Two points from someone who’s just returned from Crete for a holiday and had talked to the locals:

1. He said Piraeus harbour (the largest in Europe) has been sold off;

2. With military service still in operation, Greeks know how to handle guns if necessary.

I have no way of verifying these points, but thought them worth mentioning. Perhaps someone can confirm or deny them.

Shtove – the State is by no means monolithic, the Dept of Education and the Health Service have very different interests to the Treasury. Watch David Harvey on this.

I fear we are veering into ideologocial argument. You seem to fear the return of the monolithic ‘Socialist’ state. The whole point of Neoliberalism is that it uses the State to pursue its agenda of ‘free markets’. Neoliberalism doesn’t like democracy because it sees it as an impediment to ‘efficient markets’. The colour of your money is what counts in their system – your equal vote is unfair according to that doctrine. Neoliberals like a strong State to maintain markets – and that is where it begins to look more like Neoconservatism. And conservatives never liked democracy in the first place.

Thatcher talked a great deal about getting the state off people’s backs yet she centralised the state to a greater degree than ever before. Blair followed suit packing bureaucrats into the health service to monitor all the central targets. At the time it looked like heavy state socialism but it was in fact a continuation of Thatcher’s centralisation process.

There are other options than rigged free markets and state capitalism…

This links to the original article in The Nation (November 1990):
http://goo.gl/QIIE6

Do People tend to think Morgan Stanley is safe?

golem got to say all your earlier posts coming to pass in the mainstream media now as the sh…t hits the fan

Question is are they ignoring it because they are fools or devoid of remorse or compassion because they’re psychopaths. Have the dogs of war chosen to dress bespoke and pinstripe?

Thanks for your kind comment Hawkeye

Sorry David, meant to add that in the last post:
http://www.thenation.com/article/sls-big-banks-and-other-triumphs-capitalism?page=full

Although it’s dated 2008, the original I have lists it as first published November 19 1990 – soon after the S&L debacle – which could be seen as earlier tremors of our current financial earthquake.

But, instead of learning the lessons Greenspan et al went ahead with the plan to deregulate – using the S&L crisis as a rationale to give the rest of the banking sector its head!

Charles,

can you give me the citations of the works you are quoting and summarizing? I would dearly love to read them.