David Gow - Greece Gets Ultimatum: Accept Austerity Plan or Forego Extra Bailout Cash

Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/greece-ultimatum-austerity-forego-eu

by David Gow in Athens

Greece has been given an ultimatum that it will get no more money from the European Union and International Monetary Fund until its people have voted to accept the austerity measures demanded by the bailout package.

The latest tranche of bailout aid, worth €8bn (£7bn) and agreed just two weeks ago, is seen as vital for ensuring that Greek public sector workers can continue to be paid. But it will now be delayed until after the country decides in a referendum whether it accepts the new rescue package or even wants to stay in the euro.

The threat to send Greece closer to bankruptcy emerged on the margins of the G20 summit in Cannes – due to start on Thursday – and follows a blunt warning from Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the eurogroup, that the sixth tranche of the original €110bn bailout was now in jeopardy.

Click to read more ...

Dean Baker - Occupy the European Central Bank

The European Central Bank is responsible for the wreckage that has overtaken the Eurozone, economist says.

Dean Baker

Al-Jazeera, 01 Nov 2011 09:04

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111815133102.html

In the last month, people from around the country and around the world have picked up on the Occupy Wall Street theme of retaking the country from the wealthy. Insofar as this sentiment gathers force in Europe, there is probably no place better for people to plant themselves than on the steps of the European Central Bank (ECB).

More than any other institution, the ECB is responsible for the economic wreckage that has overtaken the European economy. In the years when housing bubbles were building across the much of the eurozone and the United States, the ECB looked the other way. Its position at the time was that these bubbles and the huge imbalances they created were not its concern. Its concern was keeping the inflation rate at two per cent.

This single-minded obsession with the inflation rate, at a time when the economies of the eurozone and the world were on the edge of disaster, is akin to Kodak insisting that its business line was photographic film at a time when digital photography was exploding. Competent business people adjust their business plans when the world changes. In the same vein, competent central bankers reorder their priorities when the economic situation requires changes.

Click to read more ...

Nigel Morris - World Faces Years of Social Unrest as Economies Falter

Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by The Independent/UK

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/world-faces-years-of-social-unrest-as-economies-falter-6255401.html

by Nigel Morris, Ben Chu

The international economy is on the brink of a deep new economic crisis that could cost millions of jobs around the globe and trigger mass social unrest, the world's most powerful nations were warned yesterday.

As the leaders of the G20 countries prepare for emergency talks on averting a return to worldwide recession, the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO) issued a grim forecast of the social effects of the continuing economic crisis.

The UN agency warned that it could take until 2016 for global employment to return to the levels of three years ago – and that anger could erupt on the streets of Europe and other continents as a result.

Click to read more ...

Robert Reich - Greeks' Choice — and Ours: Democracy or Finance?

Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by RobertReich.org

http://robertreich.org/post/12200736000

by Robert Reich

Which do you trust more: democracy or financial markets?

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou decided in favor of democracy yesterday when he announced a national referendum on the draconian budget cuts Europe and the IMF are demanding from Greece in return for bailing it out.

(Or, more accurately, the cuts Europe and the IMF are demanding for bailing out big European banks that have lent Greece lots of money and stand to lose big if Greece defaults on those loans – not to mention Wall Street banks that will also suffer because of their intertwined financial connections with European banks.)

If Greeks accept the bailout terms, unemployment will rise even further in Greece, public services will be cut more than they have already, the Greek economy will contract, and the standard of living of most Greeks will deteriorate further.

Click to read more ...

Mike Whitney - Is Goldman Sachs Poised to Takeover Europe?

Counterpunch.org  October 31, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/31/is-goldman-sachs-poised-to-takeover-europe/

by MIKE WHITNEY

Goldman Sachs is about to take over Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the papers.

On Tuesday, G-Sax alum, Mario Draghi, will take the helm at the European Central Bank replacing retiring ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet. The appointment has slipped by the media virtually unnoticed even though the ECB is the most powerful institution in the EU and is likely to play a critical role in solving the debt crisis.

Draghi was formally a Managing Director at Goldman. He also served as an advisor to the Bank of Italy in 1990, chairman of the Italian Committee for Privatisations, and was an Executive Director of The World Bank from 1984 to 1990. His bio. affirms his globalist pedigree which makes him the perfect candidate to replace the curmudgeonly Trichet who failed to comply with all of Big Finance’s demands. That’s not likely to be the case with Draghi.

Click to read more ...

Paul Craig Roberts - Living in a Delusional World

COUNTERPUNCH,  OCTOBER 28-30, 2011

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/28/living-in-a-delusional-world/

I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.

Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade.  They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State.  Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.

On October 27, 2011, the US government announced some routine economic statistics, and the president of the European Council announced a new approach to the Greek sovereign debt crisis.  The result of these funny numbers and mere words sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its largest monthly rally since 1974, erasing its 2011 yearly loss. The euro rose, putting the European currency again 40% above its initial parity with the US dollar when the euro was introduced.

On National Public Radio a half-wit analyst declared, emphatically, that the latest US government statistics proved that the recovery was in place and that there was no danger whatsoever of a double-dip recession. And half-brain economists predicted a better tomorrow.

Click to read more ...

Counterfire.org - Greece on the brink of social explosion

COUNTERFIRE.ORG  WEDNESDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2011 10:03

As another 48 hour strike begins in Greece Matthaios Tsimitakis describes a situation where despair and hope coexist in weird combination and where something seems to be about to change in the country.

http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/international/15037-greece-on-the-brink-of-social-explosion-

WRITTEN BY MATTHAIOS TSIMITAKI  

While surfing online, last week, I stuumbled on a blog-post that describes the life of a 37-year-old woman in Athens in these days of crisis. Unfortunately it is indicative of the condition in which so many gradually have entered as time under Troika and IMF, “rescue policies” passes by. Translated here is an excerpt:

“I have worked since I was 16 and I have lived in Athens since I was 24. I remember that many times I had to struggle in order to survive with two jobs, but never have I stayed unemployed for too long. During the past eight years there were times when things were tight and difficult and other times when things were more or less OK.

But not even in the most difficult period of my life, as a University student, did I find myself in the position I am today. For thirteen years I struggled, I fought, I stood on my feet. But now I can’t take it anymore. I’m giving up.

I’ve been unemployed for ten months. Knowing that I was going to lose my job, I started searching for a new one from as early as the Easter of 2010. By now I’ve sent 155 CVs but I only got two replies back, both saying that they didn’t need employees. For the first time in my life I’m facing an eviction order by the end of this month. The landlord says that I have no dignity and that I live on her expense, forgetting the eight years that I have been meeting my obligations regularly or even the improvements I ‘ve made to her house on my own expenses. Still, she’s right. She’s no charity – she wants her money.

Click to read more ...

Catherine McLean - It’s True, Bankers Really Do Control the World: Study

Published on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-exchange/globe-correspondents/its-true-bankers-really-do-control-the-world-study/article2212592/

by Catherine McLean

WINTERTHUR, Switzerland - Here’s a gift to Occupy Wall Street protesters around the world: you now have scholarly proof that banks control the world.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, also known as ETH, have published a paper that argues just 147 companies account for a large chunk of the total economic value of all the transnational companies around the world. No exact dollar figures, but it’s obviously a vast sum.

Among the top 50 corporations, 45 operate within the financial industry. Barclays PLC is the most powerful, according to the ETH study, followed by such well-known names as JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG, and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.

The United States takes home first prize with 24 companies cracking the researchers’ top 50 list, followed by the U.K. with 8, France with 5, Japan with 4, and Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands tying with 2 companies each. Canada has one company in the researchers’ top 50: Sun Life Financial, Inc. secures the 35th spot.

Click to read more ...

Dean Baker - Jean-Claude Trichet's dire tenure at the ECB

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/24/jean-claude-trichet-tenure-ecb?newsfeed=true

guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 10.30 EDT

Jean-Claude Trichet will be retiring as head of the European Central Bank at the end of October. He will step into retirement having wreaked the sort of destruction on the European economy that hostile powers could only dream about. Tens of millions of people across the eurozone countries are unemployed or underemployed because of his mismanagement of Europe's economy.

Meanwhile, the world teeters on the brink of another financial crisis because of the failure of the ECB, along with the IMF, to effectively address the sovereign debt crisis. Most incredible of all, Trichet probably thinks he has done a good job.

This last point really is central because the ECB, like much of the economics profession, continues to be controlled by a bizarre clique that believes that the most important, and possibly only, goal that a central bank should pursue is a 2% inflation target. By this measure, the ECB has done reasonably well, even as the eurozone economy has crumbled around it. After all, inflation in the eurozone economies rarely exceeded 3% and averaged well under the 2% target over the last decade.

Click to read more ...

Zygmunt Bauman - How Global Capitalism Always Finds Fresh Green Pastures to Exploit and Demolish

By Zygmunt Bauman, Comment Is Free

Posted on October 20, 2011, Printed on October 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152808/how_global_capitalism_always_finds_fresh_green_pastures_to_exploit_and_demolish

The news of capitalism's demise is (to borrow from Mark Twain) somewhat exaggerated. Capitalism has an inbuilt wondrous capacity of resurrection and regeneration; though this is capacity of a kind shared with parasites – organisms that feed on other organisms, belonging to other species. After a complete or near-complete exhaustion of one host organism, a parasite tends and manages to find another, that would supply it with life juices for a successive, albeit also limited, stretch of time.

A hundred years ago Rosa Luxemburg grasped that secret of the eerie, phoenix-like ability of capitalism to rise, repeatedly, from the ashes; an ability that leaves behind a track of devastation – the history of capitalism is marked by the graves of living organisms sucked of their life juices to exhaustion. Luxemburg, however, confined the set of organisms, lined up for the outstanding visits of the parasite, to "pre-capitalist economies" – whose number was limited and steadily shrinking under the impact of the ongoing imperialist expansion.

With each successive visit, another one of those remaining "virgin lands" was converted into a grazing field for capitalist exploitation, and therefore sooner rather than later made unfit for the needs of capitalist "extended reproduction" since no longer promising profits such an expansion required. Thinking along these lines (a fully understandable inclination, given the mostly territorial, extensive rather than intensive, lateral rather than vertical, nature of that expansion 100 years ago), Luxemburg could not but anticipate the natural limits to the conceivable duration of the capitalist system: once all "virgin lands" of the globe are conquered and drawn into the treadmill of capitalist recycling, the absence of new lands for exploitation will portend and eventually enforce the collapse of the system. The parasite will die because of the absence of not-yet-exhausted organisms to feed on.

Click to read more ...