Ernst Wolff (journalist)

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Ernst Wolff (* 1950 in Southeast Asia ) is a German author and journalist . His focus is the criticism of the global financial and monetary system , especially the role of the IMF , the World Bank , the Federal Reserve , the Bretton Woods system and the worldwide fiat money .

Life

Wolff grew up in Southeast Asia and went to school in Germany. According to his own account, he had to leave the United States after publishing articles criticizing the Vietnam War . He worked in various professions , including as a journalist, interpreter and screenwriter.

Wolff is divorced, has two grown children and lived in the Berlin area in 2017 .

Publications and video broadcasts

His books, which were mainly published by Tectum-Wissenschaftsverlag , deal with the reciprocal relationships between politics and business , in particular with the monetary and financial economy and with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) .

World power IMF was on Spiegel's bestseller list for books in the field of economics. Finanztsunami was the number one bestseller in the field of economics in Manager Magazin .

Wolff publishes articles in online magazines such as telepolis and Rubikon as well as in political blogs . He produces video programs with KenFM , such as the series The Wolff of Wall Street , with Klagemauer.tv (kla.tv), nuoviso and other YouTube channels . He is also listed as an author at Sputnik News and was interviewed as a business journalist by RT Deutsch . He also publishes articles in Contra Magazin, on goldseiten.de, the Deutsche Wirtschaftsnachrichten .

World Power IMF: Chronicle of a Robbery (2014)

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After the preface, Wolff first describes the creation of the IMF. According to Wolff, it begins with the Bretton Woods conference and the implementation of Harry Dexter White's concept . At the start of the founding of the IMF in 1945 there was a “blackmail”: “The USA tied a loan of 3.75 billion dollars, which Great Britain urgently needed because of its war debts, to the condition that the kingdom would comply with the present agreement agreed without ifs and buts. "

In the post-war boom , the IMF then threw its "net" primarily over the African states that had become independent. In the 1970s two experiences shaped the IMF: on the one hand the neoliberal reforms of the IMF and the Chicago Boys in Pinochets Chile, on the other hand the interference of the USA in the sovereignty of Great Britain. With the structural adjustment programs required by the IMF as a condition for lending , mainly privatization and deregulation , the IMF has systematized its approach and expanded individual financing criteria more and more to macroeconomic and political demands, which the respective states in a letter of intent as their own goals in their application have to formulate the funding contract.

The IMF has developed into a global crisis manager, which was first shown in the Latin American debt crisis. In this situation, the consequences of the measures led to resistance for the first time. When capitalism was reintroduced in the former Soviet Union, shock therapy was also used, as in Chile.

In South Africa, the IMF has concluded an alliance against its own people with the ANC and Mandela . Nelson Mandela's historical function did not consist in the abolition of racial segregation, which was sealed in 1990. "Mandela's historical role was to prevent the expropriation of the ruling class and the expulsion of foreign investors and thus to have subordinated the interests of the black majority of the population at the decisive moment to the interests of the old ruling clique and the international capital allied with them."

The IMF prepared and accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia by promoting ethnic tensions. The suspension of payments to the provinces and the constituent republics had the most serious consequences. The intended intended reaction had occurred: "In return, Slovenia and Croatia stopped their payments for the compensation fund and began to speculate publicly about applications for membership in the EC." The IMF thus laid the economic foundations for the final breakup of Yugoslavia.

The IMF also played an ominous role in the Asian crisis .

The fight against poverty led to the introduction of wage ceilings and rising prices, in other words to an intensification of the problem of poverty. The Argentine crisis looks Wolff as bankruptcy , which the IMF had forced.

Wolff sees the driving forces of the IMF in globalization and, above all, in financialization , which led to the world financial crisis of 2007/2008 . The IMF then targeted more and more Europe, first Ireland, then Greece. In this way he initiated an explosion of poverty in Europe, brought back hunger and, together with the EU and the ECB ( Troika ), placed Europe under forced administration. Using Cyprus as an example, Wolff shows how expropriation follows the looting as the next step in the strategy, with the IMF attempting to legalize and institutionalize its raids.

review

The political scientist Henrik Scheller reports Wolff's goal from the foreword: Wolff wants to explain how “an organization that causes such tremendous human suffering around the globe can continue to act with impunity and count on the support of the most powerful forces of our time in the future” .

Scheller judges the chapters on historical development to be informative, but attests to this part already having a “latent conspiracy-theoretical style”, insofar as reference is made to “unpersonalized powers, secret services and strategists”. The procedure of the IMF is shown in individual case studies as "planned, intentional and self-interest-oriented action". He quotes Wolff: "Without the systematic preparation by the IMF, the humanitarian catastrophe of the 1990s in the Balkans would not have been possible". Wolff also describes the role of the IMF in the Latin American debt crisis , the collapse of the Soviet Union , South Africa, the Argentina crisis and the crisis in Europe that has been simmering since 2008 in a similar way .

Scheller agrees that these crises need to be contextualized and the role of governments analyzed. However, the personalization of global processes is questionable when, for example, Horst Köhler is referred to as the pioneer of the greatest “bank enrichment” that has ever taken place on European soil. Wolff's "indictment" also remains guilty of constructive and realistic reform approaches and alternative scenarios.

The Financial Tsunami (2017)

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The work dedicated to Mohamed Bouazizi has 23 chapters after the foreword that deal with the financial markets as the new “superpower”. Wolff locates the origin of the "system" in Bretton Woods. The Federal Reserve is portrayed as a power “behind the system”. Chapter 5 examines the “close connection” between finance and politics.

This is followed by individual analyzes of historical events and developments, in which the financial sector is said to have played a mostly hidden, but all the more decisive role: the First World War and the post-war period under the auspices of Wall Street with its principle of "profiting and destabilizing" as described by Wolff (Chapters 8-9); the Russian Revolution, in which the financiers' intentions are said to have "gotten out of hand", National Socialism and World War II as the result of economic calculations; the cold war with global superpowers and new enemy images for profitable armament scenarios.

In Wolff's portrayal, war appears as the interest of the “financial elite”, as does the rise of the National Socialists and the arms race. From chapter 15 on, economic issues are in the foreground again: the new financial order with the key currency of the dollar without the gold standard , the implementation of “ neoliberalism ” and so-called financial “weapons of mass destruction”. With the war on terror , according to Wolff, a new, profitable wave of armament arose. The last chapters, 20 to 23, paint the picture of an inevitable catastrophe, the tsunami, which for Wolff marks the collapse of the economic and financial system. The last chapter opens up Wolff's view of the possibilities of action in the face of the downfall he portrays.

Main messages

In the foreword, Wolff presents his basic understanding of the underlying and deceptive effects of the financial industry:

Largely unnoticed by the public, the financial industry has become the most powerful and all-important factor on our planet. At the same time, your management staff steers and directs the fate of the world largely from unseen and in a way that is difficult to see through even on closer inspection. For this reason, countless experts have managed to hide their true work from us for decades.

Wolff's declared intention is to enable “the people who live from their work” with his educational work “to wrest control of the world from the financial industry and to take matters into their own hands in order to benefit future generations To enable a non-violent and humane existence that is shaped by justice. "

According to Wolff, the financial industry used the Bretton Woods system to create a system that was tailored to the US dollar, favored it and discriminated against all other currencies in the world. "How undemocratic and unjust it was, however, can only be assessed when you realize that even after its introduction there should only be one organization in the world that was allowed to create the US dollar, the US central bank as" Wall Street-Washington Pact ”. According to Wolff, its acceptance is based on a deception: the founders called the bank not the central bank, but the “Federal Reserve System” and sold it to the American people as a regulatory mechanism to control the banks.

Wolff tries to answer the question why the financial markets seem to have become the measure of all things. After two world wars, the financial institutions of Wall Street in New York, which had risen to world power through war loans, took over global leadership. At the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, a monetary system was brought into being by politicians "which was completely tailored to the needs of Wall Street and subjected the entire world to the rule of the US dollar ."

Wolff is of the opinion that even in the " near crash of the global financial system" in 2008 no effective measure was taken to end excesses and undesirable developments. Wolff thinks that politics has a peculiar logic according to which the financial markets, like the weather, are withdrawn from the will of the people. Wolff considers this to be a conscious concealment of reality, which is mainly done by the media.

Wolff sees four possible consequences in the situation of the crisis that delay or stop the collapse: an IMF currency, helicopter money , dictatorship or war. The financial elite spread myths that should help them to survive the crisis: the reset theory , the assumption that Asia, especially China, could act as a counterweight to the World Bank and IMF , the belief in democratic reforms and the propagation of solutions at the national level . In Wolff's opinion, none of these theories offers a way out of the crisis.

U.S. Wars and Proxy Wars since 1945 (2019)

In this essay, Ernst Wolff sees the USA as the driver of the conflicts and wars after the Second World War to secure its supremacy as an economic and military global superpower. This includes the need to preserve the dollar as the world's reserve currency at all costs, from which US corporations benefit. Power is secured through proxy wars and regime change operations. An important partial goal is the US energy dominance. Wolff sees the greatest danger in a new conflict with China, Russia and Iran.

Reception and criticism

Wolff's writings, lectures and videos are mainly received in alternative media.

Ernst Wolff in Owingen 2018

The Federal Government's Commissioner for Anti-Semitism , Felix Klein , warned of the spread of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the Corona crisis . After mentioning the YouTube influencer Mazdak, there is a section on Ernst Wolff, who spoke of a “financial fascist coup”, “behind which” the World Health Organization (WHO) is: “Basically, this is nothing more than a financial fascist coup, orchestrated internationally - obviously".

Klein quotes Wolff's view that more than 85 percent of the WHO is funded by the pharmaceutical industry and private foundations. The largest of these foundations is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .

The political scientist Kira Ayyadi from Belltower.News ( Amadeu Antonio Foundation ) criticizes Wolff as a "self-appointed" economist, he is dubious because he also publishes on "Rubikon" and video broadcasts, among other things, with "non-factual and conspiracy-prone channels" like KenFM , NuoViso and Kla.TV produce. However, Wolff finally lost his credibility with his appearance at Ivo Sasek's “ Anti-Censorship Coalition ” (AZK) in 2019.

Wolff, who strives for an undefined “democratic monetary order”, characterizes the current situation as “consciously bringing about a crash”. He stated in a video: "We are in the final phase of this monetary system and we are experiencing the absolute looting orgy by the major investors at the moment." The whole "Corona hysteria" ( false information about the COVID-19 pandemic ) serves to dispossess many. The goal is a currency reform.

Kira Ayyadi sees “anti-Semitic codes” behind the portrayal of Wolff in a video on “Gifted.TV”. These are understood and decoded by the audience, as can be seen from the audience comments on YouTube. Morten Freidel in the FAZ and Armin Pfahl-Traughber also represent this reason in an article by HaGalil on the sociological constants of protest movements. Pfahl-Traughber: “He does not name the alleged actors behind it, but are identified as“ Jews ”in the comments. Even without a precise name, one can recognize the suggested guilty party, since the allusions are perceived by like-minded people. Pfahl-Traughber assigns Wolff's utterances to the "anti-Semitic (n) Corona protest forms", which he interprets as a renaissance of medieval conspiracy ideologies. In his view, these are a sociological constant in times of crisis.

The taz headlines the “Knowledge Congress” of AfD officials on February 28, 2016 in the Parktheater Iserlohn: “Something for all conspiracy fans.” Ernst Wolff, the fourth speaker after Daniele Ganser , Michael Vogt and Eva Hermann, fits well into the concept of simple truths of the knowledge congress: Wolff believes that the world would be "completely ruled by the financial industry".

Ingrid Brodnig classified Wolff as one of the spreaders of fake news insofar as he represents speculation about the conversion of the economic system: According to Wolff's assertion, governments or nebulous financial actors are about “shutting down the economic system and possibly even expropriating some of their money from citizens . "Wolff's video productions are often" unsubstantiated opinions and speculations, but they attract enormous attention. "

Works

  • World power IMF - Chronicle of a robbery. Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag , Marburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8288-3329-6 .
  • Pillaging the World - the history and politics of the IMF. Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag, Marburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8288-3438-5 .
  • Financial tsunami - how the global financial system threatens us all. Büchner-Verlag , Marburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-941310-81-0 .
  • The international financial order as a criminal construct of the deep state. In: Jens Wernicke, Ulrich Mies (ed.): Facade democracy and deep state. On the way to an authoritarian age. Promedia, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85371-425-6 .
  • US wars and proxy wars since 1945: Iran is now in the crosshairs. In: Ulrich Mies (Ed.): The deep state strikes: How the western world creates crises and prepares wars. Promedia , 2019, ISBN 978-3-85371-449-2 , p. 263 ff.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Wolff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sputnik Germany: Ernst Wolff - Author 2018, accessed January 28, 2018.
  2. ↑ finanzmarktwelt: Ernst Wolff: Der Finanztsunami from September 21, 2017, accessed on January 28, 2018.
  3. ↑ kritisches Netzwerk.de: World Market IMF - Chronicle of a Raubzug 2014, accessed on January 28, 2018.
  4. ↑ Huffington Post: Our banking system really is so risky from October 26, 2015, accessed on January 28, 2018.
  5. ↑ Linke Zeitung: Harry Popow's Money Dictatorship January 11, 2018, accessed on January 29, 2018.
  6. ↑ World power IMF -. (No longer available online.) Buchreport.de, archived from the original ; accessed on February 3, 2018 (German).
  7. ↑ book report. Retrieved on May 25, 2020 (German).
  8. ↑ Ernst Wolff. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Ernst Wolff: "The establishment and the mass media have lost control". Retrieved on May 25, 2020 (German).
  10. ↑ Ernst Wolff Archive. In: Contra Magazin. Retrieved on May 25, 2020 (German).
  11. ↑ Gold Pages People: Ernst Wolff | Author's profile. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Bizarre alliance: Ursula von der Leyen, financial investors and the Greens are fighting together for the climate deal. Retrieved on May 25, 2020 (German).
  13. ↑ Henrik Scheller, review of: Ernst Wolff: Weltmacht IMF. Marburg 2014, in: Portal for Political Science. (online , published April 9, 2015)
  14. ↑ a b Felix Klein warns of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories , Jüdische Allgemeine, March 26, 2020. Accessed on April 19, 2020.
  15. ↑ YouTube: When a self-declared "economist" wants to explain Corona with anti-Semitism. In: Belltower.News. Retrieved on May 17, 2020 (German).
  16. ^ Corona: the collapse of the system. https://eingeschenken.tv/ernst-wolff-corona-und-der-herbeigefuehre-crash-coronavirus/
  17. ↑ Ernst Wolff: #Corona and the crash brought about. #Coronavirus. Retrieved on May 27, 2020 (German).
  18. ↑ If a self-declared economist with anti-Semitism wants to explain Corona , Belltower.news, March 25, 2020. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  19. ↑ Morten Freidel: Corona conspiracy theories: The madness from the net . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed on May 17, 2020]) Likewise, here in the FAZ article Morten Freidel argues: "Most of the Gedeon videos do not have many viewers. However, hundreds of thousands viewed this one. Like one in which the author Ernst Wolff warns of a "financial fascist coup". It serves the interests of a small clique. Wolff does not say who exactly. The viewers write it under the video: the Jews. ").
  20. ↑ from TLV-01: Anti-Semitic Corona forms of protest as a renaissance of medieval conspiracy ideologies. In: haGalil. May 23, 2020, accessed on May 25, 2020 (German).
  21. ^ "Knowledge Congress" by AfD functionaries . Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  22. ↑ Salzburger Nachrichten: Coronavirus - fact checks on current fake news. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH South East Asia