My appologies for getting such a basic fact wrong. It won't happen again.

I had not heard this very worrying notion of a "spectrum of governability". What a pernicious term! Please let us know anything more you care to, about what is going on in Portugal. I am sure your observations would be greatly appreciated here.

About that semiotic bias, there's a very worrying recurring umbrella term used by the media here in Portugal, wich would roughly translate as "spectrum of governability". This term is used to designate three political parties: PS (third way socialists), PSD (social democrats) and CDS (conservatives). Any other political party is commonly refered to as being "outside the spectrum of governability".

Thought is mainly language-driven and we are all – not only in Portugal – being deprived of the tools to assess our true situation, let alone change it. I have been to most of the protests that you mention and, altought people are demosntrating their disagreement, the very notion of 'what is wrong' is very vague and hard to formulate to most of us. 'Caretaker government' and 'helping hand' are the concepts behind a succession of governments that brought us to this point in the first place, ever since the fascist regime. Sadly, to most of us, the IMF will probably just be more of the same.

Randall Wray & Bill Mitchell have quite a bit of info available online.

In particular their video blowing the myth that a sovereign currency's economy is like a household budget (it profoundly isn't, much as the elites peddle this view) is compelling. And if we go back beyond the last 3 disastrous decades of neo-liberal economics domination, budget defecits were (rightly) of little consequence, it was employment that mattered.

One difficulty then was timely control to avoid excessive inflation because there was so much less data or data processing available.

Put very simply, the metric & goal is employment (taking 98% of 'full' as a reasonable target). The means of control is public spending into the economy – by 'printing' or in reality, as many taps on the keyboard as necessary. More increases employment. As it reaches 98%, public spending is reduced. Any defecit is just a number on a balance sheet – a sovereign currency never need repay this.

The key is to accurately match the needed public funding to provide employment levels & ensure it doesn't overshoot & create excess inflation. It's likely that inflation a little higher (but not much) than the present system's very low 'targets' would periodically occur.

For all but the wealthy elites this is no problem, but of course, perish the thought that the rich might lose a few percent of their trillions thru' inflation. Oh dear me no, that must not happen. So to keep them happy with low inflation, the price for the rest of us is high unemployment or 'underemployment' (that the stats massage out of 'official' figures) – in realty fluctuating between 1 in 10 and 1 in 5 of the potential workers.

Of course, such high unemployment is not efficient & the waste of productivity & extra cost burden does mean less public services and/or lower real standards of living for the majority. But the elites don't care because this system it is so much more effective at funnelling wealth – ownership of assets – to add to their pile. That buys more influence too. And that is the story of the last 30 yrs – why we are where we are with plummeting wages, services etc., rocketing wealth for the few (even in the 'recession') and feck all 'democracy'.

That's it in a nutshell. The trade off in choice of economic system boils down to exponential growth in wealth for the rich elite at the cost of not enough jobs, low & declining real wages & public services for the rest of us.

Guess why there's been little or no examination of this as the whole thing nearly collapsed thru' greed & fraud?

Near all the folks in positions as decision makers or influencers, to put it in Irish historical terms, are either Landlords or Landlords' Agents. Overlay the modern media PR (=propaganda) onslaught following & refining the work of the likes of Edward Bernays and you have modern society. The Rich, wannabee Rich & the bewildered herd trashing the planet to no real gain – in fact barrelling headlong toward a physical & spiritual armageddon.

In terms of economics and money systems, there's a conference in Dublin (free attendance) organised by Feasta, Smart Taxes Network & TASC in Dublin on May 9th.

See here:

http://smarttaxes.org/

It looks excellent, with speakers from the University of Missouri Kansas City, including Professor Randall Wray.

Running economies & monetary systems where people matter is not rocket science. I recommend anyone to go along & find out.

I am continually disgusted by the sheer cognitive disonance of mainstream media. The fact that the ruinous 'austerity' strategies are simply making the problems worse for ordinary citizens is completely obvious – more austerity = shrinking economies = less tax revenue = less ability to pay or invest = digging a deeper hole. Yet whenever this fact is mentioned, it is just glossed over…moving on…

It seems this is a class war. The interests of the wealthy vs the rest of us. And the political leaders, senior 'public' servants (haha) are either totally on board or simply keeping quiet & banking their own comfy salaries & pensions.

There is no 'democracy' worth a sh*t – it's a complete betrayal. And I also suspect that at the most senior levels of the world's elite, this +is+ their response to 'limits to growth'.

I've said this before & I'll say it again. The only way to achieve real 'democracy' – that works in the interests of the majority of citizens – is to limit the wealth – for life – of all those whose vocation purports to be for the 'public' interest, to some median level of the majority. Not everyone with ability is consumed by the 'greed' motive. (As Golem's & other blogs atest.) It's perfectly doable – & neccesary. Those vocations include elected representatives, civil (public) servants & news & factual media enterprises & journalists. If wealth is their motive, let them feck off & go into business & stay there.

It's time we recognised the truth that Ghandi spoke – there's enough for everyones' need, but not for everyones' greed – & build our societies accordingly.

Pat and Hawkeye – what you're describing is a form of 'creative destruction', is it not? The financial classes see that there's no potential for the realisation of a compound rate of growth of capital round these parts anymore so they'll strip it all down and realise whatever worth they can from the assets while they export all our surplus capital to emerging markets. By the time they've exhausted those for growth, this place will have gone so far downhill there'll be plenty of scope for 'redevelopment' and they'll ship all our money back over here for another go on the merry-go-round.

What a way to run a planet.

Never were truer words written.
The Conservative led Coalition are about to have the final car boot sale. In which they will sell any service or publicly owned concern that private companies can make a profit from.
All in the guise of paying off the deficit.
By the time the British people wake up. They will find they are paying taxes for services they neither own nor control. No longer run solely for their benefit. But firstly for profits of the company and then them.
The the Coalition have used deficit to circumvented democracy. To carry out this fire sale of services which neither advocated in the General Election. For both parties know that had they incorporated these policies in their manifestos the British public would not have voted for them. This is their real agenda and as Golem rightly points out in his headline. They betrayed democracy to carry it out.