IMF dictates shock program to Romania

[Hannah Bell]

Coming out of talks with an International Monetary Front delegation last week, Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc unveiled an austerity package that is the precondition for the country receiving the next outlay of a 20 billion euro loan package. Even though cuts were expected, the ferocity of the planned attack sent ripples of shock and anger through the population.

***Summary of cuts***

-- public salaries cut 25%
-- pensions cut 15%
-- unemployment benefits cut 15%
-- child benefits (includes immunizations) cut 25%
-- benefits for caregivers of disabled cut 15%
-- young family benefits cut totally
-- compensation for fired/laid off public employees cut totally
-- single parent benefits frozen
-- transport subsidies for students/elderly eliminated
-- energy subsidies for households eliminated
-- 150 national public hospitals closed, the rest given to local authorities (who don't have the funds to run them, = sale + privatization)

***end summary***

A brief look at the numbers shows the extent to which the new measures affect working people. An average monthly public sector paycheck in Romania is about 400 euros and would drop to about 300 with the new cuts. And while an average rent is around 300 euros, the maintenance cost of a household will increase, due to the withdrawal of energy subventions, from between 133 to 268 percent, depending on the city, i.e. an average of 250 euros....pensioners, who were already struggling to make ends meet with an average pension of 160 Euros, will find it literally impossible to make a living with the 15 percent cut...

During the past 20 years, Romania, one of the former Eastern European buffer states, has been subjected to a continuous barrage of free-market “reforms”, involving deregulations, privatizations of state assets and factory closures. Successive social democratic and right-wing administrations have presided over the impoverishment of the population, all the while providing international companies with a cheap, well-qualified workforce as well as state subsidies and tax exemptions...

The government’s economic plan has already provoked an angry response from the population. Scenes of desperate pensioners breaking through police enclosures and daily street protests by public employees sent a shock wave through the government. President Traian Basescu accused the pensioners of being “infiltrated by violent elements” and threatened that he would not allow “Greek relations” to predominate in the country...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/roma-m18.shtml

[JDPriestly]

1. The bankers cheat. The people pay.

That's how the IMF operates.

[leftstreet]

2. Oops. Romanian unions warn of Greek-style protests

Saturday, May 15, 2010
Romanian unions warn of Greek-style protests against budget cut plans

ROMANIANS RALLIED yesterday against government plans for swingeing budget cuts, as union bosses warned of huge “Greek-style” strikes and protests against the austerity measures.

The unions say they will bring 40,000 people onto the streets of Bucharest in protests next Wednesday, and will launch a full-scale national strike at the end of May unless the president and government back down on spending cuts and plans to shed 70,000 public sector jobs this year. The pay of some 1.3 million state workers has already been frozen.

The reforms face opposition from a broad swathe of Romanian society: hundreds of mothers plan to rally in Bucharest on Monday against a mooted cut in child benefit, and railway workers have threatened to bring the country’s rail network to a halt unless the cutbacks are tempered.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0515/1224270464105.html

A member of trade unions holds a banner showing Prime Minister Emil Boc as he shouts anti-government slogans during a protest in front of the presidential palace in Bucharest, May 13, 2010. Romanian unions threatened a wave of strikes which could cripple hospitals, schools and public transport in protest against draconian wage and pension cuts after President Traian Basescu announced the cuts last week, saying they were needed to ensure continuation of a 20 billion euro aid package led by the International Monetary Fund and would prevent higher taxes and a run on the currency.

[aquart]

3. Romanians lived a long time under cruel dictatorship.

They have superior skills in circumvention of authority.

[Lagomorph]

4. After the protests....

What are they going to do?

[Hannah Bell]

5. strangle the last banker with the entrails of the last bought-off politician?

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot

[JVS]

6. Tell the IMF to fuck off and see if Russia is interested in setting up a sphere of power again.

[Lagomorph]

8. In the globalized, multi-polar world...

Russia is all G20, WTO now....they may have to go to Iran or China.

[coyote]

7. There is no way the system can continue....

because there is no positive slant to we need to slash benefits and extend your retirement date so we can borrow more and make these interest payments.

[amborin]

9. knr