Austerity

TTIP Will Force All Europeans To Take Greece’s Medicine

July 17, 2015 John Hilary, www.politics.co.uk Educate! Austerity, Europe, Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, Greece, TTIP

By John Hilary in Politics - If the Greek crisis has shown how the institutions of the EU will stop at nothing to force through their own brand of capitalist discipline, TTIP is confirmation that we will all soon be tasting the same medicine. This week sees the 10th round of negotiations towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the controversial EU-US trade deal that threatens our jobs, our public services and our democracy itself. The talks come hot on the heels of last week's pro-TTIP vote in the European Parliament, where MEPs turned their backs on their electorate in favour of a deal that will benefit only big business and the banks. The European Parliament passed a resolution on July 8 giving the green light to the continuing TTIP negotiations, despite the fact that a record 2.3 million people from across the EU have now signed a European Citizens' Initiative rejecting the deal altogether.

Puerto Rican Plan To Make Workers Pay For The Island’s Debt Crisis

July 16, 2015 Rafael Azul, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Austerity, Debt, Puerto Rico, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Rafael Azul in Global Research - Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the US House of Representatives, Pedro Pierluisi of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is sponsoring a bill to grant Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection while it negotiates with its creditors and restructures its economy. The bill envisions a bankruptcy process for the island similar to that imposed on the city of Detroit in 2013. The House Judiciary Committee has sidelined Pierluisi’s bill. A statement issued jointly by the chairman of the committee, Bob Goodlate, and committee member Tom Marino, both Republicans, declared the general consensus on the committee to be that providing “Puerto Rico’s municipalities access to Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code would not by itself solve Puerto Rico’s problems, which are associated with underlying structural problems.”

Grexit Or Jubilee? How Greek Debt Can Be Annulled

July 16, 2015 Ellen Brown, www.ellenbrown.com Educate! Austerity, Banking, Greece, Politics

By Ellen Brown - Greece’s creditors have finally brought the country to its knees, forcing President Alexis Tsipras to agree to austerity and privatization measures more severe than those overwhelmingly rejected by popular vote a week earlier. No write-down of Greece’s debt was included in the deal, although the IMF has warned that the current debt is unsustainable. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis calls the deal “a new Versailles Treaty” and “the politics of humiliation.” Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos calls it a “coup d’état” done by “blackmailing the Greek prime minister with collapse of the banks and a complete haircut on deposits.” “Blackmail” is not too strong a word. The European Central Bank has turned off its liquidity tap for Greece’s banks, something all banks need, as explained earlier here. All banks are technically insolvent, lending money they don’t have. They don’t lend their deposits but create deposits when they make loans, as the Bank of England recently confirmed.

Understanding The Defeat Means Preparing A Victory

July 16, 2015 Transform Network, www.transform-network.net/ Educate! Austerity, Banking, Europe, Greece

By Transform Network - The Greek Dilemma and Us. Nine provisional considerations after both the popular Oxi and Syriza’s Yes to the Memorandum. This is being written after the vote in the Greek parliament and before the final decision of the Eurogroup. At the moment, everything is open, and we are certain of only a couple of things. Almost everything can change, but some things will remain true. The alternative of Grexit or a third Memorandum is not the same as reform or revolution; it is only a matter of the lack of alternatives dictated by the creditors. It corresponds to the relation of forces within Europe, which can at the moment only produce defeats. The blackmailing of Greece by the creditors leaves open two paths, both of which would be defeats. This is unavoidable.

Alexis Tsipras: Latest So-Called ‘Leftist’ To Sell-Out To The Bankers

July 16, 2015 Neil Clark, www.rt.com Educate! Austerity, Banking, Europe, Greece, Left

By Neil Clark in RT - For the so-called 'radical leftist' from Greece is only the latest in a long line of ‘radicals’ and 'leftists' to betray the people who had voted for them and cave into the demands of imperialist international finance capital. The only surprising thing about Alexis Tsipras' capitulation to the troika is that anyone should be surprised by it. In Britain, we had our own version of the Greek ‘crisis’ in 1931. And like today, it was a politician nominally of the ‘left,’ the Labour Party leader Ramsay Macdonald, who eventually sided with the bankers against ordinary working people. A ‘banker-led coup’ occurred that replaced the democratically elected Labour government with a new capital-approved National Government, which moved to introduce steep cuts in public spending and slashed unemployment pay.

Amid Protests Greece Passes Austerity Bailout

July 15, 2015 Helena Smith and Emma Graham-Harrison in Athens, Ben Quinn, Heather Stewart and Graeme Wearden Resist! Austerity, Bankers, European Union (EU), Finance and the Economy, Greece

By Helena Smith and Emma Graham-Harrison in Athens, Ben Quinn, Heather Stewart and Graeme Wearden for the Guardian - Five years into the worst crisis to hit their country in decades, Greek MPs voted by a large majority in the early hours of Thursday morning to accept draconian austerity as the price of further bailout funds but at great personal cost to prime minister Alexis Tsipras. In a vote that saw tensions soar in and outside parliament, the embattled leader’s radical leftist Syriza party suffered huge losses as 40 MPs revolted against the measures. A total of 229 lawmakers voted in favour of the internationally mandated measures, 64 against and six abstained.

SYRIZA Leaders Against The Coup

July 15, 2015 Syriza Central Committee Members, Translated Antonis Martalis, www.socialistworker.org Resist! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Syriza, Tsipras

By Syriza Central Committee Members, Translated by Antonis Martalis in Socialist Worker - The agreement with the "institutions" was the result of the blackmailing of the country through economic strangulation. It is a new Memorandum, with onerous and humiliating terms of supervision, disastrous for the country and our people. We realize that suffocating pressure was put on the Greek side in the negotiations, but nevertheless, we believe that the people's proud "no" vote in the referendum must forbid the government from succumbing to the extortionate ultimatums of the creditors. This agreement is not compatible with the ideas and the principles of the left. But most importantly, it is not compatible with the needs of the working class and the popular masses. This proposal cannot be accepted by the members and the cadres of SYRIZA. We ask for the Central Committee to convene immediately, and we call on the members, cadres and members of parliament of SYRIZA to stand for the unity of the party on the basis of our Congress decisions and our programmatic commitments.

Irresponsible German Banks Greater Threat To EU Than Greece

July 15, 2015 Μιχάλης Γιαννεσκής, www.failedevolution.blogspot.gr Educate! Austerity, Debt, Europe, Germany, Greece

By Μιχάλης Γιαννεσκής in Failed Evolution - Wolfgang Schäuble and the German leadership of the eurozone have good reasons to worry, maintaining an uncompromising attitude in the negotiations with Greece. But the repayment of Greek debt, which amounts to EUR 317 billion, is not one of the most important ones. The Greek debt is insignificant in comparison with the financial dynamite of the German (and other) banks, which in recent months gives more daily ignition signs. Only Deutsche Bank, the largest bank in Germany, is significantly exposed, holding dubious financial products known as "derivatives", worth 67 trillion euros. This amount is similar to the GDP of the entire world and 20 times greater than the GDP of Germany. Any comparison with the situation of the bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 would not be irrelevant.

German Production Is A Facade Built On Bad Loans…

July 15, 2015 Thad Beversdorf, www.zerohedge.com Educate! Austerity, Banking, Europe, Germany, Greece

By Thad Beversdorf in Zerohedge - Well Greece and China have certainly taken away the need for Russia and ISIS breaking news so there’s that….. How very nice that 2 of the top 3 global threats apparently provide the West some breathing room when we have other issues to deal with. Surely this isn’t just the media determining what should be our concern and what should not? But I digress…. I want to dig into the Greece situation to provide some clarity that I feel has been lacking in mainstream media. The Greece situation is a terrible tragedy for the Greek people. However, the real crux of the matter is out of their hands. Money that is not there cannot be used to pay down debt. And so while the referendum was symbolic it really didn’t change the course of history. The true discussion and debate has been between Germany and the ECB and this dissent between the two is becoming ever harder to cover up.

How Washington Helped Create Puerto Rico’s Staggering Debt Crisis

July 15, 2015 Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Austerity, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Puerto Rico

By Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson in The Washington Post - The sprawling pharmaceutical plants nestled in the hills of this town west of San Juan are testament to the unusual nature of this island’s struggling economy. The factories once employed a small army of highly trained workers that would be the envy of many other places in the United States. But those jobs — for engineers, chemists and others skilled in precision manufacturing — have been rapidly disappearing for largely the same reason they came here in the first place: policy decisions made in Washington. A generous series of tax breaks enacted by Congress shielded the profits of U.S. corporations operating here and helped transform Puerto Rico from a largely agrarian society to a manufacturing powerhouse. But what Washington gave, it also took away.

We Are All Greeks Now

July 14, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Poverty, Working Class

By Chris Hedges in Truth Dig - The poor and the working class in the United States know what it is to be Greek. They know underemployment and unemployment. They know life without a pension. They know existence on a few dollars a day. They know gas and electricity being turned off because of unpaid bills. They know the crippling weight of debt. They know being sick and unable to afford medical care. They know the state seizing their meager assets, a process known in the United States as “civil asset forfeiture,” which has permitted American police agencies to confiscate more than $3 billion in cash and property. They know the profound despair and abandonment that come when schools, libraries, neighborhood health clinics, day care services, roads, bridges, public buildings and assistance programs are neglected or closed. They know the financial elites’ hijacking of democratic institutions to impose widespread misery in the name of austerity. They, like the Greeks, know what it is to be abandoned.

How Vote Of Greek Inner Cabinet Led To Capitulation

July 14, 2015 Harry Lambert, www.newstatesman.com Educate! Austerity, Europe, Greece

By Harry Lambert in New Statesman - Varoufakis added: “This country must stop extending and pretending, we must stop taking on new loans pretending that we’ve solved the problem, when we haven’t; when we have made our debt even less sustainable on condition of further austerity that even further shrinks the economy; and shifts the burden further onto the have-nots, creating a humanitarian crisis.” In Varoufakis’s account, the Troika never genuinely negotiated during his five months as finance minister. He argued that Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza government was elected to renegotiate an austerity programme that had clearly failed; over the past five years it has put a quarter of Greeks out of work, and created the worst depression anywhere in the developed world since the 1930s. But he thinks that Greece’s creditors simply led him on.

Residents Fight Back Against Pittsburgh’s Privatized Water Authority

July 14, 2015 Aaron Miguel Cantú, www.truth-out.org Educate! Austerity, Human Rights, Pittsburgh, Privatization, Water

By Aaron Miguel Cantú in TruthOut - On June 24, dozens of Millvale residents have gathered in a community space to learn about a class-action lawsuit recently filed on their behalf against the PWSA, as well as the private water corporation Veolia Water North America, and the authority's collection agency, Jordan Tax Service. The group behind the lawsuit, Campaign to Reform PWSA, hopes to end what they see as the PWSA's coercive, slapdash attempts to shake down citizens for money. They also hope to alter the PWSA so that it is more transparent and responsive, because right now, they contend, the PWSA has become a smokescreen for France-based Veolia Environment, the largest private water company in the world.

The Problem Of Greece: A Tragedy And A Lie

July 14, 2015 John Pilger, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Austerity, Europe, Finance and the Economy, Greece

By John Pilger in CounterPunch - An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world. These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come.

Greece’s Capitulation Reveals Deep Conflicts Within Eurozone

July 13, 2015 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Educate! Austerity, European Union (EU), Finland, France, Germany, Greece

By Jerome Roos for ROAR - For the past two weeks, day-to-day life in Greece has been suspended on a political pendulum swinging violently from one extreme to the other. Between bank runs and mass mobilizations, heroic victories and inglorious defeats, financial blackmail and popular defiance, the future of this small country — and of the entire currency union of which it is a part — still hangs in the balance. It has been an emotional roller coaster throughout, with the collective heartbeat in Athens oscillating wildly between hope and desperation; between the tears of joy at Syntagma on the night of the referendum victory and the cries of agony resounding from the same square just days later, as prime minister Tsipras and his Syriza-led government prepared to capitulate. In the end, the overwhelming sensation is one of confusion and disbelief. What just happened? Was that real? The European Monetary Union is a mortally wounded animal preying blindly on its own tail. The Greek debt saga is merely the signal crisis of its eventual demise; even if it is eventually “resolved”, more intense conflicts are undoubtedly to come.

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