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The Greek crisis shows how far the “European idea” has shifted from 1957 when the six-member European Economic Community (EEC) was formed. At U.S. prodding, Britain and Scandinavia created the rival seven-member European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Even so, the promise of Euroland – at least before Maastricht and Lisbon – was to elevate labor to middle-class prosperity, not to impose IMF-type austerity programs of the sort that devastated Third World countries. The message to indebted economies is stark: “Drop dead.” And they are obediently committing economic suicide (emulating Japan in the 1985 Plaza Accords) to endorse the Washington Consensus – the class war of finance against labor and industry.
Political, social, fiscal and economic power is being transferred to the EU bureaucracy and its financial controllers in the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF, whose austerity plans and related anti-labor programs direct governments to sell off the public domain, land and subsoil wealth, public enterprises, and to commit future tax revenues to pay creditor nations. This policy already has been imposed on “New Europe” (the post-Soviet economies and Iceland) since autumn 2008. It is now to be imposed on the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). No wonder there are riots!
For observers who missed Iceland and Latvia last year, Greece is the newest and so far the largest battlefield. At least Iceland and the Baltics have the option of re-denominating loans in their own currency, writing down their foreign debts at will and taxing property to recapture for the government the revenue that has been pledged to foreign bankers. But Greece is locked into a European currency union, run by unelected financial officials who have inverted the historical meaning of democracy. Instead of the economy’s most important sector – finance – being subject to electoral politics, central banks (the designated lobbyists for commercial and investment bankers) have been made independent of political checks and balances.
In truly Orwellian fashion, right-wingers in Europe and the United States (such as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke) call this the “hallmark of democracy.” It actually is the stamp of oligarchy, stripping away control over the economy’s credit allocation – and hence, forward planning – while giving high finance a stranglehold over public spending programs.
Further Excerpts from:
"Drop Dead Economics": The Financial Crisis in Greece and the European Union The Wealthy Won’t Pay Their Taxes, So Labor Must Do So
by Michael HudsonWould Thom, maybe give Mr. Hudson one segment?
@Zero G. you know there's a lot of TV programming you can watch on your computer (sorry to be the one to tell you) :-(
You can even pick up a TV tuner for your computer pretty inexpensively. (as cheap as $20 on newegg.com).
N
@Zero G-
Great article post- thx
The dispersant is like detergent - it will dissolve into the water more of the heavy fractions that normally sink to the bottom and more of the lighter fractions which would normally float up or evaporate. The dispersants will actually make the oil more poisonous to the water and help it spread around the world. They will only make the plastic float a little differently or maybe a little cleaner.
@Zero G: re: TV: at my country cabin, I used to get one channel, and it was a joke. they were more incompetent than WJM and WKRP combined. When they went digital, I bought a converter, but the signal was too weak. At my city house, I dropped cable 15 years ago, but get 5 over-the-airwaves channels.
Anybody remember the days when you could buy a coke only in a returnable bottle with a penny or 2 deposit? That worked OK.
George Carlin thought the only reason that we deveoped plastic is because the earth needed it, so we are just another doomed species.
@Mstaggerlee,
My TV killed itself...I refused to buy a converter and I don't pay for cable.
A therapist can only help those who know that they need help. Glenn Beck doesn't seem to be one of those.
Are you referring to the dispersants they're spraying to break up the oil, Mark? That is an unexpected positive!
On the topic of H1B - Visa's.
Your speaker is absolutely wrong. The reason why companies bring in H1B visa's is to lower wages. The day Microsoft laid off 1400 people in Jan 2009, there were equal jobs that popped up on www.myvisajobs.com . Was that because American's aren't qualified? Absolutely NOT. The companies are asking for Master's degrees for jobs that do not need them, just to justify bringing in H1B Visa's.
Good you you, Thom for representing the people who want the protectionism for jobs.
On the plus side, the Gulf is now being filled with the one substance that can dissolve the plastic ...
@ZeroG, re: #77 - didja catch John Stewart the other night? He played a bunch of clips from the Fox Business channel talking about how Obama's "Nanny-state" policies were likely to make America the next Greece.
"NO!" he then cried, "the one thing that we CANNOT let America become is Grease 2!" :-D
I understand the sea-water itself is saturated with plastic, or plastic compounds.
@ZeroG - Exactly! - and THAT is why the Green movement isn't referred to as Astroturfed. The Corporations that DO get involved are NOT the leaders, they are bandwagon-jumpers (and reluctant ones, at that!).
garbage patches move like lava in a lava lamp. I guess that's why everybody just sits and stares at it. :)
"Drop Dead Economics": The Financial Crisis in Greece and the European Union The Wealthy Won’t Pay Their Taxes, So Labor Must Do So
by Michael Hudson
Riddle: How are the Greek rioters like America’s Tea Party movement?
Answer: Both reject government being taken over by the financial oligarchy to shift the tax burden onto labor.
The difference is that the Tea Partiers have lost faith in government. This is just what the financial oligarchy wants, of course. Giving up hope of gaining electoral control to pursue a fair fiscal agenda, the Tea Partiers have abandoned the centuries-long fight for reform to make governments better by giving them the power to check predatory finance and wealth. Sliding to the right wing of the political spectrum and acting mainly out of frustration, they have succumbed a utopian desire simply to shrink government that they see acting adversely to their interests.
@Maxrot re: #73: How about suing raptors for the birds they kill? How about the chemical companies?
Mr. Sussman didn't seem to make any points about global climate change not being real... At all... Just kept pointing out that megacorporations are scamming and trying to take up all the air in the room. Looks like ground for some agreement there...
Earth Day in Austin was great for the first few years; but corporations soon co-opted it; including huge pneumatic beer cans. Less so with Eeyore's Birthday. It's even too weird for corporations. ie. guys walking around in huge penis costumes, with testicles for feet.
Environmentalist groups suing wind farms for killing birds? Let me take a wild guess here, fossil fuel companies have organized groups that they call environmentalist and then sue alternative energy companies over BS reasons like the Wind Mills are killing birds. How many of these groups are suing glass window manufactures for the same symptom?
N
@pjsemail1
Beware treading on sensitive toes...speaking from experience....
@pjsemail1 re: Here we go again, undereducated HACK of a weather man, more BS. I ASK WHY?????
Basic military principle: Know your enemy.
N
@Mstaggerlee
And one has to look no further than Earth Day 2010 to see the corporate fingerprint on so-called green activist efforts. Major U.S. corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Siemens, Wells Fargo, AT&T, UPS, Philips and Ford all had a major presence at the so-called Earth Day “Climate Rally” on the National Mall back on April 25. That’s in addition to a sponsorship from NASA, a federal government entity and media outlets, including the Washington Post and Gannett’s USA Today.
So you have all the components – corporate interests and government bureaucracies collaborating to push a political agenda. Isn’t that the textbook definition of “Astroturf?” Yet that label has failed to become a part of any green efforts.
But was that label ever applied by any media outlet to describe this particular Earth Day event? A Nexis search of the last 90 days reveals no media outlet has used the “Astroturf” marker for Earth Day.
And it goes much further than just a clever marketing gimmick or effort by big corporation to appease an activist movement. On Glenn Beck’s May 4 program, he explained how the leaders of the green movement are actually set to profit off of environmental policy. Global warming is lucrative, and regulations that would make carbon usage a commodity will profit some, perhaps even much-maligned Wall Street boogeyman Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS)
“The global warming hoax continues to be one of their best tools,” Beck said. “We've shown you the CCX, the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon-buying and selling business that has been estimated to become potential $10 trillion gold mine – that's if cap-and-trade is passed. - Excerpted from: http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20100512110126.aspx
From my perspective, the corporate pr that masks as environmentally friendly is just that, a mask. It is a way to continue the global rape of the collective environment. We didn't hear much from the corporate media about the Cochabomba Summit for example.
@maxrot re: #51: Today's college grad has 2 choices; join the army, or work at Walmart. Do you want to face death and dismemberment every day? Do you want to work in the grimiest, squalid conditions? Do you want to have to stand at attention at 5AM while a red-faced CO screams in your face?....or do you want to join the army?