World Financial Crisis (and fallout) Part 5

I missed that wonderful little NYTimes story, F-P.    Wonder if the voters of all these debt-laden states that followed Illinois' formula are beginning to understand their role in the Conservatives' operational plan to replace state social institutions with private? (that's really not creating too large a plot theory either, eh?  Steve's hell-bent on the same thing.  But will the average masses awaken - or be awakened - to what's up?)

Austerity for workers, tax cuts for business—Europe’s class policy
8 July 2010

A new report by the statistical office of the European Union, Eurostat, reveals that in the wake of the most serious economic crisis since the 1930s, European governments are continuing to cut corporate taxes while increasing the tax burden on the working population.

Eurostat reports that European governments cut the average rate of corporate taxation across the continent from its 2009 level of 23.5 percent to a new record low of 23.2 percent. The reduction continues a trend which spans many years and has resulted in a major shift in tax policy.

This is but one expression of the ruthless class policy being pursued by governments across Europe and internationally—whether nominally “left” or conservative—to make the working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system. The result is ever greater levels of social inequality, as wealth is funnelled from the bottom to the top....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/pers-j08.shtml

Capitalist tried Keynes ideas. Taht lasted untill the 1960s. Then they tried Friedman's ideas. That lasted until 2008. Now they are just having G20 meetings that agree on nothing and spending $1 billion on security.

I have asimple solution for the capitalsits. One world country and one world currency.

After reading the news paper, I've come to the realization that commoners like myself are not supposed to think about these things. Democratizing money and banking is out of the question and should be left to the elite who are educated and most capable to manage the nation's finance and credit,  because as they say, it's very complicated and should be left to those who are well read and bred. Meanwgile us working class slobs should simply trust and obey, because it's the only way. We'd better watch out. There may be dogs about, Excuse us Mr newz writer while we follow you and the rest of your bleeting sheep into the valley of bright knives and cold storage where we should be sliced into lamb cutlets and made to hang on high hooks. Babblers in this thread think dangerous thoughts.

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball

http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant07092010.html

"Capitalism is dead but we still dance with the corpse.."

The Globe started its series on Broken Europe with Spain:

In economic terms, Spain’s simultaneous property-bubble collapse and debt crisis mean the country will face years of adjustment to a lower living standard and a less generous government. Given the country’s comparatively strong underlying economy, it does not face a Greek-style lender panic, but it will likely be more than a decade before its economy returns to its previous levels.

The new Europe

In human terms, it means millions of Europeans who had been given a foothold in the middle-class world of property ownership, secure employment and university education have now been plunged into lives of rented rooms, paltry minimum-wage jobs and dependency on an increasingly feeble state. Many face huge burdens of debt.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/spains-unemployment-devastates...

The “Berlin Club”: Germany plans to put Europe on rations
17 July 2010

Quote:
A number of important conclusions should be drawn from the plans being prepared in Berlin.

Nearly three years after the finance crisis broke out, it is now entering a new and potentially even more explosive stage. On July 23, the results of stress tests on 91 European banks will be published. Although the tests have been drawn up to disguise as much as they uncover, some financial analysts are predicting that the statistics could reveal major problems in 10 to 20 banks. In this event, further additional billions will be required to bail out these banks and buy up their toxic assets.

Plagued by worries that the eurozone rescue package is insufficient to bail out both ailing European banks and stricken economies, the German government is now drawing up its own radical contingency plan for Europe.

The proposals for a Berlin Club will also only exacerbate national antagonisms across the continent. As Der Spiegel notes: “Countries immediately or potentially threatened by insolvency, like Greece, Portugal and Spain, will be up in arms against the proposals from Berlin. Why should they agree to rules that would make it easier for the remaining euro countries to deny them aid in an emergency?”.....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/pers-j17.shtml

Chavez Praises Banco de Venezuela Growth on the First Anniversary of its Nationalisation

By Steven Mather

Caracas, July 19, 2010 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared the performance of the nationalized Banco de Venezuela unprecedented, one year after it passed formally into public hands.

At an event last Thursday to commemorate the first anniversary of the nationalization, Chavez proclaimed, “I don’t know if there has been any experience like it before in Venezuela of such growth. That means a lot of things. This throws out all of that information that is emitted from the laboratories of psychological warfare that global capitalism has set up in Venezuela … that manipulate and put fear in the minds of Venezuelans.”

He revealed an increase in deposits of 50.1% at the bank that make it the top performer in the country. “Today, the Bank of Venezuela is in first place out of all the banks in the country. When it was nationalized, and made the property of the nation, it was third place with Bs. 25.7 billion. Now it is in first place, with Bs. 38.6 billion in deposits.”.....

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5505

IMF Blueprint For a Global Currency

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-9999-0-13-13--.html

"yes really"

..use the military to impose austerity measures in europe is spreading beyond greece.

Spanish government prepares to use military against air traffic controllers
By Paul Stuart
10 August 2010

Air traffic controllers at the state-run Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA) have voted 98 percent in favour of industrial action against a ferocious assault by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) government of Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero.

However, even before the ballot, the air traffic controllers union (USCA) is seeking to restrict the struggle in advance to a series of token strikes and provide AENA with a 10-day advance notice of dates.

In February the government imposed by decree a 40 percent wage cut on the controllers. According to reports it is now imposing an increase in yearly hours’ commitment from 1,000 to 1,600 and, despite rising levels of illness, a reduction in rest periods.

Recently, government officials accused controllers on sick leave of organising an illegal strike. Development Minister José Blanco threatened to fire the staff, off sick from work due to severe stress and exhaustion, who refused to return to work after he ordered fresh drumhead medical exams. Blanco threatened, “If claims are false then they are breaking the law, which means we can take legal action that may result in them losing their jobs”. According to USCA, workers with serious medical conditions are being pressured, some on tranquilizers, back to work with transport organised by AENA.....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/spai-a10.shtml

"In its announcement, the Fed also left unchanged its benchmark short-term interest rate - the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks borrow from one another overnight - at zero to 0.25 percent, its level since December 2008. And it maintained that the rate would remain "exceptionally low" for "an extended period," the language it has been using since March 2009."

Which means that the loonie is about to rise again and really, really help our export industries.

NorthReport wrote:

Chinese miracle a cautionary tale

 http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/50132326-82/china-chinese-percent-e...

Back in 1988, the last year of Japan’s 30-year boom, the land in the garden of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo was allegedly worth more than the entire state of California, but that was just another way of saying “unsustainable property bubble.” The bubble duly burst, bringing down the entire Japanese economy with it — and it has stayed down for the past 22 years, achieving at best 2 percent annual growth and usually much less.

In the mid 1980s, the US economy was recovering from another ideologically induced recession, This was when the US pleaded with Japan to please commit economic suicide in 1985 by signing the Plaza Accord to allow the Yen to rise against the dollar, which ultimately made Japanese exports more expensive and US exports more competitive. Japan has always been a pliant colony of the US since WW II. Will  the CPC in Beijing be as compliant? For some reason I don't think so. Dyer is flapping his gums.

[url=http://tv.globalresearch.ca/content/greg-palast-confronts-wto-director-g... Palast Confronts The Generalissimo of Globalization[/url] GRTV

WTO puts the heavy on developing countries to open their borders to Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction (FWMD).

YOu can tinker with capitalism until your hands bleed. Nothing can change the inevitable.

I don't believe that is a real quote from Bernanke.  He's a central banker. People with money pay attention to what they say.  The are therefor very careful about what they say.  If Bernanke really said that all hell would be breaking loose right now.

If the US government is going to have trouble borrowing it will be reflected in long term interest rates.  Which are very low right now.

"The bankruptcy of the United States is now certain.."

Clearly, just the sort of statement Bernanke would make...on his deathbed.

Labour Day 2010: Austerity, Public Services and the Labour Movement

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/412.php#continue

"For workers across Canada, and indeed everywhere, a radical response will be needed.."

They practice socialism for the rich while preaching free markets for everyone else. Laissez-faire capitalism died in 1929, RIP.

Today, Acting as President of The United States of America, Barack Obama, announced a spending program of $50b on the Three Rs: Roads, Runways, and Rail. This latest stimulating package, the Act. Pres. said, would create construction jobs immediately, and  then many, many more jobs in, presumably, traffic control.

The AP's program is tried and true Keynesianism whereby a government becomes the consumer of last resort. As an economic prescriptive it did wonders following the second whirl of war. The idea is that government spends on infrastructure hiring construction workers, mostly men, who will get married, buy a home, a car, new appliances, furry dice, and then pay for many years more keeping all maintained. And then vacation every year at fictional kingdoms or at endless lines of McDonald restaurants separated by shiny new infrastructure.

That worked, then, because when the Joe Jackhammer would buy a car and washing machine, both were made by other Americans in other American cities. And that American factory would hire more Americans to meet the new demand of Joe (there are few Janes) Jackhammers all over the country. The problem today, of course, is that Joe Jackhammer's car and washing machine, and just about everything else he will buy, will come from overseas. When he calls to inquire if the washing machine warranty covers mixing concrete, he will be as likely to be connected to an operator in Bombay as in Flint, Michigan as even the much heralded "knowledge economy" has been off-shored, dontcha know.

Unfortunately though, that really doesn't matter. Because  Joe Jackhammer is, in most likelihood, all jacked up on debt and so any income he does get will probably go to the bank and collection agents rather than the Wal-Mart mainlining cheap Chinese labour.

Likewise, that doesn't matter either. Because even if Jack was debt free and Westinghovel actually had a factory in Wisconsin, the empire is reduced to striking oil and other minerals in the most unlikely and furthest reaches of a world already wrung of all she can give in service to the Cult of Plastic. Meanwhile, in the process of bludgeoning out whatever minerals and fuels may still linger, what remains of habitat, wilderness, and uncontaminated lakes will be fed through the wood chipper of Western Capitalism to ensure that no CEO need go without a bonus.

A financial crisis seems so quaint. We are facing a more existential crisis. One that threatens our way of life, national economies and nation states. The madness that is beginning to infect the body politic is only the first symptom of a far more sinister disease. But fascism can no more distill energy and matter from the angry mob than can the zombie of global capitalism cease devouring living flesh.  So even the rise of Palin the Impaler and her Army of the Damned Stupid will be short lived. Her powers as Maverick Sorceress will be betrayed to be as bereft as her vocabulary. Not even she can conjure surplus from scarcity (and a surplus of madness, cruelty, and blood don't count). And from there, it is all downhill.

But fear not my Babblerites. We have done well. We continue to do well. We have fuel to waste entertaining ourselves. We have many, many cheap labourers to go through, one at a time, before our iPads and iPhones must rise in price incrementally. We have lakes to destroy and sitcoms to watch and an endless array of distractions to keep our attention glued to the perfecting of the culture of self. I rock. I really, really do. Ta ta, bambinos.