with 8 pads and a Yakovlev factory at the southeast side of the airfield. It has 28 based Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft.
During the Cold War it was home to the 401 IAP (401st Interceptor Aviation Regiment) flying MiG-23P aircraft, which disbanded around 1990 with its MiG-23Ps assigned to 412 IAP at Dombarovsky. It has also been home to 871 IAP (871st Interceptor Aviation Regiment) flying MiG-23 and Su-27 aircraft in 1994, then MiG-29 aircraft in 2003. Airlift services are provided by 103 Gv VTAP (103rd Guards Military Air Transport Regiment) flying Ilyushin Il-76 jets.

The crew was warned of bad weather conditions (dense fog), but tried to land nonetheless, crashing at the fourth attempt after aborting three times. The airport does not have an instrument landing system (ILS).[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_%28air_base%29#cite_note-ADD-0][/url]

David Guyatt Wrote:If the report that the aircraft attempted to land four times before crashing, then this strikes me that it was an accident rather than foul play. In the latter case nothing would have been left to chance - whereas chance seemed to play quite a large role in this crash?

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:DPF members - the DPF Mods decided to merge the two threads about the Polish air crash to preserve the information and arguments in one thread.

On merging, the software kept David Guyatt's thread title as opposed to Peter Lemkin's. No judgement on either thread was intended in this.

• From: AFP
  
• April 11, 2010 11:17PM
  

Carsten Wiethoff Wrote:"The recordings that we have confirm that there were no technical problems with the plane," chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin said during a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the site of the crash.

Carsten Wiethoff Wrote:According to http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/26781/2010/4/10/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA&MR=1
the weather at the time of the attempted landing (short before 10 am local time) in Smolensk was:
Temp: 1 deg. C, Dewpoint 1 deg. C, Humidity 98%, QNH 1026 hPa, Visibility 0.5km, Wind from SE with 10.8 km/h, dense fog.

So the weather was really bad for a landing without ILS.

The final position of the plane is depicted here: