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In reply to the discussion: STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, December 12, 2011 [View all]Demeter
(85,373 posts)27. Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy MICHAEL HUDSON
http://www.philstockworld.com/2011/12/10/europe%E2%80%99s-deadly-transition-from-social-democracy-to-oligarchy/
(As first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
The easiest way to understand Europes financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a bankers dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their governments capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the 50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.
The problem is that Greece lacks the ready money to redeem its debts and pay the interest charges. The ECB is demanding that it sell off public assets land, water and sewer systems, ports and other assets in the public domain, and also cut back pensions and other payments to its population. The bottom 99% understandably are angry to be informed that the wealthiest layer of the population is largely responsible for the budget shortfall by stashing away a reported 45 billion of funds stashed away in Swiss banks alone. The idea of normal wage-earners being obliged to forfeit their pensions to pay for tax evaders and for the general un-taxing of wealth since the regime of the colonels makes most people understandably angry. For the ECB, EU and IMF troika to say that whatever the wealthy take, steal or evade paying must be made up by the population at large is not a politically neutral position. It comes down hard on the side of wealth that has been unfairly taken.
A democratic tax policy would reinstate progressive taxation on income and property, and would enforce its collection with penalties for evasion. Ever since the 19th century, democratic reformers have sought to free economies from waste, corruption and unearned income. But the ECB troika is imposing a regressive tax one that can be imposed only by turning government policy-making over to a set of unelected technocrats.
To call the administrators of so anti-democratic a policy technocrats seems to be a cynical scientific-sounding euphemism for financial lobbyists or bureaucrats deemed suitably tunnel-visioned to act as useful idiots on behalf of their sponsors. Their ideology is the same austerity philosophy that the IMF imposed on Third World debtors from the 1960s through the 1980s. Claiming to stabilize the balance of payments while introducing free markets, these officials sold off export sectors and basic infrastructure to creditor-nation buyers. The effect was to drive austerity-ridden economies even deeper into debt to foreign bankers and their own domestic oligarchies...
MORE GLOOMINESS AT LINK
REALITY CALLS URGENTLY TODAY...I WILL DO BETTER TOMORROW, GET BACK LATER TODAY IF I CAN...I SLEPT IN...BOTH CONCERTS WENT WELL, THE PAPERS DIDN'T, AND IT NEVER GOT ABOVE 19F YESTERDAY...
(As first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
The easiest way to understand Europes financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a bankers dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their governments capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the 50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.
The problem is that Greece lacks the ready money to redeem its debts and pay the interest charges. The ECB is demanding that it sell off public assets land, water and sewer systems, ports and other assets in the public domain, and also cut back pensions and other payments to its population. The bottom 99% understandably are angry to be informed that the wealthiest layer of the population is largely responsible for the budget shortfall by stashing away a reported 45 billion of funds stashed away in Swiss banks alone. The idea of normal wage-earners being obliged to forfeit their pensions to pay for tax evaders and for the general un-taxing of wealth since the regime of the colonels makes most people understandably angry. For the ECB, EU and IMF troika to say that whatever the wealthy take, steal or evade paying must be made up by the population at large is not a politically neutral position. It comes down hard on the side of wealth that has been unfairly taken.
A democratic tax policy would reinstate progressive taxation on income and property, and would enforce its collection with penalties for evasion. Ever since the 19th century, democratic reformers have sought to free economies from waste, corruption and unearned income. But the ECB troika is imposing a regressive tax one that can be imposed only by turning government policy-making over to a set of unelected technocrats.
To call the administrators of so anti-democratic a policy technocrats seems to be a cynical scientific-sounding euphemism for financial lobbyists or bureaucrats deemed suitably tunnel-visioned to act as useful idiots on behalf of their sponsors. Their ideology is the same austerity philosophy that the IMF imposed on Third World debtors from the 1960s through the 1980s. Claiming to stabilize the balance of payments while introducing free markets, these officials sold off export sectors and basic infrastructure to creditor-nation buyers. The effect was to drive austerity-ridden economies even deeper into debt to foreign bankers and their own domestic oligarchies...
MORE GLOOMINESS AT LINK
REALITY CALLS URGENTLY TODAY...I WILL DO BETTER TOMORROW, GET BACK LATER TODAY IF I CAN...I SLEPT IN...BOTH CONCERTS WENT WELL, THE PAPERS DIDN'T, AND IT NEVER GOT ABOVE 19F YESTERDAY...
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I think it belongs in LBN for the same reason that even NPR updates Market numbers all day
bread_and_roses
Dec 2011
#23
Wow, this is like back to the future. It's already Monday somewhere, I guess - LOL!
InkAddict
Dec 2011
#11
Perhaps lobbying the rotating honchos at LBN and/or Admin could recover SMW posting rights there,
Ghost Dog
Dec 2011
#98
Once again, the SMW thread that was posted and locked was NOT a current SMW OP
Tansy_Gold
Dec 2011
#97
There is a lot of deja vu going on, and to different periods of modern European history.
amandabeech
Dec 2011
#87
Well, perhaps here is a market opening for a firm actually contractually committing itself to not
amandabeech
Dec 2011
#88