A new stage in the attacks on the European working class

[Steven Gaal]

Shocking Austerity: Greece’s Poor Lost 86% Of Income, But Rich Only 17-20% (link)

The poorest households in the debt-ridden country lost nearly 86% of their income, while the richest lost only 17-20%. The tax burden on the poor increased by 337% while the burden on upper-income classes increased by only 9%!!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+++++++++++++++

In case you missed it: Ireland issued T-bills at a neg yield for 1st time ever. Sold €500mn of 6mth bills at an average yield of -0.01%. (link)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+++++++++++++++

In Italy, They're Now Taxing Shadows (link)

As Greece struggles to convince the world it’s serious about adopting a series of reforms designed to bolster its economy including cracking down on rampant tax evasion, the Syriza government may want to look to Italy for creative ideas on how to boost government revenue. As Italian newspaper Leggo reports, store owners in Conegliano are now faced with the unfortunate (albeit comically absurd) proposition of paying taxes on shadows.

The rationale appears to go something like this: an awning casts a shadow on public property and therefore you must pay to use that property.

[Steven Gaal]

RAW: Clashes erupt amid anti-austerity demo in Madrid (link)

==================

Here's a chart on house prices in Europe since 2008. Sweden +35%, Spain -35%. Just a 70% difference! (link)

[Steven Gaal]

Mar 24 07:37

CHART: Euro-area long-term unemployment rate climbed to a record 53.2% of unemployed in Q3, latest @OECD data (link)

[Steven Gaal]

Study: austerity undermines fundamental rights across the EU

www.euractiv.com › Health & Consumers › News

• Cached

19 hours ago - Austerity policies in the EU have eroded the poorest citizens' access to education and healthcare. According to a European Parliament report, the situation is ...

[Steven Gaal]

Mar 30 09:46

Thousands protest against austerity in Brussels (link)

Some 17,000 Belgians coming from various cities participated in the protest rally on Sunday, police sources said.

A number of the protesters shouted slogans like, "Yes, there is an alternative" to government savings. They also called for a fair tax system and a better distribution of government spending.

The demonstration came a day before a series of strikes which are scheduled to be staged across the country.

[Steven Gaal]

New video sigmatizes European austerity policies.

www.newgreektv.com/.../14901-daily-telegraph-greece-plans-bank-natio...

• Cached

17 hours ago - A video shot in Athens, Greece, in March 2015, written and directed by Nicolas Androulakis shows another view of Greece under austerity. It is in Gree...

[Steven Gaal]

Germany Generously Offers To Freeze The Bank Accounts Of Wealthy Greeks (link)

[Steven Gaal]

Eiffel Tower, schools, airports shut as thousands take to French streets in nationwide strike (link)

]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

=

A nationwide strike in France has seen thousands of people march instead of going to their regular jobs on Thursday. The union-led protest affected public services, air traffic, radio broadcasts and Paris’ most-famous landmark.

The strike is a day after President Francois Hollande's government said it expected one percent economic growth this year and lowered its forecast for 2016 and 2017.

The unions are protesting against budget cuts and a number of other grievances they have against the government or employers.

Thousands of protesters marched in Paris between Place d’Italie and the Invalides

[Steven Gaal]

Socialist leader Costa, best-selling economist Piketty slam austerity

=

by TPN/ Lusa, in Money

=======================================================================

The secretary-general of Portugal’s main opposition group, the Socialist Party, and the star French
economist Thomas Piketty, after a meeting in Lisbon this week, both rejected austerity as a model for boosting competitiveness and reducing public debt.

Socialist leader Costa, best-selling economist Piketty slam austerity

Piketty also laid much of the blame for the ongoing economic and financial crises in southern Europe on the stance taken by the governments of Germany and France.
The economist, whose book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ - examining trends in wealth and income inequality over the decades - has been a best-seller in several major markets, was in Lisbon on Monday to give a talk and for meetings with various left-of-centre politicians.
The first of these was with Costa, who seized the chance at a news conference after their meeting to criticise the policies of the current right-of-centre government.
“Portugal is indeed an example of the fact that austerity does not resolve the debt problem,” the Socialist leader said. “After four years of austerity, with cuts in salaries and pensions and an increase in the tax burden, the truth is that we today have a debt 30 percentage points [as a share of gross domestic product] above what we had, and we are in a worst condition to be able to pay it off. We need to bring an end to the policy of austerity.”
Piketty, for his part, reiterated his criticisms of policy in the European Union, which he said was largely the result of “selfishness” on the part of the two largest EuroZone members in relation to those with the biggest financial problems - Portugal, Spain and Greece.
“I think the elections in Portugal and Spain this year could serve to make a difference, reorienting Europe,” the French economist said. “The European Union is making a grave mistake in arguing that one can reduce the high level of debt simply based on more austerity.
“When you have a debt of one hundred percent or more of GDP, you must also look to history and to what happened with France and Germany after the Second World War,” he concluded, in a reference to the way debt problems were overcome through economic growth and “some inflation”.
That contrasts with the current situation in the Euro Zone, in which unemployment is high and growth anaemic, he noted. The question of equality is, Piketty added, “central to economic development”.
Piketty also had meetings with Rui Tavares, a former member of the European Parliament and founder of the Livre party, which plans to stand candidates in the general election due this autumn, and with António Sampaio de Nóvoa, a former rector of University of Lisbon who plans to standing in the presidential election early next year.
This comes after the Socialist Party had earlier announced plans to put a swift end to austerity imposed cuts and argued that they would not threaten Portugal’s status as a Euro Zone member.
“Contrary to what the government has told us, we do not need to continue with austerity to keep us in the euro while it is also not true what the radical left has been saying that we need to break with the euro in order to abandon austerity” said António Costa, before affirming that ending austerity would actually better enable Portuguese participation in the euro.
The Socialist Party leader continued to say that governing was not about dreaming but about making dreams reality and that meant “understanding the conditions available for governing.”
Costa stated that he represented an alternative and that the current government had failed by recalling how according to the government’s 2011 forecasts, “Gross Domestic Product in 2015 should now be 7 percent higher than it is, with a debt level of 100 percent and not the current 130 percent and running a budget deficit of 0.5 percent rather than the 2.7 percent forecast.”
The Socialist Party leader was speaking to some 700 supporters and said that while he had overseen the drafting of a feasible economic programme to take into the election campaign, the government was still making unspecified cuts in reference to plans to lop another €600 million off the state pension bill.
Costa concluded that “this means that the government has not only not learned from its errors but also has nothing new to say and the only thing it knows how to present, are cuts” before promising that his government would harm neither state nor household finances.

[Steven Gaal]

Poverty returns to Europe by leaps and bounds

04.05.2015

Poverty returns to Europe by leaps and bounds.

===

The news about the economic situation in the EU reminds frontline reports. Head of Unilever in Western Europe, Ian Zeyderveld, from the pages of the Financial Times Deutschland said that poverty is returning to Europe. The main reason for the increasingly lower income of the residents of the Old World is a full-blown crisis in the euro area that is still far from complete.

Ian Zeyderveld has proposed a new strategy to remedy the rapidly declining profits of Unilever in Western Europe. He believes that product packaging should be made smaller to reduce its price. It works both in Asia and now in Europe. The Unilever is not alone in changing its marketing strategy in the crisis-stricken European countries.

Head of the Department on International Financial Issues at the Centre for European Economic Research, Professor Michael Schroeder said that the European crisis affects export-oriented producers more than others. As a result, market conditions weaken, unemployment rises, and living standards lower. According to the expert, this situation may last for three to four years. Numerous examples of the fall of the level of European citizens clearly illustrate his words.

In its study, the British Guardian newspaper found that 83 percent of teachers in the UK every day see hungry students. Over half of teachers say that in the last couple of years the number of hungry school children has increased, as many British families are suffering from reduced benefits, unemployment and recession. Almost half of the teachers admitted to feeding starving scholars, one in five even gives them money for lunch. Why is this happening?

The Center of the Modern Family in the UK conducted a study that demonstrated the effects of the fall of wages and cost of living for the Britons, and increased cost of goods and services related to child care. The crisis also hurts young Britons of 18-32 years old - according to the survey, one in five cannot pay their utility bills, and one in eight young resident of England skips lunch for the opportunity to feed their family.

But Britain is not the poorest country in Western Europe. The situation in not so wealthy economies of the region is much worse. The unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 years old in Italy is 28 percent, in Greece - 43 percent, and in Spain - 51 percent.

The Greek economy in the past year fell by 6 percent, the recession in the country has been ongoing for five years, and it is projected that this year the economy will fall by another 5 percent. About 20 percent of retail stores were shut down. The number of suicides in Greece over the last 12 months has increased by 40 percent, and the amount of debt of the Greek government, according to the IMF, is 160 percent of GDP.

In June of this year, the public debt of Italy, according to the local central bank, has reached a record $2 trillion euros, which is 123 percent of its GDP. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said that Italy does not need financial help from the EU, but only moral support, which is hard to believe.

The second largest economy in Europe after Germany, France, has also suffered from the crisis. According to the Statistics Bureau of France Insee, this is the third stagnant quarter in a row. Stagnation is, of course, not a recession, but the country's government has a lot to think about.

Perhaps one of a few countries that are more or less stable during the financial storms is Germany. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the growth of the economy of Germany for the year 2012 was 0.5 percent. It had a positive impact on the growth of domestic consumption and export.

The opinion of the Europeans about the situation is worthy of note. In July of 2012, the results of the survey "Eurobarometer" that tracks the level of anxiety and concern among residents of the Old World were published. It turned out that 71 percent of the EU citizens consider the economic situation in the country poor. 30 percent of the residents of the EU assess their position in the labor market as unsatisfactory. 100 percent of Greek believes that the economy is in trouble. The same opinion on the state of the national economies was expressed by 99 percent of the population of Spain, 96 percent of Irish, 93 percent of Hungarians and 92 percent of Italians.

However, according to the same survey, there are optimistic countries, whose people consider the situation in their countries more than acceptable. Among them are 83 percent of Swedes, 77 percent of Germans, 66 percent of Austrians and 55 percent of Danes.

According to head of the Scientific Research of Mises Center Yaroslav Romanchuk, now there is a situation where we have two Europes - a happy one (mainly Germany and Scandinavia), and the rest - about 20 countries, and the difference between the two Europes is turning into an abyss. The consequence of this situation is growing nationalism, resentment, and envy.

The crisis also affected most affluent segments of the population of Europe. According to a research by Capgemini and Royal Bank of Canada, the wealth of millionaires not only in the EU, but in the entire world in recent years has declined. The exceptions are, perhaps, only the fat cats in the Middle East. Last year, the total wealth of the world's millionaires fell by 1.7 percent - the first such decline since 2008. The number of the super-rich decreased by 2.5 percent. The report's authors say this is due to the fact that wealthy people abroad often invest their money in low liquidity and high risk assets - such as real estate

However, statistics shows an increase in the number of millionaires in Europe at 1.1 percent due to the fact that the wealthy people of the continent now prefer to invest in foreign assets. The largest number of wealthy people now lives in the Asia-Pacific region.

Chinese business advisor Andy Xie believes that the measures taken by the European leaders to improve the economic situation in the region cannot put an end to the crisis and are not radical and convincing enough. The expert sees the main cause of the crisis in their irresponsibility. The EU countries have broken the rules of their own game in terms of the budget deficits and mired in debt. Endless loans that were handed out in the past, sooner or later, would lead to a crisis.

The European leaders have asked the international community to support their nation, saying that otherwise the global economy will get worse. According to Xie, since Europe is the main trading partner of China, export-oriented Chinese firms are ruined. It is not just China - Europe is the main source of technological and industrial maintenance for Africa, and the crisis in Europe affects the situation in the most negative way.

Germany proposes to introduce austerity measures to cut all kinds of benefits and wages in the troubled areas of Europe, mainly in its south. However, these measures are becoming increasingly more ineffective and unpopular - unemployment is rising, the standard of living is falling, and the positive trend is not visible.

Andy Xie said that the inefficiency of today's economy of Europe is due to its lavish social costs, ineffective trade unions, as well as confusing laws that prevent the development of competition. If the countries of Europe eliminate these obstacles to their development, the situation may markedly improve.

The administration of the U.S. President has sent to Europe the U.S. Treasury representative Lyle Brainard to encourage the governments of several countries in the anti-crisis measures. In particular, it is expected that the Eurozone stabilization funds will be used - about 700 billion euros - to recapitalize banks and provide financial assistance directly to financial companies, not the countries.

All experts agree that Europe has to learn to live within its means and stop giving endless credits and encourage dependency of the poorer EU countries. Only a concerted and deliberate policy of the EU leaders will be able to stop the spread of the crisis and improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

====================

Sergei Vasilenkov

Pravda.Ru

Edited May 6, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

The Inhuman Failure of ‘Austerity’ (op-ed)

May 5, 2015

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution said the Government should provide for the “general Welfare,” a mandate to help build a strong and prosperous nation. But the concept has been lost in a wave of anti-government, “neoliberal” propaganda making the Market king, as David William Pear explains.

=====

By David William Pear

Close your eyes and imagine an affluent society with subsonic trains crisscrossing the continent. One that produces unlimited clean energy. Provides basic healthcare for everyone. Values education for its own sake. Cultivates the arts and research to discover beauty and the unknown. An affluent society that responds with compassion to natural disaster. Conserves natural resources and protects the environment. And enjoys more leisure time. Cares about eliminating poverty and illiteracy. That ends racism and prejudice.

Does the affluent society seem like a dream? Is it an impossible goal? The neoliberals think it is. They imagine a world of austerity and a new Gilded Age.

================

The neoliberals are prisoners of the Eighteenth Century. They have not advanced since the neo-feudal teachings of Adam Smith (1723-1790). Smith is the godfather of economics and wrote the “bible” of capitalism, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith was among the first to give much thought about economics.

In Eighteenth Century Great Britain, half the population lived in poverty. They survived, if they did, with disease, famine, illiteracy, lack of sanitation and in slums. It was normal then. Things had always been that way. They thought the poor, starving and ignorant mass of people would always be among them. They thought their society was according to the law of nature.

Smith was a charitable man. He fretted about poverty, and gave a great deal of thought about wages. With a large pool of the unemployed, the new industrial class only had to pay subsistence wages.

Smith tried to tell the industrialists that people were like cattle. He said if one gave their cows more grass, then they would produce more milk. The industrialists said that if they gave their workers higher wages, then it would come out of profits, and the workers would just produce more children with mouths to feed, leading to greater starvation. The neoliberals still think this way.

Every progressive social project the neoliberals call it socialism, as if that is an obscene word. The only government projects they like are those that benefit the private sector, corporations and the wealthy.

Almost every modern democracy has done better than the U.S. at providing good government for its people. All the evidence proves it. The U.S. consistently ranks far below more progressive countries on the United Nations Human Development Index that measures health, education and equality of income.

On the Social Progress Index, which measures “Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellness, and Opportunity” (see interactive map); the U.S. is ranked sixteenth, and well behind other developed democratic nations. Those countries doing better have not degenerated into totalitarianism, as the neoliberals predict.

The neoliberals see Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin behind every government social program. In the 1940s the neoliberal’s idol, Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) wrote a thesis called The Road to Serfdom. It is a simple book in its Eighteenth Century theories about government and freedom. There is a comic book version, courtesy of General Motors. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for it.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and Hayek were colleagues at the London School of Economics. They had a long-running debate for years over the role of government. Keynes realized that government was important, that it has an active role in the economy. He said the government could do “good” and manage the economy well. Hayek said it was the road to serfdom.

Keynes was an economic advisor for the British government during World War I. He also advised the British during the Treaty of Versailles to negotiate Germany’s surrender. Keynes resigned from his position at Versailles in disgust, saying the harsh austerity the Allies were demanding of Germany and Austria would cause massive poverty and starvation. He said it was inhumane and would result in the rise of fascism and war. He proved to be right. He was not awarded the Nobel Prize.

In the Twenty-first Century, the European Union is imposing harsh austerity on its weaker members. The neoliberals are dismantling Europe’s progressive social programs. We are seeing the rise of fascism again too. So which is more likely to cause fascism and war: Austerity for the people, or progressive government social programs? Hayek said he did not mind a dictatorship, as long as it is neoliberal. The neoliberals like right-wing dictators.

During the Great Depression (1929-1939), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned to Keynes for advice about the Great Depression. Keynes wrote a letter to Roosevelt advising him on the need for government social programs to stimulate the economy. Keynes further warned FDR that lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply alone would only bailout speculators, but would not sustain economic recovery.

By contrast, President Barack Obama took the neoliberal advice in the Great Recession and bailed out the speculators. Keynes would have predicted that the result would be anemic economic recovery. He would have been right.

Keynes gave worthy advice that would do the American people well in the Twenty-first Century. The neoliberals keep sabotaging good advice from past sages. Their sabotage is well-funded by corporations, foundations, foreign governments and the wealthy.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a genius with Twenty-first Century ideas. Galbraith served as an economic advisor to both FDR and John F. Kennedy. His most famous book is The Affluent Society (1958), a popular book during the 1960s.

During the Stagflation of the 1970s, the neoliberals allied with the religious-right and racists to purge Keynes’s and Galbraith’s teachings. In the 1980s, the Reagan-Thatcher revolution established neoliberals, corporate hegemony and right-wing extremists in the halls of power.

The first experiment of the neoliberals was in Chile during the 1970s. It led to the rise of Pinochet, fascism and crimes against humanity. Hayek said in a 1978 letter to the Times of London that he personally approved of Pinochet, preferring a dictator to a democratic government without neoliberalism.

Hayek made one excuse after another for Pinochet. He was not even faithful to his own principles, and said Pinochet’s firing squads would transition to democracy. Those on the wrong end of Pinochet’s firing squads would not live to see that miracle. The neoliberals never take responsibility, admit they are wrong, or say they are sorry. (See example, here.)

Galbraith’s discarded ideas had some excellent questions and answers to ponder in the Twenty-first Century. What is our obsession with economic growth and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), when an affluent society already produces all the private goods and services needed, Galbraith asked? And, shouldn’t we be more concerned about what is produced instead of how much? He said there is a “problem with social balance … private affluence and public squalor … as well as related environmental, aesthetic, and cultural concerns.” He was a man for the Twenty-first Century.

Neoliberals are not against fascist and corporate planning of the economy. Fascists use the firing squad as their economic planning tool. Corporations use monopoly power, public relations departments and political graft. Corporations are hierarchical organizations that meet in secret to decide what to produce and the price people will pay. They spend billions of dollars on advertising to change consumer preferences and move their products off the shelves. Their propaganda has created a privatized culture of consumerism, materialism and gluttony.

The corporations are dictating government programs too. Their oligarchies have taken over governments globally at all levels. They plan the government and the economy for their own profit and greed. Corporate oligarchies and neoliberals attack every social program for the public. They impose austerity on the public sector and the people. The impoverished public sector is in dire need of investment.

Education could use a tsunami of new investment. The lack of investment for education, especially in poor neighborhoods, is glaring. The neoliberals blame “bad teachers.” They want to privatize public schools and hire proctors that will work for the minimum wage, so their hedge funds can make billions of dollars in profits that should be going to education.

Higher education is failing too. Students are condemned to indentured servitude to payoff student loans. Young people have been indoctrinated that the value of education is to learn how to work for corporations and the military.

College graduates discover that there are no jobs for their qualifications. Neoliberals stuck in the Eighteenth Century say the answer is that not everybody needs an education to be a widget or carry a gun. They want other people’s students to enroll in online schools pushed by their hedge funds, while their kids go to Harvard, Yale and MIT.

An affluent society needs educated people. There is a cadre of potential teachers, healthcare workers, nutritionists, scientists, sociologists, historians, artists, engineers and administrators now working at meaningless minimum wage jobs. There is an abundance of opportunity for college graduates in an affluent society.

New community centers could staff professionals to enrich the lives of seniors, teens and children. With people living longer, retired seniors could improve their lives and social activity by taking courses and enjoying the arts. Teens could have tutoring, learn to play chess, take music lessons, cooking classes, creative writing, languages, and have supervised sports. The possibilities for public investments and to improve the quality of life, and provide meaningful jobs are endless. Neoliberals want everybody to sit alone at home and watch TV.

Malnourished and neglected children are unacceptable in an affluent society. The problem is not a lack of resources. It is because of unequal distribution. There is a shameful lack of prenatal care. As a result, infant mortality in the U.S. is higher than every developed nation. It is 30 percent higher than even Cuba, which the neoliberals constantly chastise about its human rights.

New parents could get healthcare, infant care and education in an affluent society. Instead, Eighteenth Century neoliberals want to kill Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid; and they want to privatize the Veterans Administration. Their greed is insatiable.

Obama promised single-payer healthcare. The public got excited and wanted it. The Eighteenth Century neoliberals killed it in the womb. Long-term health care and homecare goes uncovered by any public insurance. Neoliberals let the old and disabled go without and die, as if those people are just useless eaters. Instead an affluent society would treat the old and disabled humanely; and single-payer healthcare would create more careers and professional jobs.

Twice a day every workday the highways are in gridlock with automobiles idling, burning fossil fuel and polluting the air. Clean, fast and comfortable light-rail and motor coaches would be quicker, more comfortable and use less energy. Building and operating a Twenty-first Century mass transportation industry would make commuting time productive and leisurely; and create more skilled jobs.

An affluent society should not neglect the unemployed. The public sector has the responsibility of full-employment and providing for those unemployed. Employees did not volunteer to be the risk-takers of capitalism. They should not be condemned to their fate because they were unlucky and chose the wrong industry or employer years ago.

Society must also face the reality that some people are permanently unable to work because of social, emotional and health reasons. The unemployed need treatment, counseling, education and care; which would also create more jobs.

These are just a few ideas, some from Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. As Galbraith said in 1958, the private sector is a king; the public sector is a pauper. They can both be royalty.

The neoliberals and their alter-ego, the neocons, do not have any good ideas for the Twenty-first Century. They have caused financial disasters and endless wars, and they tell us not to expect better.

Part of the public sector that is not a pauper but should be is the military. The military-industrial complex is wasting vast resources making machines of death. Society is spending trillions of dollars to send armies to invade other countries. We spend trillions of dollars in order to protect us from imaginary enemies and those that our wars have created. It does not make us any safer. The jobs that it creates do not add any value.

The Eighteen Century neoliberals and the neoconservatives say that government economic planning will destroy our freedom, while they plan the economy for war and financial speculation. The neocons say the American people must give up the Bill of Rights in exchange for safety. The neoliberals say that austerity will bring prosperity. Instead we are less free and more poor. They are leading us down the road to fascism and serfdom.

Let’s open our eyes and stop listening to the neoliberals.

=======================================================================================

After 40 years, David William Pear retired from investment management and started writing on economic, political and social subjects. He is a regular columnist for The Real News Network and Op Ed News.

Reference Sources:

Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics: by Daniel Stedman Jones.

Keynes, Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott.

The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

Cyprus: New Law Opens Way for More Foreclosures

=

http://socialistnetwork.org/cyprus-new-law-opens-way-for-more-foreclosures/

=

Author: Soteris Vlachos (Socialist Expression, Cyprus).

=

Having as their main argument the urgency to give to the banks “a tool…to collect large debts which would enable them to improve their balance sheets,” the right wing government of Greek Cyprus has passed through Parliament legislation that opens the way to mass evictions.

“All money lent has to be returned” said the leader of the main right wing party. But he was not applying this prescription to the banks by requesting repayment of the 10 billion euros taken from the bank accounts of thousands of people in the last ‘bail in’. Nor was he asking back the more than €5 billion through which the State has guaranteed bank liquidity. No, he was demanding return of money only from those of our compatriots that have been rendered economically broken and unemployed by the banking system.

By issuing such a demand, the right wing leader is exhibiting incredible audacity towards those whom the private banking system has condemned to poverty and unemployment. Thus the poor and the unemployed are expected to lose their homes in order to “rescue” those who bear the basic responsibility for the chaos that has been created.

The right wing government is following the directives of ‘the Troika’ (the International Monetary Fund, EU Commission & European Central bank) blindly despite the fact that these directives are absolutely unfair. Indeed, there is not a single piece of evidence that these economic policies are in any way effective or have produced positive results elsewhere.

Of course, such considerations do not inhibit the capitalist strategists who only seek to increase the rate of profit and to create a narrative to undermine the new SYRIZA-led government in Greece. According to this narrative, Greece was on the verge of reversing the economic fall but SYRIZA interrupted the process with its irresponsible policies. Meanwhile Portugal, Spain and Ireland which have loyally stuck to the austerity programme, are now on the eve of success. What such a narrative doesn’t explain is how such countries can be on the brink of success at the same time as coping with dramatically reduced levels of investment; a debt level much higher as a percentage of GNP now than at the beginning of the crisis; and with record numbers of people unemployed and even more living below the poverty line.

Opposition Within the Capitalist Intelligentsia
The Troika Memorandum camp is fast losing the support of the best representatives of the capitalist intelligentsia. Among these we must include Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who could be described as the specialist of the Keynesian capitalist camp for around two decades now. Then there is Paul Krugman, another American Keynesian economist and Nobel laureate. And now we have the French economist Thomas Piketty who’s best-selling book on inequality ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ has pushed him into first place in the most recent list of leading thinkers in the world.

Stiglitz, more than two years ago characterized the Troika’s pro-Austerity policies followed in Greece as “suicide recipes” and said that the results of these policies do not correspond to their own Memorandum camp theory. Rather than change the theory, however, it appears easier for them to change the facts. “This seems to be what the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders who are in favor of austerity believe.” (Stiglitz)

Going further last autumn Stiglitz openly argued that “they have to abandon austerity”. Then just a few days ago he contradicted the claim of Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s Finance Minister and heavy gun of the austerity camp that those following the Austerity programme .are benefiting from “moderate but sustainable growth”. Instead, Stiglitz described the European economic situation in a completely different way arguing that “I see many countries still mired in recession …”.

Krugman takes the same line as Stiglitz and Piketty, all of them trying to “save capitalism from the capitalists”. After a very recent visit to Athens, Klugman wrote a short report saying that the Memorandum policies in Greece “included spending cuts and tax hikes that, if imposed on the United States, would amount to $3 trillion a year. There were also wage cuts on a scale that’s hard to fathom, with average wages down 25 percent from their peak. These immense sacrifices were supposed to produce recovery. Instead, the destruction of purchasing power deepened the slump, creating Great Depression-level suffering and a huge humanitarian crisis. … It has been an endless nightmare.”

Preparing for Mass Evictions in Cyprus
With this background, the right wing government in Cyprus has passed new legislation providing for express procedures for mass evictions. They argue that this is the only way forward, that there is nothing with which to even question the Troika’s wisdom.

Immediately after passing the new legislation, the government received the congratulations of the International lenders for having behaved “responsibly” on the issue. Passing this law “opens the way for the next assessment,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Chair of the Euro Finance Ministers, welcoming the adoption of the insolvency framework and noting that Cyprus is performing better than projected. Immediately afterwards the Eurogroup inserted in the agenda to be discussed with the Cypriots the issue of new cuts in wages and pensions.

According to these brilliant capitalist strategists – selling the houses of ordinary people is the way to restart the economy. They assert this absolute truth without feeling it necessary in any way to explain to the rest of us, two years after the banking collapse in Cyprus, how it was that the banks suddenly changed from profitable institutions to dramatically bankrupt ones, and in a period when there were no ‘red loans’ at least at the level home and small business loans? Red loans in these categories were created only after the banking collapse. They were created after the state rescued the banking system, leading the rest of the economy towards havoc, and producing business bankruptcies and mass unemployment.

That is why demanding from ordinary folks, the victims of the crisis, to stay homeless in order to restart the economy, is vastly immoral and hides the real reasons that led to the crisis. Worse still, it leaves wide open the path for another collapse in the period that lies ahead.

The Creation of a Banking Monster
The various experts of the capitalist camp have started gradually speaking about the existence of a “hypertrophic banking sector” before the 2013 banking collapse. But a “hypertrophic banking sector is a time bomb in the foundations of the economic system which sooner or later will explode.” None of the “experts” that now support foreclosures and austerity measures had said even one warning word when the Cypriot banking system was built up into a over-inflated monster ready to fall. Not a word. And instead of now being accused of complicity in crimes against the economy, they have the audacity to present themselves as the holders of the absolute truth.

The formation of the banking ‘monster’ though, touches something much deeper to do with the weakness of the rest of the private sector to contribute to development. This weakness was disguised for a while by the ballooning of the banking system which increasingly invested in non-productive, illegitimate functions until the disaster could not be avoided any longer.

The creation of an unsustainable banking system is the clearest indication of fundamental problems in the actual operation of the free market. But it is exactly at this point that things become difficult. The free market is the “altar” of the capitalist class, which they will defend until the end, even if they have to rip apart the rest of society.

This reality has been exhibited by their actions time and again. After 2009, the bonds issued by the Greek state were first bought in the secondary market where these bonds were sold massively by those possessing them, after realizing what kind of trash they were.

The political representatives of the capitalists move blindly with their only motive being to rescue the banks and big business for the benefit of their class, irrelevant to the cost incurred to the rest of the society. To this end they falsify reality, accusing as irresponsible all who do not get in line with them. They exclude the state from any possibility of intervention in favour of society and leave to the state only the role of saving the private banks even if this means driving the rest of society into bankruptcy.

[Steven Gaal]

EU to get rid of cash – new economic totalitarian regime

19.05.2015 | Source: Pravda.Ru -

http://english.pravda.ru/news/business/19-05-2015/130638-cash-0/

Brussels is going to bring about new steps in order to cope with the debts of European bank reserves. It decided not to undertake any further reforms to tackle the existing economic problems but rather to get rid of all cash. To maintain the euro, they must maintain the banks. But the bank reserves consist of debts of all member states. As government becomes insolvent as in Greece, the banking system is undermined. The only way to prevent the banking collapse is to prevent people from withdrawing cash. Hence, we see this trend surfacing all the mainstream press to get the people ready for what is coming after 2015. We can even evidence this approach in major parts of Germany. There will be no ability to buy or sell anything without government approval. That is where we are going and this may be the major event that erupts after 2015. Thus, the European banking system may face totalitarian regime. The bail-in that took place in Cyprus has further encouraged governments to safely continue on the course. Also read: France to restrict movement of cash, gold and crypto-currencies Pravda.Ru Read article in Russian on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru Read more on the subject

==========================

here - go to link above for more

and also below

See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/news/business/19-05-2015/130638-cash-0/#sthash.nN4JPE3y.dpuf

[Steven Gaal]

Greek hospitals cannot afford painkillers, scissors or sheets as budget cuts bite.

Submitted by IWB, on May 24th, 2015

=================
Greek hospitals have run out of supplies such as painkillers, scissors and sheets as swingeing budget cuts have left the health service unable to provide even basic provisions for operations and medical procedures.

Huge cuts to the healthcare budget, amid the economic turmoil which made millions unemployed, have left than 2.5m Greeks uninsured, up from 500,000 in 2008, the Times reported.

On coming to power the Syriza government scrapped the €5 fee for attending state hospitals and pledged to hire 4,500 more health workers, despite the need for austerity and criticism from creditors.

MORE:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-hospitals-cannot-afford-painkillers-scissors-or-sheets-as-budget-cuts-bite-10271819.html

[Steven Gaal]

Morning Star and the EU: The EU is in trouble and it is the working class which poses the real threat to its future:

Posted on May 29, 2015 by rtuc

THE EU: ANTI- SOCIALIST AND ANTI-DEMOCRATIC

May
2015

Tuesday 26th

posted by Morning Star in Features

The EU is in trouble and it is the working class which poses the real threat to its future, writes KELVIN HOPKINS

THERE should be no doubt that the European Union is anti-working class, anti-socialist and anti-democratic. This has been the case since its first incarnation as the European Common Market in 1957, and the evidence is now overwhelming.

One in four workers are now unemployed in Greece and Spain, with youth unemployment at double that. Living standards have been cut as economies have contracted under the lash of austerity and thousands have been forced to move abroad to look for work.

Unemployment in Spain has been the equivalent of over seven million without jobs in Britain.

Three-hundred thousand Irish working people have left their homes to look for work overseas since the 2008 banking crisis, the equivalent of over four million in Britain.

Membership of the euro has acted as an economic vice on these economies, fixing them at unsustainable currency parities above all with Germany.

Only when the euro is dismantled so that those EU members in severe economic difficulties can begin to manage and rebuild their own economies again will the sufferings of their peoples be reversed.

Gordon Brown’s 1997 decision to resist British membership of the euro saved Britain from economic catastrophe after 2008.

Larry Elliott, writing in the Guardian, rightly suggested that if Britain had joined the euro at the then prevailing parity, and had been unable to depreciate after 2008, the economy would have been wrecked.

Britain would have been the first to crash out of the euro and the whole edifice would have collapsed.

As it is, sterling depreciated by 27 per cent against the euro after the crisis and gave a degree of protection from the savage economic storms which have devastated other EU economies.

But the anti-socialist and anti-democratic nature of the EU were long ago recognised by the left and it is the left which threatens it today.

The virtual disappearance of Pasok, the formerly socialist Greek political party, which chose to walk into a deadly embrace with the Conservative New Democracy Party to inflict austerity on Greek workers, has been a modern Greek tragedy.

Other pro-EU social democratic parties elsewhere in the EU are suffering too.

Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain have grown quickly to fill vacuums on the left.

But to return to the nature of the EU and what it is for. It is of course a branch of global neoliberalism, of laissez-faire capitalism, constructed to raise up the power of the market and progressively dismantle the socialist and social democratic structures which were established and were so successful in the immediate post-war decades.

The EU political class does have a serious problem, however, because working people have a strong attachment to these post-war structures — welfare states, public services, redistributive taxation and the public ownership and democratic accountability of public utilities and other sectors.

The reactionary Thatcherite revolution inflicted on Britain has pushed the neoliberal agenda far beyond that of Continental Europe, but the direction and objectives are the same.

It is of significance that the neoliberal push in the European Union was actually initiated quietly by Thatcherite ideologues in Britain, including the then deputy governor of the Bank of England in the mid-1980s.

The so-called Single European Act was the first major step on that road.

However, on the Continent, it is fear of the likely political reaction by millions of workers which has held back the neoliberal thrust.

The left and the working class resisted the attempt to impose a “European constitution” on the EU, voting against in referendums in France and the Netherlands, despite pressure from allegedly socialist parties to vote in favour.

The Swedish elite failed to persuade the Swedish people to join the euro and the Norwegian political class twice failed to get Norwegians to vote to join the EU.

Eurosceptism is indeed growing right across the EU, and an early Greek exit from the euro remains a probability.

The EU is in trouble and it is the working class which poses the real threat to its future.

It is time for democratic governments across the EU to reclaim power from Brussels and begin again to represent the real interests of their peoples and move in a socialist direction.

The EU economy is failing, and it is not just the southern fringe where problems exist.

The elephant in the room, so to speak, is in fact France, and as France finds it increasingly difficult to sustain its membership of the eurozone, a seismic change really is in prospect.

It is the EU which has in effect derailed President Francois Hollande’s initial progressive agenda promised before his election.

The French, like other members of the eurozone, need to be able to adjust the value of their currency, against Germany in particular, which means re-establishing the franc and beginning once again to manage their economy at a national level with appropriate monetary and fiscal policies and direct state intervention to generate full employment and long-term economic stability.

The whole EU economic strategy has proved a failure, and while a useful level of co-operation between economies on a voluntary and mutually beneficial basis is appropriate, bureaucratic control and economic dictats from the EU institutions do not work.

It is time for the EU to recognise its failure and leave the countries of Europe to reconstruct the democratic socialist/social democratic post-war world which worked so well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------0o0o0
◾Kelvin Hopkins is Labour MP for Luton North. He has recently written The European Union — A View From the Left (published by Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign).

Edited May 30, 2015 by Steven Gaal