They may be the lowest form of human life, but when it comes to defending their wealth the Financial class are not stupid. They know they need to make us, not them, pay for those debts whatever it costs. That’s why, to quote one leading market analyst, ‘there are still doubts on whether the peripheral countries can deliver on austerity.’ That’s their worry now. That is what the financial class sees as the proper and apparently only role of government. DELIVER ON AUSTERITY. That is what your government is for. Welcome to your future.
There is now no easy way out of the killing field we have been led into. And it must be coming clear to people that a killing field is a good description of the place they are taking us.
Men in fine suits, with fine degrees, who live golden lives have led us and our children to a desperate place. Our political leaders have helped them take us there. They chose not to spend our future taxes on education, on health, on investment in a better future, but instead they sacrificed it all to save the banks. That sacrifice will involve tearing from us every thread in the fabric of our national life that is not tied down and defended tooth and nail. It is the ultimate failure of imagination and courage by a generation of political leaders.
The pain they have stored up for us will not go away. This means, in my opinion there are only two futures remaining. One in which the pain comes quickly but where we do everything to make sure it is the financial class, and not us, who suffer the most. But there is another future, the one they have planned for us, where it happens slowly, the pain getting greater and greater with time, but where it is made to fall on us rather than the immensely rich people and institutions that caused the crisis.
It is the future where everything we have sacrificed and struggled to build to make this country a better place – our universities, our schools, our pensions, our health service – is hacked down and the little left is subjected to the laws and logic of the market where nothing is valued but profit. That is the future they want; it is the future we must resist.
With that future in mind our political leaders know everything now is about enforcement – about enforcing this future upon us. In simple terms it means what we are seeing in Greece and what we saw in Iceland. It means police versus people. It is where Democracy and Finance run into each other like bulls in a field. It will come here too.
If you believe, like me, that the only long-term and sustainable path out of the killing fields we have been led to is for the ordinary people of all countries to force the bad debts to be taken by those who made them and put an end to public money being misused to bail out the wealthy then we must act now. The longer we delay, the longer we put off the inevitable, the greater the pain for all of us.
In my opinion democracy – when you have it already – is about peaceful voting. When you don’t have it, or you are in danger of having it hollowed out and what is left serves only the rich and the powerful then it is time for standing up and confronting those who would deny you. That time is now. Our political leaders, if we let them, will deliver us to the killing fields. A different leadership will have to come from the bottom, from you and me, to stop them.
We have to confront this disaster together or each of us will be pulverized by it on our own.
So let me ask a Burroughs-esq question: Is it really "Men in fine suits, with fine degrees, who live golden lives have led us and our children to a desperate place", or are those men agents, actors, avatars of invisible systems of economic/industrial connections, acting autonomously, which have brought us to the brink, not necessarily by their intent, but by their nature?
If the latter is the case, then no matter how much we oppose them, vote against them, or revolutionarily replace them (i.e. South Africa post apartheid), the nature of the beast does not change. So if you attack the class but leave the class-room (sorry to mix the metaphors), the structure remains, replenishes it biological agents and a lot of people get killed in the process.
Or is this simply the way we've gone about things in the past, it's how we do it, and we hope it 'works' again without, to quote Burroughs "the whole shithouse" going up?
Malagodi,
in my opinion it is both the structure into which people are born, whose 'grammar' and rules they learn and in to which they find a place to fit, but is is also those people who are in it now, make it work and defend it.
Remove teh people but leave the structure/systerm unchanged and nothing will alter only the actors will be replaced.
But I don't see how one can change a system without removing the people who are defending it from their p[ositions of power and influence. How one doies it is the question.
One can hopefully do it by peaceful means. By protest, by witholding consent/tax/spending/debt and by altering people's willingness to accept what they are told in necessary, innevitable and natural about teh system they live in. And by voting.
But if those in charge thwart all attempts to change by voting, or by debate, enforcing the rule of law, or by withholding consent – you may not strike etc – then more revolutionary means will be all that is left.
I hope it does not come to that.
I prefer to do the little I can to sow seeds of doubt and dissent in to the minds of those who are willing to listen so that they can develope them and pass them on.
Combine that with a willingness to confront injustice and the role-back of democracy with physical protest and I have hopes that we can change enough people's minds, give enough people hiope and belief, that we will be able to change the system as well.
My children's future depends on it. So I am in for the long run.
Well, phew, I read that last sentence and thought you weren't going to write anymore (- cos I'm the sort of person who has to stop and think 'what year are we in' when I write a cheque.)
Agree completelt that its is better to jump in now and have the bloody crisis and get it over with, while we still have a society worth talking about, so we can restart in a saner world. It does feel like we are waiting for something to just spark something off – but no matter how small the protests going on I have hope too – movements of real change always start pretty small – but they are growing.
Please keep going too.
PS. did you see that in addition to Lipsky now head of the IMF we have a former Goldmanite heading the ECB?
I think Malagodi is asking a good question. I know I constantly struggle with the question in various forms-and citing Burroughs just seems very apt- as his own central struggle was essentially about that eternal problem, captured by Goethe, Dr Faustus bargain with the devil, although his struggle was mediated through the prism of his drug habit, and his sexuality.
Part of the problem is that we need to update these basic themes for the present time to allow more people to understand them. To some extent I think that is what is happening within the blogosphere. Goethe was living in a time when a religious (Christian) background informed peoples thinking. i don't want to 'go religious'- I am not actually inclined that way, however it is an inevitable backdrop to most western ideas, but I think that the general grounding in the metaphors of biblical stories, so many of which are illustrating underlying constants, constraints and consequences of personal, social, and political activity, often provided a reasonably accessible, intellectual braking system for our excesses, whether personal, social, or political. Of course , religion also provided a conveniently submissive perspective of established privilege and power.
Widespread secularization is partly, I am sure ultimately helpful to a higher level of consciousness but it involves dismantling some kind of working personal intellectual architecture. We are in an interim period and at the moment, many people have no way of relating to the basic question-without lapsing into high levels of anxiety and alienation. Relief of existential anxiety is ultimately one of the main goals of us all, as that relief permits our best characteristics to flourish , and as we have acquired greater knowledge, we appear to have little option but to travel down the road of greater knowledge (self and scientific). Essentially I see the political elites as simply the most vocal supporters and effective rhetoricians of an (unbalanced/exclusive ) pursuit of knowledge.
They express a logic which appears to be inescapeable, but it is also inevitably exclusive-so many people are prevented from taking part in the Faustian bargain, made on their behalf- by their ‘circumstances’-whether that is disability, personal misfortune, or lack of opportunity or abuse, so the politicians have no escape from the logic of setting up ‘quality traps‘ – means by which the ‘less worthy’
( or less willing/dissenters) become ensnared and disempowered even more than before. We see this in the authoritarianism and managerialism of Labour, and in the Afghan war, which despite all assurances to the contrary, from all sides, is a cultural war against the primacy of a static,(eternal /traditional), tribalist conception of human life. The connection and significance of Islam is inescapable.
In an another sense ‘the war’( include Iran here) is a war of competing apocalyptic visions.
For politicians, the price of the casualties ( economic or military) is worth paying to secure the progress of some portion of the population. I think is the essence of the political struggle going on just now.
For MacPuddock:
"There is another kind of justice than the justice of number, which can neither forgive nor be forgiven. There is another kind of mercy than the mercy of Law which knows no absolution. There is a justice of newborn worlds which cannot be counted. There is a mercy of individual things that spring Into being without reason. They are just without reason, and their mercy is without explanation. They have received rewards beyond description because they themselves refuse to be described. They are virtuous in the sight of God because their names do not identify them. Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory.
These are worlds of themselves. No man can use or destroy them. Theirs is the life that moves without being seen and cannot be understood. It is useless to look for what is everywhere. It is hopeless to hope for what cannot be gained because you already have it. The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. Dance in this sun you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction.
You fool, it is life that makes you dance: have you forgotten? Come out of the smoke, the world is tossing in its sleep, the sun is up, the land is bursting in the silence of dawn. The clear bell of Atlas rings once again over the sea and the animals come to the shore at his feet. The gentle earth relaxes and spreads out to embrace the strong sun. The grasses and flowers speak their own secret names. With his great gentle hands, Atlas opens the clouds and birds spill back onto the land out of Paradise. You fool, the prisons are open. The fatman is forgotten. The fatman was only his own nightmare. Atlas never knew him. Atlas never knew anything but the ways of the stars, of the earth and of the ocean. Atlas is a friendly mountain, with a cloud on his shoulder, watching the rising sun."
Thomas Merton, Atlas and the Fat Man, The Behavior of Titans, p.46-48
For Golem: What is the first objective? Take out command and control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbad22CKlB4
A revealing comment made to Newnight's Paul Mason by a veteran City fund manager.
"Forget inflation targeting: the world needs inflation. Inflation is a way to erode the value of all the debts hanging over the system. Inflation wipes out the debts and the resulting currency devaluation passes on the recession to somebody else. We're not called the "first world" for nothing…"[…]
"I mean," said my interlocutor, "we have 350 years experience of passing on the costs of crisis to other people. That's why we're the first world. You watch – the Americans and the Brits will make the rest of the world pay."
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13927566 ).
I said "revealing", nothing more.
One good thing about the crisis: when it's finally over, never again will governments and politicians be able to say of any social public spending "we can't afford it"…
PS Mason uses the word "forbearance" to describe current monetary policy. Meanwhile Robert Peston – in a post entitled (I kid you not) "Have banks been hiding their losses?" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13925465 ) describes this as a banking term meaning "to vary the terms of a loan, when a borrower can't keep up the payments or breaches the conditions, rather than pulling the rug".
A new term for the Liars' Lexicon?
David
I agree (I'm sure all of us do here) that the system & its implementers must be confronted. But I recall a documentary on 1968 Paris. The French government conceded defeat & essentially went cap in hand to the dissidents with "..ok, you win, what do you want?…". Sadly, Kohn Bendit & the others knew what they didn't want, but didn't really know what they did want. Inevitably, it's been downhill from there. We don't want to make that mistake again.
Well, I believe we do have the essential elements of a system diametrically better than the present lemming-like rush to meltdown.
In economics, the more I absorb, the more convinced I am that MMT (Modern Money Theory) centred around the University of Missouri Kansas City economists has a good way forward. The blog http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
explains & has just started a 'Modern Money Primer' section to educate, inform & refine the practical details.
In essence, it places (near) full employment as the primary goal – optimal use of Labour resources – of economy management. Using such measures as a (preferably 'green') Job Guarantee scheme to maintain employment during (typical, cyclical) periods when a private sector cannot . Keeping price inflation within a reasonable, but likely not the present obsessively low, range is a secondary goal. It recognises an important trade off between these goals & the importance of careful fiscal management to balance these together with the avoidance of other excessive economic imbalances. It is intended to operate within a sovereign currency state where the government budget defecit at any point is an irelevance – merely a number on a balance sheet. In theory this could work within the EMU, but the added complexity & large existing imbalances would make it too difficult to introduce probably. But for any country that exits the Euro, they have a fantastic opportunity to adopt such a reform.
However, imo, MMT has a potential weakness, but one I regard as perhaps it's greatest strength also. It requires careful fiscal management – much better than the present dreadful mish mash of decision making, contorted out of all coherence by the corruption of conflicting vested interests. The current 'adminstration', sham democratic 'process', carried out by institutions largely captured by wealthy & corporate interests, would surely be barely capable at best of producing a stable result. But the need to remove corruption & conflicting interests from politics, civil service & news media, & ensure true representation of the majority makes such a system even more attractive to me.
Anyhow, I encourage anyone not familiar with MMT & the work of its developers to take a look.
They have lauded democracy for a reason! It is your unwritten right to be able to borrow far too much! They are here to help you! Get the picture? Democracy has quite a price, now if you don't realize who you are dealing with?
They want inflationary democracy again, so you must pay for it. They will exempt themselves if they can. The system is the problem, it comes complete with parasites!
Buying politicians is inevitable in a democracy that doesn't police them. Too many business secrets at the expense of actual human rights.
Power comes from the barrel of a gun and they can buy a lot of them! Army, police all there to protect democracy. How much of the political fabric have they bought? How many dead bodies does it take to turn their stomachs?
Let us just say that all the paper worth will be 1% of what it was?
Mike Hall
There are many solutions but all will founder if the msm dictate to the mob whatever their rights are!
The problem is a human one. All the mistakes of the thirties were slowly repeated and then after 9/11, rapidly aggravated!
Survival of the state dictated that there be a catastrophic credit boom. No theoretical model will survive such cold blooded destruction! Naive?
@ Fungus
I'm under no illusions as to what the problems are, right down to evidence that human psychology is thus far incapable of overcoming its shortcomings. It may well take a mass extinction event (the one we are beginning) to wake people up & even then…
But, historically, the MSM is weaker than it's ever been. There exists the most educated – more important educable – society ever. Both political representation & MSM could be diammetrically better than now. Even 50yrs ago I could not have had much notion of how. Now I do & so do others. Is it possible? Probably not, but worth trying anyway imo. It's not obligatory that society allows & even lauds the private greed of people who purport to represent the wider majority. A system that rejects such motivations to a considerable extent is perfectly achievable. And it need not place entrenched power in a bureaucracy any more than a private oligopoly.
There will be windows of opportunity for change. Great moments of mass doubt that the existing mess is fit for purpose. But if all we do is whinge & say what we don't want, then for sure the powers that be will continue under whatever new smokescreen of bullsh1t they can get away with.
I'm not sure if you were criticising or dismissing MMT in particular or just any notion of fixing our problems? If it's the former, their MMT 'Primer' is intended to invite online discussion to better refine understanding of it in practice. If you feel it's flawed, why not join in?
Mikehall- i assume you are meaning a major population contraction 'event rather than a mass extinction event which normally relates to a global biological perspective .
Actually it will only be 'visible' with hindsight. In a hundred years tine there may be a graph showing the contraction of the population to four billion or so, but in human experiential terms our only clues to being in such a process are heightened tensions and perhaps increased hardship and wars. But wars are now being waged differently so even that idea may become rather abstract.
Usually there is a fall off in fertility, infant survival, and an increase in death rates and reduced life expectancy and increased frequency of diseases/epidemics.
However the 'sense' of that calamity, for which there is not actually that much evidence, at least in all us literate, connected seekers after truth, seems to percolate into our present consciousness, and create anxiety.
Actually there IS some evidence that fertility is falling in some populations, especially in the west, although the gender selection of the Chinese one child policy, and the Indian habit of sex selection in favor of males is creating some demographic and social troubles for these places in the future.
and the current lurch to the right in many old world places-Cameron and Sarkozy and Merkel. Obama is dead-meat (electorally speaking).
Ohio state just passed a law banning all abortion. This indicates the future-a shift towards totalitarianism and despotism. America always manages to shroud its despotism in faux populism
Regardless of the merits of the policy it is a sure indicator of the way the political wind is blowing.
However i think there is a strangely anomalous situation at play at the moment. Somehow, despite superficial evidence to the contrary there is a spreading sense that we are seeing the 'failure' of technology. Clearly technology is still advancing but the modernist theme of technology creating a universal utopia has given way to the idea of a selective and shrinking utopia for the select.
Utopia is not being abandoned as an idea, the most powerful are simply placing selection systems in place to filter the worthy by putting their quality checks in place and creating a hierarchy of privilege.
In essence we are seeing a kind of political Jehovah's witnesses of money.
One of the strange examples of the doublethink of people like GW Bush is that he holds and expresses climate skeptical views, while doing a lot of things that suggest he is more than a little worried about the future-building a super-secure , energy independent bolt hole ranch, stuffed with resources like solar generation and impregnable water supplies, and no doubt a few weapons systems installed to protect himself and his family -from what?
Well it can only be some kind of environmental and/or social apocalypse.
Curiously, Ahmadinejad is on record as believing that we are approaching some apocalyptic event foretold in Islamic scripture.
Such limited intellect and vision in people we 'elect' is really a problem.
http://youtu.be/2C5XuylNFLo
HOW I CLOBBERED
EVERY BUREAUCRATIC
CASH-CONFISCATORY AGENCY
KNOWN TO MAN
Many of us have caught on that the rules of the Debt Game actually include a few clauses which describe how ‘they’ have agreed to be responsible for any debt that we incur. Hence, they agree that they will ‘pay’ it. Since there has been, for the past 75 years, nothing with which to pay any debt, it stands to reason that we cannot possibly incur any debt. It is THEIR debt and they simply want us to step forward to pay, via our jobs/labour, aka our time and energy, aka our lives, a debt which is not ours to pay. All we have to do is kindly remind them that they have agreed to set-off their OWN debt and we will happily assist them via signing, FOR them, and allowing them access to our account of unlimited credit in order to do so. The reason it is their debt – which appears to be difficult to understand when we see ourselves buying a new car – is because it is they who own the car the second we register it. Many of us have tried to avoid this by not registering the car and found way to much trouble accompanying such resolve so, it is easier to go with the program and simply have them pay for their car. We are permitted to sign for them because the Birth Certificate is the credit card they gave us to use. So, we buy the car for the state/province and we use it. If we get a ticket, whilst on business for that corporation – which is ongoing due to our having put many years of our lives, albeit unwittingly, into said corporation – they also agree to pay the ticket. Somehow, they have tricked us into believing that it is our car and, therefore, we are required to pay for it, insure it, pay for registration, plates, licence, etc. if we want to use it. All we have to do is not fall for the trickery any longer. Once we know that we can (kindly) allow them to recall that they agreed to pay, we can then direct any and ALL charges over to them to handle and, PRESTO!, we no longer have to give one more minute to the corporations/ banks/ Illuminati/ Crown/ Vatican and we can get our lives back.
Now that's a plan.
Like a grenade in a glasshouse
So we’re living in a glass house with the grenade sitting there for all to see. Who knows what will pull the pin. It could be Greece, a Chinese food crisis, peak oil or any number of other triggers. But it’s coming.
The question to ask yourself is simple. Are you ready?
They have already plundered the system. They however, will continue to damage the system, as they are now falling out over the spoils: internecine strife as we used to say in the gutter!
The packages arranged by their "bought and paid fors", are inflating commodities. Some of these will collapse, probably most. These have been analysed as mainly paper profits, with few taking delivery. Many of those who made $$ will lose it all in the slumps to come.
After that, the inflation packages will cease and further public losses will also cease. The mortgages foist upon a gullible public in America are now seen to be unenforceable! Capital out of nothing for the fortunate many! Some are already plotting on how to get their hands on that!
In the blue corner, not even bothering to hide it's true intentions, IMF etc.
http://www.independent.ie/business/european/greece-will-pay-for-euro110bn-bailout-with-its-sovereignty-2812141.html
& in the red corner, the Keiser & a bunch of Greek lawyers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jypNsyae5Z0&feature=player_detailpage
Greek documentary "Debtocracy" with full english subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpxPo-lInk&feature=player_embedded#at=4315
Particularly interesting to see the history of 'odious debt' & the fact that it continues to have recognition in international law today. In particular, the use of the concept by the US to declare Iraq's debts void after it invaded & took responsibilty for administration there. A fact that they went to great length to hide from public knowledge with the collusion of other 1st world governments. Also discussed is it's use by Ecuador with the setting up of a (properly) independent Audit Committee to examine the details of their country's loan agreements. Pretty much all debt entered into by a previous corrupt adminstration was declared 'odious' & thus void.
The film is well worth watching, particularly for people in Ireland & other 'peripheral' euro states. The only difference to Greece is that they were 1st in line for invasion & occupation by international finance.
'Austerity', anywhere, is not 'economics' – it's political & ideological warfare waged by wealth & the financial sector against labour, pure & simple. It's not neccesary. It's part of the robbery perpetrated by the rigged financial & monetary system.
Another excellent blog by an advocate of the MMT alternative, Prof Bill Mitchell here:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
@Mike Hall
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2011/07/04/declaration-by-distinguished-former-european-leaders-in-support-of-the-modest-proposals-main-tenets-the-urgent-need-for-a-fresh-new-deal-for-europe/
(sorry about the html deficiencies)
Would this be a potentially progreesive move MMT,
either way at least it some fresh thinking for the Der Speigel readers and on the 4th of July too -very apt
@ Rebecca
The 'fresh-new-deal-for-Europe', 'modest proposal for a solution to the euro crisis', you reference is essentially a recognition that the so-called 'solutions' of loading up massive debts (at high interest) onto the 'problem' states whilst demanding viciously GDP deflating 'austerity' simply cannot work. Cannot lead to economic recovery for those states, & will probably lead to a disorderly default at some stage. It's hard to say whether it's fear of the latter or some genuine concern for the deep social damage the present policies are inflicting & will inflict for a decade or more.
What they propose is not MMT, but simply aggregating the debts into collective eurozone bonds, with a very long maturity (50 years is mentioned) & presumably a lower effective interest rate than the penal rates Ireland, for example, is now paying. Whether because interest becomes a collective responsibilty based not on which country has supposedly accumulated said debt, and/or the low rates attracted by the likes of Germany at present.
The proposals also strongly argue for public (at least public led) investment to reduce unemployment.
So it's basically all back to Keynes & Roosevelt's 'New Deal' of the 30s which followed the disaster of 3+ years of 'Austerity' defecit-hawk cr@p after the meltdown of '29/'30.
Being kind, you could say the economics 'establishment' are not fast learners, some 80 years after the Great Depression. Less kind would be to call them a bunch of variously 'captured' intellectually bankrupt w@nkers. That a handful are just about making a glimmer of recognition of doomed to failure 'solutions' & none (of the 'establishment') are looking seriously at the system that caused the crisis, isn't much of a testament imo.
Fundamentally, MMT asks the question – what is the social purpose of a monetary & fiscal system? It provides a simple answer – social well being – and follows that with setting (near) full employment as a primary goal. It establishes that giving private banks a free lunch, at society's expense, in currency issuance, with added interest, is uneccesary for a sovereign currency administration, which has no need whatever to borrow or incur debt that must be repaid. (Hence, a 'defecit' is a number on a balance sheet, nothing more.) MMT regards price inflation that varies around 5% or so a minimal price to pay for social well being.
Whereas, neo-liberal policy cares about only one thing – low inflation, typically 2% or so as a target, and cares not how many people don't have a job or how many people live in poverty or how much social distress occurs. Nor does it care how many free lunches the rich get or if they facillitate a casino where the risks are all borne by those who don't participate in the gambling.
Aside from a critique of the (non) 'solution' the 'modest proposals' address nothing of these issues.
You are better than ordering "Human forms" David, a lot better: what next, a purge of the money lenders? For someone who subscribes to language philosophy, thats pretty poor.
How did we get into this state?
I've been lucky so far, still have a job to pay for my lifestyle and two mortgages.
Had we tried to sell our first house only 6 months earlier than we did we would not be stuck stuck with our first home in negative equity and our second (final) home just about level.
Some pople are quick to say 'well its your own fault' for being greedy and borrowing so heavily.
At no stage was it ever mentioned during this time by banks/advisors that what we were getting into was a bad idea. The money was positively forced into our hands and now we are stuck.
I never wanted two properties. I'm not a speculator or a wealthy man, just an average PAYE joe. I'm thankful we didn't/couldn't have any kids (yet), so any ruination to come will be only upon myself and my wifes head.
Like I said though, I've been lucky so far.
I looked to the complete obliteration of the FF/IMF party in the last election and we nearly got it too. I niavely hoped that their replacement would live up to their talk, and stand up for the little man against what FF did, forcing bad investment bank debt upon the taxpayer in return for unemployment and certain overtaxation for our children/grandchildren.
As we know it did not happen, this lot has so far behaved as impotently as the last.
Still no arrests, still no jail for corrupt politicians. Nothing.
Only blood flowing in the streets of Ireland will even start to clease the cancer of corruption our glorious free state has allowed to manifest. Its time to withdraw from this european sham and go it alone. We can grow our own food, make our own energy and buy petrol from the Arabs or the Russians. We cannot and must not continue this suicidal path to destruction that is paying the debts of the wealthy so they don't have to.
@ didihno
"How did we get into this state?"
As a society, whether you live in Ireland or much anywhere else, we gave the power to run the Money system to privately owned Banking. Of course, they've done a sterling job of dressing it up to look like there's been some sort of democratic, public interest oversight. (As far as our 'democracy' has ever really operated in the wider public interest – ie not much, even less today.) But make no mistake, nobody gets to any position of authority unless they demonstrate allegiance to the staus quo.
The most fundamental thing to realise (& get curious about) is that monetary systems & macroeconomics, running the finances at a national level, are NOT AT ALL ANALAGOUS to your household (or business) budgetary accounting. Much of macroeconomics is counter 'intuitive'. Which has made it so damn easy for the Banksters to run things heavily rigged in their favour. Sponsored 'Groupthink' on steroids.
We are now living with the final unequivocal PROOF that not only was the system rigged in the Bankers favour (& by extension other 'Wealth' interests), we have yet more PROOF that periodic financial crashes are INHERENT, with the various bubble-bursting, Ponzi/Pyramid collapsing losses of the system dumped on the ONLY source of real wealth in society – ordinary citizens in the 'real', productive economy.
Even worse for Ireland, it has handed over it's economic sovereignty to an unelected bunch of foreign banksters at the European Central Bank (ECB). Even the dogs on the street have realised by now that they represent financial sector interests not those of the majority of citizens. And financial sector interests have no national 'allegiance' at all.
In the face of this, unless Ireland wants to revert to the days of mass unemployment & poverty – or worse – we must leave the Euro & declare void the 'odious' public debts ordinary citizens did not incur.
We can then rebuild our economy with our own currency & a new system – one that places citizens' well being (& stable employment) first & foremost. We need borrow NOTHING, from anyone to do this. A sovereign currency is NEVER CREDIT CONSTRAINED, EVER. A public 'defecit' need NEVER BE 'REPAID' or pay interest. (To WHO? It's our fecking currency!) We can invest as much as we need to create jobs, infrastructure & stimulate private enterprise. Our only minor constraints are, 1. In the medium term & longer we must achieve a reasonable balance of exports vs imports. 2. Price inflation will rise as we near full productive capacity (full employment), so we reign in public investment and/or adjust taxation at that point to limit it to a reasonable level. Allowing inflation to fluctuate & be limited to temporary peaks of up to 10% (most often half that) presents no problem or difficulty.
Just think how prosperous Ireland could be if we did not waste the lives of 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 workers thru' unemployment, and pay usurious 'homage' to parasitic banksters?
This is 'MMT'* economics. An alternative monetary & fiscal system that puts ordinary people first, not the wealthy few & their 'establishment' apologists & promoters with snouts in the trough (when their heads are not up their arses). Don't believe the 'TINA' (There Is No Alternative) cr@p for one second.
*For commentary & explanations by MMT economists, start here:
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/
I was thinking about the psychopathic tendancies of certain business people & politicians & I remembered some time ago seeing a drama-documentary about Gustave Gilberts psychological assessment of the Nazis on trial at Nuremburg. In particular how the majority were respectable family men but were totally lacking in empathy. I did a search & found this series of articles written by Harrison Koehli.
It focuses on all aspects of psychopathy but concentrates on the political & corporate manifestations of the condition. It uses Gilbert's work to compare Goering with Madoff & also shows that Goering's & the Nazi's methods of controlling populations is still very much in use.
Well worth a read, Know thy enemy.
http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com/category/pettytyrants
@Didihno It is sickening to see how the political entities of either left or right , with the exception of Iceland have basically grovelled before the Troika. I wish you the best of fortune, I lived in the Republic it sickens me to see what the greedy & power junkies have done to it.
Italian bank stocks suspended:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/italian-bank-stocks-suspended-after-sudden-drop-2011-06-24
Unidebt.
Come back, Golem.
A little light relief for all you iPhone users out there:
Zombie Banksters for iPhone
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Golem – hope all is well with you. We're all looking forward to new posts with bated breath.
In the UK it seems that we're experiencing at least our 3rd crisis of legitimacy since the financial meltdown. The News of the World phone hacking scandal shares a lot in common with the MP's expenses scandal and the student fees protests in my opinion. The mainstream press and political elite are straining every sinew to hide the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the system yet again.
This time it's the spectre of Murdoch that stalks the corridors at Westminster rather than that of the financial elites but the parallels are clear. The rule of law has been suspended for the rich yet again. This time the public have claimed a head in recompense but as with fighting the Lernaen Hydra we can expect two to grow back in its place. 'Normal' service will do doubt be resumed shortly but at the moment we're living through one of those brief moments where the obscene power weilded by our financial and political elites is on the tip of everyone's brain and you feel that only if it was articulated in the right way, by the right person…
Would love to hear your thoughts.
No pressure 🙂
Jamie
Yes, but it is the corruption in the MET is the most shocking, because the police are meant to the ones enforcing the rule of law!
Here is just one of my posts on the Newsnight blog today:
"Remember this story with the News of the World is also about bribery & corruption amongst the police!!
The police SOLD confidential information to the press!!
No-one had even mentioned “cash for confidential information” involving the police until a few days ago. See Operation Elveden press release from the Met on 6th July 2011.
For me this is the bigger story as it reveals police corruption and complicity! And also explains why a proper investigation into the phone hacking keeps getting ignored.
Perhaps we all need to support Jenny Jones in her request that we get a formal declaration from all officers involved in Operations Weeting & Eleveden that they have never and are not receiving any innapropriate payments or are under any undue pressure or influence from outside sources:
http://surrey.greenparty.org.uk/news/jenny-jones-to-re-quiz-met-commissioner-over-police-payments-from-newspapers-in-phone-hacking-probe.html
– Ends
See more at the Newsnight blog
As for Michael Fallon on Newsnight last night, what an odious and supercilious little man.
StevieFinn
None at all 😉
I'm just jonesing for my fix.
Forensicstatistician,
Absolutely agree. A long succession of politicians have ignored this corruption entirely. Here's Brooks admitting at a selct committe hearing in 2003 that the NOTW paid police for information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1AJjnl2y8U&feature=youtube_gdata_player
yes we are entering a very odd world at the moment, where a lot of assumptions are being called into question.
I agree about the MET issue. Very very serious. But even more serious is the collusion of the political groups with a corrupt media. The problem for the existing political establishment is that all our suspicions of how closely they have cooperated and colluded in undermining accountability,and manipulating information are becoming visible. It is all very well for politicians to say they must sup with the devil at times. but it looks more and more that they been have sucking at the teet of the devil.
I am sure there are some very worried political figures out there, looking out their brown trouser suits.
Sorry for the long silence. Taking care of family. Just a tough time.
Thank you for asking Jamie.
I think I can speak for all us Golem junkies, when I say, sorry for your troubles, no apology necessary.
Ditto. There was a brief review of what looks like an interesting book in yesterday's Guardian: The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, by Colin Crouch. For details, see http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745651200#toc . For an article developed in the book, After Privatized Keynesianism (2008), see http://clients.squareeye.net/uploads/compass/documents/CTP41KeynesianisamCrouch.pdf .
Crouch is an academic, author of Postdemocracy, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Post-democracy-Themes-Century-Colin-Crouch/dp/0745633153/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1310338206&sr=8-2 .
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