The world's about to end

Independence would threaten a major economic crisis for Scotland and be regarded in history as being as great a mistake as the decisions that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to banking giant Deutsche Bank.  On the face of it that’s a pretty troubling headline in today’s Herald.
 

And we would have “economic catastrophe” being visited upon Britain within days of a vote for Independence according to some MPs.

Lets stick with Deutsche Bank at the moment and dig a little deeper and you may find it a little difficult  to take such words seriously. It knows all about how to create a crisis.

In January 2014 it was reported that Deutsche Bank reported a €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) pre-tax loss for the fourth quarter of 2013.  Hardly the most auspicious of performances.   

And if we go back a little further in history Deutsche Bank was one of the major drivers of the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market during the housing credit bubble from 2004–2008, creating ~$32,000,000,000 worth.  The 2011 US Senate Permanent Select Committee on Investigations report on Wall Street and the Financial Crisis analysed Deutsche Bank as a 'case study' of investment banking involvement in the mortgage bubble, CDO market, credit crunch, and recession. It concluded that even as the market was collapsing in 2007, and its top global CDO trader was deriding the CDO market and betting against some of the mortgage bonds in its CDOs, Deutsche bank continued to churn out bad CDO products to investors.  That doesn’t sound so good. 

Add to that the little probe by Germanys financial regulator into allegations that senior Deutsch Bank AG executives initiated spying operations against unruly shareholders and other targets. The regulator talked of “misconduct” by officials in the banks security department and we perhaps begin to see a rather different Deutsch Bank.

So there you have it.  George Robertson’s words on the cataclysmic implications for global security. And now we have a similar warning for the financial markets.  It may come as a big surprise to you too, but I never in my wildest dreams realised that Scotland really was at the centre of both military and economic policy for the whole world and what happened here the future of world depended on.