Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained here. (The flash drive includes the anti-fascist books available on this site.)
Updated on 5/22/2013
COMMENT: In past discussion, we have chronicled the Eurozone crisis as a manifestation of successful German economic and political warfare against fellow EU countries. We have also noted that the GOP in this country is advocating the implementation of similar austerity policies in the face of this country’s recession.
Paul Krugman’s latest column notes that the IMF (not exactly a bunch of fellow-travelers) has fundamentally repudiated the austerity doctrine as applied to weakened economies.
Comparison by the Germans and their Underground Reich allies of the U.S. economy to that of Greece are fallacious, and designed to rationalize the type of horrifying, wrenching budget cuts here.
In the past, we have noted the elevation by the EU of the fascist LAOS party to become part of the Greek provisional government in the late fall of 2011.
Since the same bitter medicine is being prescribed for America’s ills, let’s take a look at just what “austerity” is actually like for the average Greek.
Predictably, the social dislocation produced by such hardship is feeding grass-roots fascist political sentiment and xenophobia.
If you don’t like what you see, get busy before you experience the same thing!
EXCERPT . . . It has been a common secret among PE teachers for some time now that they don’t expect pupils to do PE any more, because many of them are underfed and get dizzy. . . .
“Squeeze Dry and Obscure”; german-foreign-policy.com; 12/17/2012.
EXCERPT: . . . . A trauma therapist, following his trip to Athens, has described the social consequences and the total collapse of the Greek economy, provoked by the German austerity dictate. The therapist provided supplementary training for his Greek colleagues, which was deemed exceedingly necessary because of the consequences of the crisis. In the process, he also became acquainted with the Greek social situation and since has been complaining of the “gigantic obscurantist capacity” of Western Europe, where the austerity policy is being continued, in spite of the catastrophic situation in Greece. For example, “entire residential blocks (...) are deprived of oil deliveries for financial reasons.” Illegally felled trees are the sole source of heating. Whoever must go to the hospital, “must bring his own sheets and bed covers, as well as the own food.” “Since the cleaning personnel was fired, doctors, nurses and orderlies, who, for months, have not been paid, are cleaning the toilettes.” The EU is warning of “the danger of an outbreak of infectious diseases because of the devastating hygienic conditions.” The trauma therapist reported that “women, in their late pregnancies, have to beg from hospital to hospital, because, having neither health insurance nor enough money no one wants to help them.” The elderly, whose pensions have been cut in half, cannot even afford important medicine. Since the crisis began, the rate of suicides, on the other hand, has not been cut in half, it has doubled.[3]
Tremendous Rage
According to the report, one need be “neither a pessimist nor an expert, to imagine what this means for interpersonal relations” as well as “for the cohesion of Greek society.” Rage against Greek politicians and “international policy of financial installments flowing into bailing out the banks, but not the people,” is “tremendous and continues to grow.” A society that can provide at least protection from the worst, would be able to absorb this rage, but Greece no longer has even this possibility, explains the trauma therapist. In Greece “the functional society was progressively undermined until it collapsed like a dilapidated house,” because “the crisis has destroyed the welfare state.” Rage is now turning into aggression and violence. As a matter of fact, in traditionally hospitable Greece, attacks — particularly against migrants — have suffered a vast increase. “The number of violent mobs that attack minorities is growing.”[4]
Racist Violence
Human rights organizations have already been complaining about this for months. For example, following the murder of an Iraqi refugee in Greece, Amnesty International discerned a growing frequency of racist-motivated attacks.[5] The UN High Commission on Refugees reported in October that between January and September, alone, 87 xenophobic-motivated attacks had been counted. This is “exceptionally alarming,” particularly in consideration of the fact that the actual numbers are likely to be far higher, since victims were either too scared to report attacks to the police or were turned away, when they did.[6] The repressive forces are also using excessive force against migrants. In mid-November, the US Embassy in Athens issued a travel warning against a rise in violent attacks against persons who, because of their complexion, are perceived to be foreign migrants.[7] Certain neighborhoods of Athens are considered “no go areas” for migrants.
Plans for a Putsch
In the throes of the crisis, the rapid rise of xenophobia that has overcome Greece is flanked by a just as rapid rise of the extreme right. The neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi party (“Golden Dawn”), which is particularly known for its violence against migrants, won 18 seats in parliament in the last elections and — according to opinion polls — could win 12 percent today. Last fall, one of their parliamentarians declared that the party is waging a “civil war” against migrants and the left. According to publicist, Dimitris Psarras, who, for the past 20 years has been doing research on the Chrysi Avgi, “the escalation strategy (...) has a primary significance” for that party. “It is similar to the strategy of Italian neo-fascists in the 1970s and 80s: escalate the conflict on the streets, between the right-wingers and left-wingers — and in the case of Greece, the migrants — to create a climate of insecurity, so that a putsch can be justified.” Psarras points out that not only the Greek neo-Nazis, but even “serious media organs (...) are speculating on possible plans for a putsch.” He finds, “if the political and economic situation becomes even more instable and the society, more polarized, anything is possible.”[8]
EXCERPT: Vanna Mendaleni is a middle aged Greek woman who until now has not had vehement feelings about the crisis that has engulfed her country. But that changed when the softly spoken undertaker, closing her family-run funeral parlour, joined thousands of protesters on Thursday in a mass outpouring of fury over austerity policies that have plunged ever growing numbers of Greeks into poverty and fear.
“After three years of non-stop taxes and wage cuts it’s got to the point where nothing has been left standing,” she said drawing on a cigarette. “It’s so bad families can no longer afford to even bury their dead. Bodies lie unclaimed at public hospitals so that the local municipality can bury them.” . . .
“Little Hope for Greece’s Jobless Youth” by Jannis Papadimitriou; Deutsche Welle; 5/21/2013.
EXCERPT: Nearly two-thirds of young Greeks are currently jobless. The unemployment rate in the country has reached a record 27 percent. Experts are warning of dramatic consequences for Greek society.
Before Europe’s debt crisis set in, young Greeks complained of poorly-paid jobs and described themselves as the “1,000-euro generation.” Today, a situation like that would be paradise — currently more than 60 percent of young people have no jobs at all, and analysts and unions are warning of grave social consequences.
“A whole generation of well-educated young people feel like they’ve simply been set aside, especially because many of them are long-term unemployed,” says Ilias Katsoulis, professor of sociology and political sciences at Athens University. He thinks that society could face serious problems. “In a crisis, our society needs these people especially,” he says. “But society hardly offers them any opportunities to use their qualifications, and that makes the crisis worse.” . . .
Austerity in Europe, and the rules and regulations coming from Brussels are part of the German economic system — the Social Market Economy.
Merkel says in her New Year speech that she hopes (read “is making sure”) there will be more controls next year on international financial markets — a popular issue in Germany that the SPD is planning to make a central plank of its 2013 election campaign.
“The world hasn’t sufficiently learned the lessons of the devastating 2008 financial crisis,” she said (is she going to ‘teach’ the world??).
“Never again can we allow irresponsibility like back then to happen. In a social market economy, the State is the guardian of order — and that is something people should be able to count on.”
Germany’s plan after killing capitalism, partly by pushing for endless rules on banking, is this;
Instead of a dynamic, growing pot of wealth and ever-increasing resources, which can enable larger and larger proportions of the population to become prosperous without taking anything away from any other group, there will indeed be an absolute limit on the amount of capital circulating within the society.
The only decisions to be made will involve how that given, unalterable sum is to be shared out – and those judgments will, of course, have to be made by the state since there will be no dynamic economic force outside of government to enter the equation. Wealth distribution will be the principal – virtually the only – significant function of political life.
The total absence of economic growth would mean that the limitations on that distribution would be so severe as to require draconian legal enforcement: rationing, limits on the amount of currency that can be taken abroad, import restrictions and the kinds of penalties for economic crimes (undercutting, or “black market” selling practices) which have been unknown in the West since the end of the Second World War.
As the fixed pot of national wealth loses ever more value, and resources shrink, the measures to enforce “fair” distribution must become more totalitarian: there will have to be confiscatory taxation on assets and property, collectivisation of the production of goods, and directed labour.
Democratic socialism with its “soft redistribution” and exponential growth of government spending will have paved the way for the hard redistribution of diminished resources under economic dictatorship.
Consider from that perspective, what associating every human movement with carbon emmissions really means. Ever tightening carbon allowances will shrink countries and populations by legal force. The Eco movement is a tool of the same economic system being pushed on people.
http://www.germanywatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/german-economic-imperialism-social.html
http://germanywatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/merkel-new-year.html
Didn’t everybody hear the great news? The worst of the eurozone crisis is behind us. Austerity works! Apparently!
Everything is going to be getting better from here on out. Mission Accomplished!
The latest message from the ECB appears to be:
1. The eurozone financial markets are back to ‘normal’. Borrowing costs have fallen from their crisis-level peaks and, while this hasn’t actually led to lower unemployment, officials hope the improvements in the financial markets will eventually trickle down into the real economy. Someday. Yay!
2. The ECB will not engage in any new stimulus and will instead be sticking with its sole mandate of low inflation or eurozone-wide “price stability” (except for times when the focus on “price stability” create crises that undermine faith in the euro itself).
3. The long-term solution to the record high unemployment rates in many eurozone countries — with youth unemployment nearing 60% in Spain — is to reform labor laws that make it easier for companies to fire older workers (problem solved!).
In other words, the philosophy of “just barely enough help at the last minute to avoid complete financial catastrophe without any real regard for the real (non-financial) economy” is still guiding the policies at the ECB:
It’s also worth pointing out that a Mitt Romney victory in 2012 could have imposed this same “price stability”-only bind on the Federal Reserve. It’s a reminder that this bizarre push to impose austerity and bank bailouts to elevate “financial health” over the actual health of the economy and its citizens real health is a global agenda:
Yes, the EU’s leaders are seriously prepping for another round of bloodletting and prayer to the Confidence Fairies. Oh Confidence Fairies, please accept our human sacrifices so they our peoples may be pure and virtuous and spared from your wrath:
Yes, it just wouldn’t be right to reverse course on the austerity drives given all the sacrifices that have been made...because sacrificial death-spirals are the height of virtue. Oh Confidence Fairies, may the wisdom of your teachings spread far and wide.
Ah, the joys of currency union policy-making: So it looks like there’s a number of leaders in the financial community that maintain that the eurozone’s general “austerity” approach is working, as evidenced by the calming of the eurozone sovereign bond markets (LOL!), but there’s still a pesky problem of record unemployment and persistent intra-eurozone trade imbalances. Financial analysts in the article below appears to have a number of proposed changes, like dramatically cutting wages and slashing state spending instead of mass layoffs and slashing state spending. Yep, those are the proposed changes for “rebalancing” the eurozone:
Yes, according to the OECD, contrary to “received wisdom” (which one can “receive” by observing recent economic history), “structural reforms” (i.e. mass wage cuts and cutting public spending) really can work in a year or two by catalyzing investment and jobs. If it hasn’t happened over the past year of two, it’s because there hasn’t been enough “structural reform”. It’s a theme.
Anthanasios Orhpanides, the former head of the Central bank of Cyprus and former adviser to the US Federal reserve, appears to be lamenting the ECB’s commitment to purchasing sovereign bonds — which was only agreed upon by the ECB when it appeared that Spain was on the verge of austerity-induced financial implosion — because these emergency bond purchases only delayed desired “reforms”. He also thinks it’s crazy that the UK might not be enthusiastic about further EU integration. Interesting:
So, apparently, if Spain was allowed to implode last September, Spain and the UK could have avoided this:
Here’s one of those articles that should raise questions over whether or not increasing economic “competitiveness” is really all that great a goal:
The question of “why we structure the economy the way we do?” has pretty much always been a poignant question for societies across the globe. But when were living in a globalized economy that’s facing surging youth unemployment coupled with an apparent inability for societies to deal with aging populations and limited vital natural resources, it’s important to keep in mind that some goals are better than others.
One of the ideas behind the expansionary-austerity theories is that once a “rebalancing”(wage cuts) has taken place within the indebted country the increased “competitiveness” will result in a rebound in exports and economic rejuvenation. And sure enough, it looks like Greece’s austerity regime has increased at least one type of export:
Clearly, the only feasible way for the US to prevent a complete implosion of the US economy is to implement aggressive austerity measures now. Otherwise the deficit will spiral out of control and no one will want to buy US debt:
Why can’t policy-makers just do the right thing, make the cuts, and set the economy on a path to prosperity? It’s for the children:
Two news stories came out yesterday that dovetail perfectly in an examination of the current stench (state) of American capitalism. Here’s the first, from “The Daily Mail.UK”:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306980/Why-better-grow-Slovenia-Greece-U-S-Lack-education-healthcare-costs-homicide-rates-America-26th-29-nations-UN-survey.html
“Why it’s better to grow up in Slovenia and Greece than the U.S: Childhood obesity, poor education and homicide rates put America 26th out of 29 nations in survey about best places to raise a child”
“Lack of education, cost of healthcare, childhood obesity and teenage pregnancies put the life chances of American children at the bottom of a table of overall well being – far behind those from poorer countries, a damning report has found.
UNICEF ranked the U.S. at the bottom of a league table of the best places to raise a child – below the likes of Slovenia, Greece, Hungary and Slovakia.
Only Lithuania, Latvia and Romania lagged behind.
Despite being the seventh richest country in the world, the U.S. had some of the worst rates for teenage pregnancies, homicide and childhood obesity.
The overview of child well-being was constructed out of five different dimensions – material well-being, education, health and safety, behaviors and risks and housing and environment.
Factors such as poverty, infant mortality and homicide rates were taken into consideration.
For behaviors and risks, things like teenage pregnancies, smoking cannabis, bullying, obesity and exercise taken were factored in.
The U.S. is one of the only countries with infant mortality rates higher than six per 1,000 births, along with Latvia, Romania and Slovakia, and has one of the lowest birth weight rates of all the countries surveyed.
It also has one of the lowest rates of young people enrolled in education and preschool.
Only Greece and Romania fared worse in overall educational well-being.
America has – by far – the highest rate of children who are overweight by BMI with almost 30 per cent, though it also has one of the highest rates of children aged 11 – 15 who exercise at least one hour a day, coming second only behind Ireland.
The U.S. has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies but one of the lowest levels of underage drinking.
It also ranks at the bottom of the league in homicide rates with five per 100,000.
The ‘low family affluence’ rate, the infant mortality rate, and the percentage of young people who smoke cigarettes, for example, have fallen in every single country for which data was made available.
Overall, the Netherlands was ranked first, followed by Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.
(Mulitple charts with information at link)
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So why have things gotten so bad for the general population in America compared to small European countries that have been battered by war and austerity?
“Russia Today” (RT) ‑Ok, consider the source… Has a valid argument that the U.S. has been taken over by corporate fascism:
http://rt.com/op-edge/us-economy-fascism-crisis-democracy-696/
Is it corporate fascism yet?
“The financial crisis that washed across the globe in 2008 is just the latest economic disaster to hit the American people. The fall of too-big-to-fail banks and companies marked the latest chapter of a tragedy that has been unfolding for years.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once warned that democracy will never be safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. If such a scenario arose, Roosevelt said, that would be the very definition of fascism.
Has America, the self-proclaimed land of the free, reached such a point?
With the rise of the lawless transnational corporations, an increasing number of Americans are becoming mere spectators to this winner-take-all economy. At the same time, workers are simply too afraid of risking their positions by demanding democratic representation in their myriad workplaces. Corporations play on the fear factor while enforcing the most egregious labor practices.
Combine this with the vast political powers that corporations have acquired and you have a recipe for a national disaster.
As Francis Fukuyama pointed out, “An American chief executive exercises authoritarian powers of which a politician could only dream,” and is held accountable in his actions only to a board of directors, which enables him to “hire, fire, make mergers or divest divisions at will.”
Indeed, the captains of big business are able to act with total impunity, and this has created a veritable reign of fear throughout every sector of the economy.
For the American people, out-of-control corporate power – corporate fascism, if you will – has eroded their standard of living, to say nothing about the standard of democracy.
No matter how the spin doctors twist US labor data over the past forty years, it is nearly impossible to find a silver lining. As the Financial Times summed up the grim reality: “The annual incomes of the bottom 90 percent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973—having risen only by 10 percent in real terms over the past 37 years”—despite the rise in two-income homes. Over the same period, however, the incomes of the top 1 percent have smashed through the roof.
Consider the fantastic growth of billionaires in the United States over a very short time. When Forbes magazine launched its ranking of the nation’s ultra wealthy in 1982, the “price of admission” into this prestigious club was just $75 million of net worth. Today, as Forbes reported, even after adjusting for inflation, “this year’s entry fee ($1.1 billion) is roughly six times what it was 30 years ago.
Here is a look at the residents of the Forbes 400 penthouse, otherwise known as the 1 percent: “The combined net worth of the 2012 class of the 400 richest Americans is $1.7 trillion, up from $1.5 trillion a year ago. The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion, up from $3.8 billion, and the highest ever, as two-thirds of the individuals added to their fortunes in the past year.”
Now compare those figures to 1982, when there were just 13 billionaires while the total worth of the 400 club was just $93 billion. Despite what the super rich wish to believe, this massive hoarding of wealth is working against the American people.
For those who have forgotten what the economic climate inside of the United States was like before the 2008 economic tsunami made landfall, consider the following. The Economist, quoting Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institute, reported that “between 1974 and 2004 median wages for men in their 30s, adjusted for inflation, fell by 12% from $40,000 to $35,000.”
The Wall Street Journal, calling this middle-class bloodletting “the lost decade,” reported: “The inflation-adjusted income of the median household—smack in the middle of the populace—fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.”
The article provided a candid comment by Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the right leaning American Enterprise Institute: “It’s going to be a long, hard slog back to what most Americans think of as normalcy or prosperous times.” That dire prognosis may eventually prove to be overly optimistic since many economists believe the best days of the American economy are gone forever.
The hardest thing to accept about this fantastic reversal of fortune for so many American people is that much of the present pain and suffering was largely avoidable. It would have required self-restraint, political will, and very little sacrifice, but the bleeding of the American middle class was nothing less than a deliberate, premeditated crime.
As the Financial Times revealed, “the share of the US income that goes to workers as wages rather than to investors as profits…has fallen to its lowest level since records began after the Second World War.” The world’s most reputable business newspaper was forced to admit that “something strange and unprecedented is going on” inside the US economy.
Strange, indeed. According to the abovementioned report, the present economic crisis is a wildly different animal from past recessions and depressions. In past crises, “the labour share tends to rise during recessions as companies hold on to workers and sacrifice profits, then falls back in a recovery,” according to FT. “But during the 2008 recession the labour share did the opposite: it fell, and when the recovery began it kept falling.”
Here comes the bloody kicker: “If wages were at their postwar average share of 63 percent, workers would earn an extra $740bn this year, about $5,000 per worker,” the FT article reveals. Labor’s slice of the income pie has decreased to 58 percent, a historic low that still has not hit bottom. This unprecedented disparity in wage distribution explains why the US economy is furiously spinning its wheels, while only the corporations seem to be advancing.
Meanwhile, labor is always one precarious step away from becoming road kill. “The decline in the US labor share, along with a shift of labor income towards higher earners, may be an important part of why the US economic recovery is so sluggish,” the article concludes. “Instead of hoarding labor and cutting prices to grab market share, companies are sacking workers, holding prices and choosing to buy back their own equity rather than make new investments.”
Clearly, the American corporate elite – now fully blessed with the political representation originally designed for We the People – is indulging itself to an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord at the salary trough, and with a void of democratic procedure inside the workplace, nobody is forcing them away from the table.
What the American worker desperately needs today is a separation of business from politics, similar to the way the world of politics was separated from the world of religion. He also needs democratic representation inside of the workplace.
“The mission of democratic statecraft…,” wrote Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. “is to give society a chance of controlling the energies let loose by science and technology. Democratic leadership is the art of fostering and managing innovation in the service of a free community.”
A person need not be a Marxist to understand a very simple universal truth: Without vibrant representation both in the workplace and at home, the individuals at the top of the corporate pyramid will exploit the people in the eternal quest for greater profit. At that point, with the corporate overlords in bed with our political representatives, and democratic procedure totally absent inside of the corporate fortress, fascist is the only way to define such a brutal system.
Excerpt from the new book by Robert Bridge, “Midnight in the American Empire”
Austerity: You’d support it if you really cared about the kids:
You have to feel for the unfortunate officials that are forced to impose this kind of austerity. It’s not like they have a choice:
So now Greece gets punished if no one wants to buy off their state assets. It’s definitely not a seller’s market:
Gee, who wouldn’t want to make a major investment in a country ruled by a troika of lunatics?
Using Troika-logic, since the main source of the 1 billion euro Greek budget shortfall is in healthcare, maybe a nice epidemic will fix things? At least, let’s hope so because epidemics are what the economic doctor ordered.
JTA 6/30/13 reports: BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — The Jewish ex-interior minister of Argentina will be investigated for his ties to the AMIA Jewish center bombing.
The Buenos Aires Federal Appeals Court last week ordered the probe of Carlos Vladimir Corach in connection with an illegal payment of $400,000 to Carlos Telleldin, an auto mechanic who was among those charged in the 1994 attack that left 85 dead and hundreds wounded.
Telleldin, who allegedly provided the car bomb that blew up the Jewish center, has not been indicted.
The three Appeals Court justices called on Federal Judge Ariel Lijo to investigate “the existence of concrete allegations involving Carlos Vladimir Corach, which have not been investigated until now” regarding the illegal payment to Telleldin.
Corach was interior minister during the Carlos Menem government in the 1990s. He was responsible for obtaining the building for the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires and was the main speaker at its inauguration.