“O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths”; so declared the Prophet Isaiah in an inspired prophetic vision of the current status of Anglo-Saxon government extant in our day and age.

There is a great blindness affecting the minds of those governing the economy, the defense and security of the Anglo-Saxon nations. Of those given charge over both the spiritual welfare and the security of these nations, Isaiah declared, “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant ….” Even amid the greatest global crisis since the Great Depression, having the effrontery to place the heaviest of burdens on the taxpayer to pay for the corporate sins of the greedy and the corrupt, they say, “to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant” (Isaiah 56:10-12).

Yet, it is in the field of international relations that the Anglo-Saxon nations appear so blind to the signs of the times. Nowhere is this more apparent, it seems, than in Washington.

America is undergoing a sea change in its North Atlantic foreign policy. The most glaring example of this is the current friction engendered by the U.S. administration with Germany.

German commentators, once caught up in the heady atmosphere of the seeming messianic worship of America’s new president, are now starting to notice a cool change blowing from Washington. This was quite apparent from the reaction by Germany’s leading daily newspaper to Chancellor Merkel’s reception at an awards ceremony during her visit to the U.S. last week.

Under the headline “Does the U.S. Still Care About Germany?”, Der Spiegel mused, “German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in Washington Thursday evening to receive an award for her contributions to transatlantic relations. But with few politicians in attendance, she might have gotten the feeling that Germany no longer carries its former weight in the U.S. capital.” Noting that “there was just a single member of the House of Representatives (out of a possible 435) who bothered to show up to see the German chancellor,” Spiegel went on to critically observe that “Interest for countries like Germany is no longer seen as a way to advance one’s career in the U.S. Congress. … In Washington, the concept of a G-2 is gaining credence, a world order in which the U.S. and China take the lead. Europe—and Germany—is on the margins.”

The continuance of such a stance will ultimately prove fatal to America.

Conscious of the developing rift between Washington and Brussels/Berlin, Chancellor Merkel declared in her speech at the awards evening, “The Europeans have grown closer together. … We have understood that we need to speak with a single voice. We are 500 million people and that is a weight that cannot be ignored” (emphasis mine throughout).

The fact that both the German chancellor and President Sarkozy of France, the two leading lights in the European Union, have roundly criticized Washington’s handling of the current financial crisis does not sit well with President Obama and his cabinet, let alone the Fed. Spiegel noted that “Merkel’s recent critique of Washington’s loose monetary policy raised many an eyebrow in the U.S. capital.” Merkel could not resist hitting this theme in her speech last Thursday, observing, “Such a crisis cannot be allowed to repeat itself. It is the result of market excesses; we need more regulation.“

For those with ears to hear, Chancellor Merkel fired two warning shots across the bows of the current U.S. administration when she declared that the EU carries a weight that cannot be ignored, and reiterated that the financial crisis highlights the need for more regulation.

Washington appears outwardly ignorant that the EU—in particular its leading nation, Germany—is already throwing its weight around to ensure that “such a crisis cannot be allowed to repeat itself.” At the April G-20 summit in London, the U.S. administration meekly and ignorantly signed up to “more regulation” to be directed, globally, by the forces in charge of Europe’s central banking cabal.

During her Washington visit, Chancellor Merkel discussed with President Obama issues ranging from climate change to Guantanamo prisoners. In two issues at the core of their discussions, Merkel took a strong stance in contrast to the American president’s: Iran and the forthcoming G-8 conference in Italy.

President Obama seemed intent on simply waving aside Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s demands for an apology regarding the U.S. president’s belated condemnatory remarks on the Iranian election outcome. By contrast, Chancellor Merkel minced no words when she demanded that “the Iranian nuclear program ‘must be stopped’” (Bloomberg, June 26).

Concerning the July G-8 summit, “both pledged they would avoid protectionism and maintain a course of government actions leading to ‘sustainable growth,’ Obama said.” In contrast, the German chancellor again underlined her theme of the previous day. “Merkel said the summit of industrialized nations would ‘take stock’ of new financial regulations imposed on both sides of the Atlantic that she said are meant to prevent ‘a future crisis’ and global meltdown” (ibid.).

Watch for the G-8 summit to further entrench the regulatory control of the European central banks over not only America’s, but the whole global economy.

Many of those who once sneered at the inerrant Bible prophecies for our time—prophecies that Herbert W. Armstrong tenaciously proclaimed in print, over radio and television for almost the entire latter half of the 20th century—are now living through their daily fulfillment. One of the most powerful of these prophecies that is even now building in strength in Brussels, Berlin and Rome is that of Revelation 13 which speaks of a regulatory power that will restrict trade to those alone who bow to its global will.

Though commentators have been generally slow to comprehend the devious nature of the soon-to-be-enforced regulatory power of the EU Financial Stability Board (fsb)—a global financial and economic regulatory body directed by the EU-based central banks—the more astute are beginning to understand its sinister and far-reaching nature.

Author Ellen Brown noted in an insightful article recently that “The ‘Report on Financial Regulatory Reform’ issued by the Obama administration on June 17 includes a recommendation that the fsb ‘strengthen’ and ‘institutionalize’ its mandate” (Global Research, June 23). In a June 21 article, Brown also cited increasing concerns that “that the new agency benignly called the Financial Stability Board (fsb) is the latest sinister development in the covert consolidation of global financial power in a few private hands.” That power, she noted, is controlled by the G-7 central bankers, dominated by the EU.

In effect, as commentator Dick Morris has pointed out, the American presidency, like the British government, has signed over sovereign rights of its entire economic and financial control to the European Union. This will have catastrophic results for America.

Should the fsb further consolidate its power at the upcoming meeting of the world’s top industrial powers, the G-8, in July, then, as one commentator put it, “holding on to your wallets won’t matter because everything in them will be emptied, the result of (banker-controlled) regulatory bodies pulling off the greatest-ever financial heist—a global coup d’état” (ibid., June 24).

Washington ignores the principal power behind Europe’s push for control of the global economy—Germany—at its own risk. The warning bells were sounded last week in Washington by the German chancellor herself as she declared that the EU carries “a weight that cannot be ignored.”

Germany has yet again proven adept at creating national advantage out of global crisis. Chancellor Merkel’s warning that “we need more regulation” is but a harbinger of the fulfillment of the time not so far away when the power that evolves from the fsb will be so great as to demand that “all, both … rich and poor, free and bond … receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17).