Troubling to say the least - from Zerohedge, a usually reliable website; I really haven't looked into this; but if even half of it is true, folks, .....

It sounds like the Catholic church to me; it has the smell, the stench of the Inquisition, the feel of feudal law, of serfs of old; medieval Europe is waking up; is this the Holy Roman Empire revisited? And who are those ESM members anyway? Maybe you can enlighten me on this, I just discovered this video at 3: 00 AM, and it is very, very late.

PS: the video came with the following text:

Three years ago, Congress balked at the mere thought of giving Hank Paulson's (so lovingly portrayed in Andrew Ross Sorkin's straight to HBO Too Big To Fail) proposed TARP, which came in an "exhaustive" 3 page term sheet with limited bailout powers however with virtually unlimited waivers and supervision, and voted it down leading to one of the biggest market collapses in history. Curiously, a more careful look through Europe's €500 billion (oddly enough almost the same size as America's $700 billion TARP) European 

Stability Mechanism or ESM, reveals that in preparing the terms and conditions of the ESM, Europe may have laid precisely the same Easter Egg that Paulson did with TARP, but failed. Because at its core, the ESM is like a TARP... on steroids. It is a potentially unlimited liquidity conduit (only contingent on how much cash Germany wants to allocate to it - which in turn means how much cash Germany is willing to let the ECB print), with no supervisory checks and balances embedded, and even worse with no explicit or implicit liability clauses - in essence it is a carte blanche for its owners to do as they see fit without any form of regulation. As the following brief but must watch video explains, the ESM "is an organization that can sue us, but is immune from any forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity; there are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply; governments can not take action against it? Europe's national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization? Is that the future of Europe? Is that the new EU? A Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?" Ironically even America's feeble and corrupt Congress stopped a version of TARP that demanded far less from the taxpaying citizens. Yet somehow, Europe has completely let this one slip by. Is it simply to continue the illusion of the insolvent Walfare State for a continent habituated by zombifying socialism, or is Europe by now just too afraid and too tired to say anything against its eurocrat class? One thing is certain: when the people voluntarily give up on democracy, out of sheer laziness or any other reason, the historical outcomes are always all too tragic.

 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/video-explanation-how-esm-europes-uber-tarp-steroids

UPDATE:

I had a chance to look into it a little bit: indeed, it is for real, but according to Wikipedia not to be instated until July 2012... and who is behind it but GERMANY, of course?! So I was right, this is part and parcel of the wishing to be reborn 'Holy' Roman Empire. As someone aptly commented: " Zieg Heil.".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Stability_Mechanism

Now the big question is, will Europe last that long? It seems that there are two conflicting and powerful forces at work here: on one hand the implacable, cruel, despotic hand of Rome; on the other hand, Hashem's hand, which B"H will save us from these beasts... if commentators are correct and we indeed have entered the long-awaited End of Days.



And as an encore: it's curtains for Greece, on Chanukah!

 ( Remind me, wasn't it the Greek Empire that challenged God's law in Jerusalem at the time of Chanukah? Don't mess with our Temple, by now the lesson should be clear to all. Hey, Rome, you're next!)

Greek Budget Deficit To Pass 10% Of GDP, Country Stops Most Cash Outlays

From ZeroHedge as well:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greek-budget-deficit-pass-10-gdp-country-stops-most-cash-outlays

While European banks may or may not succeed in delaying the inevitable unwind of the Eurozone by a month or two, the European credit catastrophe is taking on a grotesque form, first in Greece, where following news that the budget deficit will soar past an unprecedented 10% of GDP, the Greek government has halted virtually all cash outflows. Ekathimerini reports that "The government has decided to stop tax returns and other obligation payments to enterprises, salary workers and pensioners." In other words, the entire government has now virtually halted one half of its operations - the outlays - as the country reverts even more to its status as European bank debt slave, in perpetuity, or until the country breaks away from the Eurozone and reinstitutes the Drachma (which as Zero Hedge pointed out first in August, continues to trade When Issued at various desks) whichever comes first.
From Ekathimerini:

The Finance Ministry is desperately seeking ways to contain the fiscal deficit that has swollen due to additional grants to social security funds totaling 0.5-0.9 percent of GDP and due to the lagging of public revenues in the year’s first 11 months.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and his alternate, Filippos Sachinidis, met on Monday with the other high-level ministry officials and agreed to issue an order to the country’s tax authorities to immediately stop paying tax returns to taxpayers, companies and state suppliers.

They also decided to promote a new regulation at the start of 2012 allowing for old debts to be paid in 60 installments, at a minimum sum of 300 euros each, in an effort to bring more revenues into the state coffers.

Provisional figures for the first 10 days of December showed that public revenues remained at low levels, although a pleasant surprise came in the form of the special property tax paid through electricity bills. This revenue has exceeded expectations, although a share of that will have to be returned owing to errors made in calculating the tax for certain property owners.

As a result we are about to get, you guessed it, another downward growth revision. We have lost count how many there have been in the past year alone.

Under these circumstances, state revenues are expected to lag the
revised target for 2011 by a considerable 1.5 billion euros at least,
while the excess on the expenditure side will be calculated after the
amount granted to the social security funds is established.

In conclusion, even Greece now admits terminal failure:

The only way to reduce the damage done to the 2011 budget by
insufficient revenues is through further cuts to the Public Investment
Program, but even then the deficit will be impossible to bring below 10
percent of GDP.

Sachinidis admitted in Parliament yesterday that
both the government and its creditors have failed in their estimates for
Greece’s macroeconomics this year, saying that this was also down to
the financial program followed.

And while the next depoit update from the Bank of Greece will confirm the domestic bank run is soaring, and the country's financial system is a hollow shell, none of this matters any more: Greece is now officially bankrupt in all but name. At this point the best the banking cartel is to hope to bleed the country dry for a few more months before the people finally revolt at which point all bets are off.