austerity » 99GetSmart

Thursday READ – 21 March 2013

Mar 212013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* BAILOUT, AUSTERITY, CONFISCATION: CYPRUS REVEALS THE 3rd PHASE OF THE GREAT BANK ROBBERY

By Scriptonite Daily

We’ve hit crisis and it is the public programmes who are taking the blame and the hit rather than the flagrant corruption, the waste of tax payer money, the tax evasion and the bailouts which got us here in the first place.

This is a stick-up

Yesterday, the people of Cyprus awoke to the news that up to 10% of the cash in their bank accounts was to be confiscated on Tuesday 19^th March, as part of an EU deal to bailout banks. This decision, signals the insidious next step of the Great Bank Robbery underway since the Financial Crisis of 2007/8. First Bailout, then Austerity and now direct Confiscation of wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

The Three Steps of the Great Bank Robbery

There have been three distinct phases to the great bank robbery of the banking and corporate class on the 99%.

The Bailout

In the bailout of 2009, the UK government had to guarantee funding to the banking sector, of 101% of GDP. That is, the UK diverted over £2trn of tax payer money (101% of GDP), equivalent to almost 3 times its entire annual budget, to prop up its failed banks. This is twenty years of NHS spending (£106.7bn a year), forty years of education spending (£48.2bn), or five hundred years of job seekers allowance (£4.9bn a year). All that money is going to prop up a derivates market which serves zero social purpose. It doesn’t build things, it doesn’t create things, it doesn’t do anything except repackage debts for fees and notional profits.

The US spent or guaranteed $12.8trn in its bailout package, which is equivalent to almost its entire annual GDP.

This rescue package for Banks, is absolutely unprecedented. If you take just the UK and US figures, ignoring everyone else, you’re at $15trn. How does this compare to other large scale expenditures? […]

READ @ http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/bailout-austerity-confiscation-cyprus-reveals-the-3rd-phase-of-the-great-bank-robbery/

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* ECB GIVES CYPRUS MARCH 25 LIQUIDITY ULTIMATUM

By Tyler Durden, zerohedge

As reported yesterday, Cyprus banks are now expected to reopen next Tuesday. We would boldly go ahead and take the under following overnight news that the ECB has once more escalated its political interventions (remember the lies about “apolitical, independent” Central Banks – good times…), and following a Reuters report yesterday that the ECB is prepared to let Cyprus go, the FT now has doubled down on the propaganda, reporting (in an article with no less than five authors) that the ECB has issued an ultimatum to Cyprus to agree to a bailout by Monday (which is a holiday), or the free liquidity ends.

“The European Central Bank raised the stakes in the Cyprus crisis on Thursday, telling Nicosia it had until Monday to agree a bailout with the EU and International Monetary Fund or it would cut off emergency liquidity provision to the country’s banks. The hardline stance from the ECB sets a clear deadline for Cyprus to agree to a plan after its parliament rejected a bailout negotiated at the weekend that would have taxed the deposits of account holders in the country’s banks.” Which means yet another weekend of ad hoc choices and spontaneous decisions awaits, only this time with a key non-Euro actor involved in the face of Russia, whose interest just in case there is any confusion, is to see Cyprus crushed, so it can swoop in later and “acquire” the assets on the cheap, or preferably free, while the local population welcome the second coming of the glorious Red Army with open arms, delighted to be free of European slavery. Well played Putin.

From the FT:

The ultimatum came as EU leaders maintained pressure on Nicosia to come up with a new plan on its own and Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev told a visiting European Commission delegation that a solution had to include Russian participation.

“It is now up to the Cypriot authorities to come up with proposals,” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chair of the committee of 17 eurozone finance ministers who negotiated the bailout, told the European Parliament on Thursday morning.

In a short statement the ECB said its 23-person governing council had agreed to maintain emergency liquidity provision to Cyprus’s banks until Monday. “Thereafter, Emergency Liquidity Assistance could only be considered if an EU-IMF programme is in place that would ensure the solvency of the concerned banks,” it said.

The country’s two biggest banks, Bank of Cyprus and Laiki, are believed to be reliant on Emergency Liquidity Assistance provided by the Central Bank of Cyprus. The ECB’s governing council can terminate ELA if it believes the banks receiving it are no longer solvent.

The move, however, raises the prospect of the ECB having to make good on its ultimatum on Monday, which could leave the banks unable to honour their obligations. Some analysts have speculated that the collapse of the banks could trigger a series of events that lead to Cyprus leaving the euro, with unpredictable consequences for the rest of the eurozone. […]

READ @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/ecb-gives-cyprus-march-25-liquidity-ultimatum

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* PRIVATIZING EUROPE: USING THE CRISIS TO ENTRENCH NEOLIBERALISM

Source: roarmag

Rather than solving Europe’s crisis, EU institutions are allowing corporate elites to further enrich themselves through a fire sale of state assets.

The text and infographics below are excerpted from a new working paper, Privatising Europe: Using the Crisis to Entrench Neoliberalism, which was just released by the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam:

The European Union is currently undergoing the biggest economic crisis since its foundation 20 years ago. Economic growth is collapsing: the eurozone economy contracted by 0.6% in the fourth quarter last year and this slump is set to continue. The euro crisis was incorrectly blamed on government spending, and the subsequent imposition of cuts and increased borrowing has resulted in growing national debts and rising unemployment. Government debts in crisis countries have predictably soared: the highest ratios of debt to GDP in the third quarter of 2012 were recorded in Greece (153%), Italy (127%), Portugal (120%) and Ireland (117%).

Europe’s member states have responded by implementing severe austerity programmes, making harsh cuts to crucial public services and welfare benefits. The measures mirror the controversial structural adjustment policies forced onto developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s, which discredited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The results, like their antecedents in the South, have punished the poorest the hardest, while the richest Europeans – including the banking elite that caused the financial crisis – have emerged unscathed or even richer than before.

Behind the immoral and adverse effects of unnecessary cuts though lies a much more systematic attempt by the European Commission and Central Bank (backed by the IMF) to deepen deregulation of Europe’s economy and privatise public assets. The dark irony is that an economic crisis that many proclaimed as the ‘death of neoliberalism’ has instead been used to entrench neoliberalism. This has been particularly evident in the EU’s crisis countries such as Greece and Portugal, but is true of all EU countries and is even embedded in the latest measures adopted by the European Commission and European Central Bank. […]

READ / CHARTS @ http://roarmag.org/2013/03/tni-infographics-european-fire-sale/

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* CONGRESS NEVER FIXED THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM … AND IS ABOUT TO MAKE IT EVEN WORSE

Source: Washington’s Blog

Empty chairs for empty suits

Out-of-control derivatives were largely responsible for the 2008 financial crisis … and still pose a massive threat to the economy.

Unchecked derivatives are so harmful to the economy that:

Warren Buffet called them “weapons of mass destruction”

A Nobel prize winning economist who helped develop derivatives pricing said some of them were so dangerous that they should be “blown up or burned”

Newsweek called them “The Monster that Ate Wall Street” after the financial crash

This is especially true since the big banks are manipulating the hundred trillion dollar derivatives market.

No, the big “financial reform” bill passed in the wake of the financial crisis didn’t fix anything. We noted last year:

No, there have not been any reforms or attempts to rein in derivatives, and the Dodd-Frank financial legislation was really just a p.r. stunt which didn’t really change anything.

Indeed, the derivatives “reform” legislation previously passed has probably actually weakened existing regulations, and the legislation was “probably written by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs“.

In fact:

Harold Bradley – who oversees almost $2 billion in assets as chief investment officer at the Kauffman Foundation – told the Reuters Global Exchanges and Trading Summit in New York that a cabal is preventing swap derivatives from being forced onto clearing exchanges:

There is no incentive from the moneyed interests in either Washington or New York to change it…I believe we are in a cabal. There are five or six players only who are engaged and dominant in this marketplace and apparently they own the regulatory apparatus. Everybody is afraid to regulate them.

*** Moreover, the big banks are still dumping huge amounts of their toxic derivatives on the taxpayer. And see this.

Indeed, the U.S. has agreed to backstop potential trillions in derivatives in the U.S. … and abroad.

If the big banks are manipulating the derivatives market, they could manipulate every other market on the planet. Given that the size of the derivatives market dwarfs the entire global economy, and given that derivatives are – by definition – not real assets, but paper abstractions loosely based upon real assets, manipulation of derivatives can drive asset prices up or down at whim. […]

READ @ http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/congress-never-fixed-the-financial-system-and-is-about-to-make-it-even-worse.html

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* WHAT IN THE WORLD IS A BITCOIN?

By Simon Black, Sovereign Man blog

[…] In most countries, a small tiny banking elite exercises total control over that nation’s money supply. And we’re just supposed to trust them to be good guys.

Yet central bankers around the world have conjured trillions of dollars out of thin air, debasing the money’s value. It’s a concept any six-year old can understand. If money grew on trees, it wouldn’t be worth very much.

This is one of the key reasons why people buy gold. You can’t just conjure gold out of thin air. It takes years of exploration and investment to pull it out of the ground.

In the information age, though, we have an alternative.

Bitcoin is digital currency. It doesn’t actually exist in our physical world… only in computers.

If this sounds esoteric and far-fetched, it’s not. The vast majority of our monetary system today is already digital. […]

READ @ http://www.sovereignman.com/finance/what-in-the-world-is-a-bitcoin-11234/

If you want to find out more about Bitcoin, this website provides a lot of great introductory information

Éric Toussaint: “Greece must unilaterally suspend repayment of its debt.”

Activism, CADTM, Greece, Interviews, SnakeArbusto, Submitted No Responses »

Mar 042013

Interview by Tassos Tsakiroglu, 99GetSmart

Translated by Snake Arbusto - Mike Krolikowski

“In Greece, the ruling class and the government are destroying democracy,” Eric Toussaint, professor of political science and militant, told the Greek Daily of Journalists. According to Eric Toussaint, only a determined government which has the support of the people will be able to find a solution to the debt problem. In his view, SYRIZA must not slide towards more moderate positions.

Éric Toussaint, professor of political science at the University of Liège, is president of the CADTM – the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt – and a member of the scientific council of ATTAC France. In 2007 he was appointed by Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa to that country’s internal and external public debt audit commission. He is known in Greece, where he has visited several times as part of his efforts toward liberating the countries of the South from the influence of international speculators and credit entities.

Clearly, all of Europe is in a deep crisis. The capitalist class and the European Commission, which operates on their behalf, have launched a terrible attack against Europe’s peoples. Greece is at the center of the crisis, but is also at the center of the resistance to that attack. Countries like Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, but also Romania and Bulgaria, etc. are also victims of that attack.

However, Greece is at the center because Greece represents the start of the new phase of the crisis, with the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding of May 2010, but also because of the resistance of the Greek people. I am aware of the last general strike of 20 February 2013, which was a very large one. Millions of people throughout Europe and on other continents are looking towards the forms the resistance is taking in Greece. We are doing whatever we can to bring about a European-wide cooperation between peoples’ movements in order to build a broad resistance that can turn the situation around. It is very difficult for the citizens of one country to face this attack alone.

- For the moment we are not seeing that kind of cooperation.

That is why we should be concerned. However, many attempts have been made to bring it about. For example, the European Trade Union Confederation is working at it, but that’s not nearly enough. |1| There will be demonstrations throughout Europe on 13 and 14 March, 2013. I hope that they will meet with success, but that is still not enough.

- In Greece, we are in a very precarious political situation, with many possible scenarios. We live under a government that is more and more authoritarian, that has succeeded in several legislative coups d’état, and that systematically resorts to repression of social movements. At the same time, it is possible that SYRIZA could become the leading party in the next elections. What is your view of the situation?

You are facing a major challenge. I agree with you that in Greece the ruling classes and the government are destroying democracy at several levels. They are not respecting the people’s vote; they have imposed Memoranda of Understanding and treaties with no recourse to the democratic process; they are undermining the legislative power; and they are seeking to destroy the ability of the working class to negotiate collectively. So you are facing a major challenge, and SYRIZA’s ability to provide a truly radical response to this attack is crucial. If SYRIZA adopts more moderate policies and proposals, the consequences could be enormous.

- Recently, many have said that SYRIZA is making an effort to adopt more moderate positions.

I hope that SYRIZA will radicalize its positions. If SYRIZA succeeds in becoming the next government, it is very important that they unilaterally suspend repayment of the debt, for example.

- You feel that that is realistic?

I feel that it is absolutely imperative that the balance of power be changed. If the government does not adopt a combative position and contents itself with saying ‘we want to renegotiate,’ it will be very difficult to impose a solution on the creditors that will be in the interest of the masses of the people. If you begin a negotiation without changing the balance of power, you cannot arrive at a really positive solution. That is why, first of all, there has to be a payment default, which will force the creditors to negotiations. And suspension of payments needs the support of the people, as was proven in the cases of Ecuador and Argentina. Only a determined government can do it.

- We are seeing a gradual elimination of common property with the privatization of health, education and most public-sector companies and services. What are the consequences of that?

There is a considerable deterioration of the living conditions of the majority of the population. It is clear that with these attacks, the capitalist class seeks to destroy what was built after the Second World War with the victory over Nazism and Fascism in Europe. This is a historic moment for the capitalist class, who see this crisis as an excellent opportunity to bring about their dream of doing away with all the achievements of the people.

- What is your message to the Greeks?

First, the pan-European social movement must be strengthened. That requires action in cooperation with the Greek people. The issue is not only solidarity with the Greek people. The challenge is to join our struggles together, since other peoples of Europe are also suffering. The circumstances may be different, but they are victims of the same attack. We cannot face this attack unless we unite all the strengths of the continent in order to achieve radical change. So my message is that we need to unite and that all our efforts must converge in that direction.

Wednesday READ – 27 February 2013

READ No Responses »

Feb 272013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* TROIKA DIRECTIONS

Source: youtube

… featuring the showroom dummies of the Troika, that are implementing the “Program” in countries like Greece, Ireland or Portugal : Poul Thomsen (IMF), Matthias Mors (EU) and Klaus Masuch (ECB).

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0OXDTnwWo8

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* GREECE: BLACKWATER MERCENARIES GUARDING GOVERNMENT AND OVERSEEING POLICE; COUP FEARED

Source: Salem-News

Blackwater mercenaries are currently overseeing the police in Greece as rumours of a coup abound. We understand the situation is extremely tense and that the mercenaries are there mainly to protect the Government and parliament should trouble break out either in the form of a revolution or counter-revolution. Already, a destabilisation plot involving the far-right and police has been uncovered.

Over the last 12 months or more Greece has seen wave after wave of mass demonstrations, riots, battles between police and protesters, armed attacks on Government premises, attacks by fascists (i.e. Golden Dawn ) on migrants, as well as, of course, the complete collapse of the economy. The Government has been beset by scandals (e.g. secret bank accounts in Switzerland) and journalists have been arrested. Most people now exist day by day via co-operatives ; workers are taking over the factories .

As we have said, there is a revolution taking place – a messy revolution . And it’s going to get messier, for the situation in Greece has now entered a critical phase – here is a summary (with further details below):

* Strategy of tension has already commenced
* Government is under siege and is protected by mercenaries
* Military coup is now talked of openly
* Insider warns that revolution (or counter-revolution) is imminent […]

READ @ http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february252013/greece-coup.php

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* GREEK GOVERNMENT MAKES EXTRAORDINARY AND UNDEMOCRATIC ATTACKS ON FREE SPEECH

By Yiannis Baboulias, NewStatesman

Greek pensioners demonstrate outside the Labour Ministry in Athens against pension cuts and the downgrading of the social health services. Photograph: Getty Images

There’s no element of surprise in the fact that things move faster when going downhill. In the wake of revelations such as the alleged torture of detained anarchists and the crackdown against activists in Skouries (Northern Greece), the Greek government and especially New Democracy has decided to use the “rule of law” in order to tighten its grip of the Greek media while at the same time winning back some of the voters they lost to the Golden Dawn.

Following PM Antonis Samaras’ own anti-immigrant rhetoric, 85 New Democracy MPs proposed a bill which would see only citizens of “Greek race” hired in police and military. The Golden Dawn was of course quick support it and to claim the proposed bill as “a major victory” for them. “The honourable uniform of the Greek armed officer will not be handed to the Albanians, the Asians and the Africans and the country’s armed forces will not come under the control of foreign spies,” the statement released by the party on Tuesday continued.

This follows weeks of extreme anti-immigrant and anti-leftist messages released by minor members of ND in social networks and interviews, their futile attempts to out-flank the far-right only strengthening the neo-nazi party’s current, that now sees six year-old kids brought in to it’s HQ’s for classes on “patriotic awareness”.

But this is only one side of the PR machine the coalition’s ruling party has set in motion: we’ve also had major moves against journalists and newspapers that speak out against their plans. Most striking example is the case of UNFOLLOW magazine, an independent left-wing publication, who saw its writers receive life threats after publishing an investigation on oil smuggling that appears to implicate Aegean oil and its owner Dimitris Melissanidis. A man who identified himself as Melissanidis threatened to “blow up” the reporter behind the article. The magazine went ahead and sued the oil magnate whose business ventures include contracts with the US Navy. But what is interesting here, is that after the magazine published the incident, Melissanidis requested the retraction of the article through his lawyer who none other than Failos Kranidiotis, personal friend and advisor to PM Antonis Samaras.[…]

READ @ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/greek-government-makes-extraordinary-and-undemocratic-attacks-free-speech

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* NEOLIBERALISM AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN GREECE

Source: leftunity

Panagiotis Sotiris, Vice-president of the University of the Aegean Teachers’ Union, explores the problems of Higher Education in Greece

Students at the gates of the Athens Polytechnic in 1973

First of all, I would like to express my deepest feelings of solidarity to Egitim Sen regarding the recent wave of arrests. Governments all over the world want to get rid of trade union resistances and attempt to criminalize trade union action. Solidarity and struggle are our weapons! Secondly, I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for this opportunity to share with you some thoughts and experiences regarding the neoliberal attack on Higher Education in Greece and the struggles against this attack, in a particular conjuncture marked by economic crisis, austerity and the imposition of draconian cuts as part of the loan agreements with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.[1]

Higher education in Greece has always been a highly politicized terrain. Until recently the sole responsibility of the State because of an explicit constitutional ban on private Higher Education, it has been considered one of the main forms of upwards social mobility and this can account for the social pressure to broaden access to Higher Education. Currently there are more than 75,000 posts to Universities and Technological Educational Institutes offered ever year. For the average Greek family entrance to a University Department, traditionally associated with obtaining better employment prospects, has always been a major goal. This can also explain the importance, in the public sphere, of events such as the university entrance exams or the high cost of extra tutorial courses a family is ready to bear in order to achieve entrance to a good University Department (Medical Schools, Law Schools, and Engineering Schools).

Struggle and protest has been an integral part of Greek Higher Education. The history of Greek Universities has been marked by the intervention, since the 1960s, of a highly politicized student movement,[2] which was highly esteemed because of its role in the struggle against the 1967-1974 military dictatorship (epitomized in the 1973 Occupation of the National Polytechnic School which was brutally suppressed by the military dictatorship). After the fall of the dictatorship, the student movement was a crucial aspect of a process of radicalization of Greek society, producing not only victorious movements (such as the 1979 movement of occupations that forced the government to repeal the law 815/78 – one of the few cases in the past 40 years that a law that had been passed was subsequently repealed because of protests) but also important elements of the general social and political culture. Most aspects of Greek post-1974 left-wing radicalism emerged from Universities. In the early 1980s a wave of extensive reforms – and especially the 1268 frame law introduced in 1982 – combined a modernizing, technocratic aspect with the introduction of a democratic system of extensive faculty and student participation in the administration of University students, which included high representation in University Senates and Department Assemblies and a particular weight of student vote in the election of Rectors, Deans and Department Heads. […]

READ @ http://leftunity.org/neoliberalism-and-higher-education-in-greece/

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* LITTLE CLARITY IN ITALIAN VOTE, ASIDE FROM ANGER

By Rachel Donaldio, NYTimes

Voting officials count the ballots at a polling station in Rome on Monday at the end of the second day of Italy’s national elections.

ROME — Italian voters delivered a rousing anti-austerity message and a strong rebuke to the existing political order in national elections on Monday, plunging the country into political paralysis after results failed to produce a clear winner.

Analysts said that the best-case scenario would be a shaky coalition government, which would once again expose Italy and the euro zone to turmoil if markets question its commitment to measures that have kept the budget deficit within a tolerable 3 percent of gross domestic product. News of the stalemate sent tremors through the financial world, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points.

Although analysts blamed the large protest vote on Italy’s political morass and troubled electoral system, the results were also seen as a rejection of the rapid deficit-reduction strategy set by the European Commission and European Central Bank — from a country too big to fail and too big to bail out. […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/europe/Italy-elections.html?_r=2&nl=afternoonupdate&adxnnl=1&emc=edit_au_20130225&adxnnlx=1361828247-EdcqEfkHx2W16mJS7ubjTQ&&pagewanted=all

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* AUSTERITY, ITALIAN STYLE

By Paul Krugman, NYTimes

Two months ago, when Mario Monti stepped down as Italy’s prime minister, The Economist opined that “The coming election campaign will be, above all, a test of the maturity and realism of Italian voters.” The mature, realistic action, presumably, would have been to return Mr. Monti — who was essentially imposed on Italy by its creditors — to office, this time with an actual democratic mandate.

Well, it’s not looking good. Mr. Monti’s party appears likely to come in fourth; not only is he running well behind the essentially comical Silvio Berlusconi, he’s running behind an actual comedian, Beppe Grillo, whose lack of a coherent platform hasn’t stopped him from becoming a powerful political force.

It’s an extraordinary prospect, and one that has sparked much commentary about Italian political culture. But without trying to defend the politics of bunga bunga, let me ask the obvious question: What good, exactly, has what currently passes for mature realism done in Italy or for that matter Europe as a whole? […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/opinion/krugman-austerity-italian-style.html?hp&_r=0

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* GREECE AND SPAIN HELPED POSTWAR GERMANY RECOVER. SPOT THE DIFFERENCE.

By Nick Dearden, Guardian

People exchanging food for tickets in 1923 Germany. ‘Many, including Keynes, argued that [reparations imposed on Germany following the Versailles treaty] led to the rise of the Nazis and the second world war.’ Photograph: Keystone/Corbis

Sixty years ago today, an agreement was reached in London to cancel half of postwar Germany’s debt. That cancellation, and the way it was done, was vital to the reconstruction of Europe from war. It stands in marked contrast to the suffering being inflicted on European people today in the name of debt.

Germany emerged from the second world war still owing debt that originated with the first world war: the reparations imposed on the country following the Versailles peace conference in 1919. Many, including John Maynard Keynes, argued that these unpayable debts and the economic policies they entailed led to the rise of the Nazis and the second world war.

By 1953, Germany also had debts based on reconstruction loans made immediately after the end of the second world war. Germany’s creditors included Greece and Spain, Pakistan and Egypt, as well as the US, UK and France. […]

READ @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/27/greece-spain-helped-germany-recover

Monday READ – 18 February 2013

READ No Responses »

Feb 182013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* A SHORT HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM (AND HOW WE CAN FIX IT)

By Jason Hickel

The attack on labour: real wages and productivity in the US, 1960-2000

As a university lecturer I often find that my students take today’s dominant economic ideology – namely, neoliberalism – for granted as natural and inevitable. This is not surprising given that most of them were born in the early 1990s, for neoliberalism is all that they have known. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher had to convince people that there was “no alternative” to neoliberalism. But today this assumption comes ready-made; it’s in the water, part of the common-sense furniture of everyday life, and generally accepted as given by the Right and Left alike. It has not always been this way, however. Neoliberalism has a specific history, and knowing that history is an important antidote to its hegemony, for it shows that the present order is not natural or inevitable, but rather that it is new, that it came from somewhere, and that it was designed by particular people with particular interests.

For most of the 20th century, the basic policies that comprise today’s standard economic ideology would have been rejected as absurd. Similar policies had been tried before with disastrous effects, and most economists had moved on to embrace Keynesian thought or some form of social democracy.As Susan George has put it, “The idea that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given less rather than more social protection – such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time.”

So how did things change? Where did neoliberalism come from? In the following paragraphs I offer a simple sketch of the historical trajectory that got us to where we are today. I demonstrate that neoliberal policy is directly responsible for declining economic growth and rapidly increasing rates of social inequality – both in the West and internationally – and I make a few suggestions for how to tackle these problems. […]

READ / CHARTS @ http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it

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* ATTIC AMNESIA: THE CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN CONTEXT OF THE GREEK CATASTROPHE

By Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

The catastrophic situation in Greece has disappeared from the headlines in recent weeks, replaced largely by lurid reports from Syria, where religious extremists aligned with al Qaeda are wreaking carnage with suicide bombers in the capital — to the cheers of America’s adamant anti-terrorists.

[Such hypocrisy doesn't mitigate the hideousness of the current Syrian regime, of course. Why, I'm so old, I can remember when Washington sent innocent people to Assad's torture chambers for a little outsourced "rigorous interrogation." But as the hapless ophthalmologist teetering atop the slagheap in Damascus is now learning, no good deed -- or evil favor -- done on behalf of the Potomac Poobahs ever goes unpunished. Then again, the aforesaid hideousness does not gainsay the unsavouriness of the other side in the vicious Syrian civil war. I strongly recommend that readers consult As'ad AbuKhalil -- the "Angry Arab" -- for a clear-eyed view of both these plagued houses.)

But even though it is now off the media radar, Greece continues to groan under the draconian conditions imposed on it by Europe's financial elite. As always, everywhere, the weakest are going to the wall: the poor, the workers, and the middle class are being brutally punished so that the rich and powerful can escape the slightest consequence for their own monumental greed, their own ravenous crimes.

Germany continues to lead the way in the harrowing of Greece, with the full backing of Washington and London, who keep chipping in with their stern condemnations of Greece's fecklessness and lack of moral fiber. But as Richard Clogg pointed out in the London Review of Books earlier this month, this righteous hectoring by the lords of the West completely ignores the true context of the Greek catastrophe -- and the atrocious modern history that lies behind it. […]

READ @ http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2266-attic-amnesia-the-conveniently-forgotten-context-of-the-greek-catastrophe.html

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* CATALAN SOVEREIGNTY: EMANCIPATION OR POLITICS AS USUAL?

By Carlos Delclos, RoarMag

As Catalan parties square off with the federal government to claim independence from Spain, the reality of the street remains one of deferred dreams.

On 23 January 2013, the Catalan Parliament approved a so-called Declaration of Sovereignty, thus supporting the calls for independence expressed in a massive protest organized by the Assemblea Nacional de Catalunya that brought Barcelona to a halt on 11 September 2012. In an uncharacteristically radical swing for a governing party that has been anything but friendly to popular demands since coming into office in November of 2011, the neoliberal Convergència i Unió party (CiU), with the support of left-wing parties favoring the right to self-determination, has opted for a policy of confrontation with the central Spanish government in Madrid.

Has the Catalan government finally caved in to the voices of the streets? Are they tuning in to some new, emancipatory potential in concepts such as sovereignty, independence or national identities? In order to answer these questions, let’s rewind a bit, see where they’re coming from and ask ourselves why it’s on the political agenda now.

The early days of the acampada at Plaza Catalunya were an astonishingly intense and productive period. To the thousands that came together to voice their indignation, the air smelled of hope, strength and solidarity (and a little bit of weed). To the kleptocratic elite throughout the Spanish state, it smelled of uncertainty, condemnation and revolt (and too much weed). As the multitude articulated their positions on an array of issues that had been sidelined for decades, new debates emerged and contrasting positions were respected in a spirit of autonomy. Yet there was one question which proved particularly difficult for the General Assembly to agree on: Catalonia’s right to self-determination.

After three days of debate, the General Assembly decided to include this basic democratic right in its demands, as had the General Assemblies of several other acampadas outside of Catalonia previously. And while the debate had been particularly draining for many of its participants, the movement came out of it stronger. Throughout the first year of the 15-M movement, Barcelona’s indignados were arguably the most radical in Spain, occupying entire housing blocks for evicted families, occupying public hospitals threatened with being closed down, and reaffirming the city’s nickname of la Rosa de Foc (“the Rose of Fire”) during the General Strike of 29 March 2011 that shut down the city. […]

READ @ http://roarmag.org/2013/01/catalan-sovereignty-emancipation-or-politics-as-usual/

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* SPANISH DOCTORS, NURSES MARCH AGAINST ‘PILLAGE’ OF PRIVATIZATION, AUSTERITY

By Jon Queally, CommonDreams

Protesters march as they shout slogans during a demonstration against regional government-imposed austerity plans to restructure and part-privatize the health care sector in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013. (Andres Kudacki/ Associated Press )

‘This is pillaging of our public services, looting something we’ve all contributed to through taxes, to give it to private companies to run for profit’

Thousands of nurses, doctors and other health professionals staged protests in sixteen cities across Spain on Sunday, decrying the nation’s continued austerity policies that they say are putting real lives at risk each passing day.

Specifically, the energized protests were aimed at thwarting a proposal by the ruling rightwing government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of privatizing portions of the country’s health care system.

“There is no study that shows that privatizing the management of hospitals leads to lower costs,” said Emilia Becares to Agence France Presse. The 46-year-old nurse brought her three sons, aged seven, eight and nine to the day’s protest. “This privatization hurts patients’ health care to benefit other interests.”

Civil servant Javier Tarabilla, 31, explained to the Associated Press that Spain’s welfare state was being systematically dismantled in order to be handed over to the private sector.

“This is pillaging of our public services, looting something we’ve all contributed to through taxes, to give it to private companies to run for profit,” he said.

As AFP reports, the Rajoy government has slashed “health spending by seven billion euros ($9.1 billion) a year as part of a campaign to squeeze 150 billion euros out of the crisis-racked country’s budget by 2014. […]

READ / PHOTOS @ http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/17-1

Power Cuts – A Daily Reality in Greece

Activism, DEN PLIRONO, Greece, Video 1 Response »

Feb 012013

Posted by Elena Tiniakou, 99GetSmart

The Greek Public Power Corporation is cutting the electricity supply to 30,000 homes and businesses each month due to unpaid bills.

VIDEO @ http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx4t3d_power-cuts-a-daily-reality-in-greece_news?start=4

Greece: Police invades Lelas Karagianni Squat in Athens

Activism, Global Occupation, Greece, Submitted, Video No Responses »

Jan 152013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

Today on January 15, 2013 in Athens: Lelas Karagiani is the 4th squat that has been attacked by the Greek rioting police in just few weeks (following the squats of Villa Amalias, ASOEE and Skaramagka) in an attempt to distract attention from the government-of-the-regime’s brutal economic policies that have forced people into absolute poverty and hunger.

VIDEO 1 @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4WYgtKurAw&feature=em-uploademail

VIDEO 2 @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0BVPQPusFk&feature=em-uploademail

READ more: Riot police raid 24-year-old Kypseli squat @ http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_15/01/2013_478545

The Greek Crisis: The Real Causes

Greece, Video No Responses »

Jan 072013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

The Greek Crisis : The Real Causes and possible solutions which are hidden from the public is a documentary that was produced in Greece at the end of 2011 and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZc6oD0WfW8&feature=share

Monday READ – 17 December 2012

READ No Responses »

Dec 172012

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* AUSTERITY EXPLAINED: A POCKET GUIDE TO THE EU CRISIS

By Collettivo Prezzemolo, ROARmag

By blaming the crisis on public spending, politicians’ and bankers’ only solution was to impose austerity. This has predictably worsened the debt crisis.

Excerpt via the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

“We are punishing the innocent through austerity, and we are rewarding the guilty because the banks are continuing to receive huge privileges and subsidies from our governments. That is why we must defeat this austerity treaty, and all the measures that come with it unless we want Europe to be retrograded to, shall we say, the 19th century.”

Susan George, President of the Board of the Transnational Institute, author of Whose Crisis, Whose Future?

Austerity measures have never worked, and have led growth to collapse across the EU. Greece witnessed its battered economy shrinking by 6.2% in the second quarter of 2012, and is forecast to enter its sixth straight year of recession in 2013. Austerity means less national income from taxation, reducing governments’ capacity to pay back spiraling debts, leading to even higher debts. […]

Download the full ‘EU Crisis Pocket Guide‘ via the Transnational Institute.

READ @ http://roarmag.org/2012/12/transnational-institute-eu-crisis-pocket-guide/

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* THE INSUFFERABLE HUMAN DRAMA OF EVICTIONS IN SPAIN

By Jerome Roos, ROARmag

With 500 families being evicted in Spain every day, foreclosures have become a source of great suffering. But luckily, there are still those who resist.

Throughout this crisis, there has always been a certain alienating quality to the pronouncements of European leaders and technocrats. Sometimes one is led to wonder if these people are actually talking about the same continent — or the same universe, for that matter. Just today, for instance, the European Central Bank announced that “the eurozone is starting to heal.” Indeed, the major weakness the central bankers could detect from the commanding heights of their glass-and-steel tower in downtown Frankfurt was “falling bank profits.”

But this morning, huddled together with activists and independent journalists in a small apartment in Madrid, the eurozone seemed to be far from healing. Together with Santiago Carrión from the Associated Whistleblowing Press, we were there because the Platform for those Affected by their Mortgage (PAH), which runs the Stop Desahucios (Stop Evictions) campaign, had called on the city’s indignados to protect Juana Madrid and her two daughters of 21 and 17, who were about to be evicted from their humble home in the poor neighborhood of Orcasur. The atmosphere, of course, was tense.

The living room was full of people, most of them photographers, while outside the first chants of activists could be heard as people prepared to physically block the entrance to the apartment. Nervously dragging on her cigarette, Juana’s baggy and dark-ringed eyes said it all: this was a woman on the verge of a breakdown. Her voice was calm and subdued, but her facial expression exuded despair. “We have nowhere to go,” Juana’s 21-year-old daughter Isa told us in the kitchen. “If they evict us today we will end up on the street tonight.”

Sadly, the story of Juana and her daughters is by no means an exception. Ever since the start of the crisis in late 2008, over 350.000 families have been evicted from their homes. According to government figures, Spain currently faces a staggering wave of 500 evictions per day — 150 of them in Madrid alone. The vast majority of these involve families whose main breadwinner lost his or her job in the recession and who have inadvertently fallen behind on their mortgage payments to the bank. At 25.02%, Spain’s unemployment rate is the highest in the developed world, higher even than in the U.S. at the peak of the Great Depression. […]

READ @ http://roarmag.org/2012/12/spain-evictions-suicide-bankia-rajoy/

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* POVERTY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION RISING IN GREECE

By Leonidas Oikonomakis, ROARmag

[…] In Greece, we know well who is paying for the crisis. A good question to ask would be: who gains? Apart from Greece’s private creditors, could it be the multinational corporations, which are now swooping in to benefit from the country’s dramatically reduced labor rights and privatization schemes? Again, I will give you an example that I recently read in the press. Kostis Hatzidakis, the Minister of Development, announced proudly that Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch multinational consumer goods company, will from now on produce 110 of its products that it used to produce abroad, in Greece. He also mentioned that this will boost employment and that his government wants to create a business-friendly environment in Greece in order to attract “investments” for “development”.

What Hatzidakis did not mention are the conditions under which the future employees of Unilever — and whatever other multinational decides to “invest” in Greece bringing its production facilities or, maybe, buying its state owned enterprises — will have to work. Let me present them to you: Unilever’s Greek employees will be paid slave salaries (586 euros is the minimum wage today, down from 751 euros before the crisis, while for young workers under the age of 25 it stands at 510 euros: below the poverty threshold!). They will only have minimum labor rights. They will have to work 6 and maybe 7 days a week. They will only have a minimum of 11 hours rest before getting back to work (from 13 that it was so far). And they will be extremely easy to fire without compensation — as the government effectively rid itself of pesky labor rights. […]

READ @ http://roarmag.org/2012/12/poverty-and-social-exclusion-rising-in-greece/

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* SPECIAL REPORT: GREECE’S TRIANGLE OF POWER

By Stephen Grey and Dina Kyrakidou, Reuters

In late 2011 the Greek finance minister made an impassioned plea for help to rescue his country from financial ruin.

“We need a national collective effort: all of us have to carry the burden together,” announced Evangelos Venizelos, who has since become leader of the socialist party PASOK. “We need something that will be fair and socially acceptable.”

It was meant to be a call to arms; it ended up highlighting a key weakness in Greece‘s attempts to reform.

Venizelos’ idea was a new tax on property, levied via electricity bills to make it hard to dodge. The public were furious and the press echoed the outrage, labeling the tax ‘haratsi’ after a hated levy the Ottomans once imposed on Greeks. The name stuck and George Papandreou, then prime minister, felt compelled to plead with voters: “Let’s all lose something so that we don’t lose everything.”

But not everyone would lose under the tax. Two months ago an electricity industry insider revealed that some of the biggest businesses in the land, including media groups, were paying less than half the full rate, or not paying the tax at all. Nikos Fotopoulos, a union leader at power company PPC, claimed they had been given exemptions. […]

READ @ http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/17/us-greece-media-idUKBRE8BG0CF20121217

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* TAIBBI, SPITZER FUME OVER HSBC SETTLEMENT

Source: Eliot Spitzer’s Viewpoint

VIDEO @ http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/matt-taibbi-on-hsbc-settlement-i-think-even-people-on-wall-street-were-blown-away-by-the-result/

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* NOAM CHOMSKY: US INTELLECTUAL CLASS IS MORALLY DEGENERATE

By Noam Chomsky and Eric Baily, InformationClearingHouse

Eric Bailey: The last four years have seen significant changes in American federal policy in regards to human rights. One of the few examples of cooperation between the Democratic and Republican parties over the last four years has been the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. This bill has given the United States military the power to arrest American citizens, indefinitely, without charge, trial, or any other form of due process of law and the Obama administration has and continues to fight a legal battle in federal court to prevent that law from being declared unconstitutional. Obama authorized the assassination of three American citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, admittedly all members of Al Qaeda — all without judicial review.

Additionally, the Guantanamo Bay prison remains open, the Patriot Act has been extended and the TSA has expanded at breakneck speeds. What is your take on America’s human rights record over the past four years and can you contrast Obama’s policies with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush?

Noam Chomsky: Obama’s policies have been approximately the same as Bush’s, though there have been some slight differences, but that’s not a great surprise. The Democrats supported Bush’s policies. There were some objections on mostly partisan grounds, but for the most part, they supported his policies and it’s not surprising that they have continued to do so. In some respects Obama has gone even beyond Bush. The NDAA, which you mentioned, was not initiated by Obama (when it passed Congress, he said he didn’t approve of it and wouldn’t implement it), but he nevertheless did sign it into law and did not veto it. It was pushed through by hawks, including Joe Lieberman and others.

In fact, there hasn’t been that much of a change. The worst part of the NDAA is that it codified — or put into law — what had already been a regular practice. The practices hadn’t been significantly different. The one part that received public attention is what you mentioned, the part that permits the indefinite detention of American citizens, but why permit the indefinite detention of anybody? It’s a gross violation of fundamental human rights and civil law, going all the way back to the Magna Carta in the 13th century, so it’s a very severe attack on elementary civil rights, both under Bush and under Obama. It’s bipartisan! […]

READ @ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33336.htm

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* ANOTHER GOLDMAN CREATURE GIVEN VITAL GOVERNMENT POST

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Big news yesterday in the United Kingdom, where the citizenry surveyed its domestic banking system and discovered that it couldn’t find a single person trustworthy enough to put in the top job at the Bank of England. So they went to Canada and stole that country’s central banker, Mark Carney, who just happens to be a former Goldman, Sachs executive – he was once Goldman’s managing director of investment banking.

Carney’s appointment may be seen as an admission that the British banking sector is now so tainted, only an outsider can be trusted to govern them. Almost all of the major English banks have been dinged by ugly scandals. The LIBOR mess, in which banks have been caught messing around with global interest rates for a variety of sordid reasons, has most infamously implicated Barclays, but the Royal Bank of Scotland is also a cooperator in those investigations.[…]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/another-goldman-creature-given-vital-government-post-20121206

GREECE: The Austerity “Cure” is a Humanitarian Catastrophe

Greece, StopCartel TV transcripts 2 Responses »

Nov 292012

By greydogg and SnakeArbusto, 99GetSmart

StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece on Monday and Thursday @ 6 pm Athens time. The following post is a loose transcript of the 26 November 2012 broadcast.

- From Brussels:

The IMF wants Eurozone finance ministers to agree to a cut in Greece’s debt by €40 billion, but German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble remains opposed to further cuts to the country’s ‘debts.’

After months of political theater, a green light is expected for the next dose of money to recapitalize the Greek banks. The funds will be swallowed up by the black hole of the Greek banks – aiding a clear and continuous theft of public funds.

The Troika’s manufactured economic crises and its prescribed ‘cure’ of austerity have plunged Greek society into a humanitarian catastrophe. The so-called third Memorandum (M3) demands further austerity measures and the mass privatization of public assets, forcing Greek citizens into an unsustainable position of paying the odious debt of the banks with their lives.

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Predictions and polls:

- Citigroup predicts that there is more than a 60% probability that Greece will exit the Eurozone within 12-18 months, even if the Greek banks get the next dose of money.

- Analyst Ben May from Capital Economics, one of the biggest finance companies in the world, predicts that Greece will exit the euro in 2013. May stated that the Greek government and representatives from the Troika will agree to the last dose of money, but they are not in agreement over the sustainability of the Greek debt. Germany is going to refuse to agree to a reconstruction of the Greek debt, May said.

- From Reuters: A new Gallup poll indicates that SYRIZA has a 26% approval rating, with New Democracy at 21.5% and the neo-Fascist party Golden Dawn at 13.5%.

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- Economic analysts are discussing the next storm of wage cuts, dismissals and unemployment that will plunge Greece into an employment status resembling feudalism.

The Troika’s and the Greek government-of-the-regime’s recently approved Memorandum 3 contains a complete reversal of the labor laws that were developed in Greece in the last few decades. M3 subverts collective bargaining and violently reduces wages to €586 per month, temporarily, until wages will decrease again in early April to a new minimum wage. As Chris Rock famously stated, “You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It’s like, ‘Hey, if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.’”

Just one week after the passage of M3, large, profitable companies were quick to exploit workers by inviting employees, regardless of any current contracts, to renegotiate their monthly earnings under the threat of being laid off if they do not accept decreased wages and increased working hours.

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- There is a HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE IN GREECE.

Hundreds of Greek children are fainting in class daily from hunger. Recently, in Thessaloniki, a student at the Third Pines Elementary School fainted in class and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, unconscious.

Greek citizens are appealing to their municipalities to provide at least one meal a day for young students, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

What kind of government creates policies that illegally funnel public funds and assets into the pockets of the already wealthy by starving children?

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- For the third straight week, public employees are occupying town halls and municipal buildings in regions all over Greece to oppose further wage cuts and layoffs.

In Heraklion, Chania and Aghios Nikolaos on the island of Crete, public employees have occupied administrative buildings and have gone on strike for eight consecutive days. ADEDY (the Civil Servants’ Confederation) is encouraging all employees to participate in demonstrations.

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- The Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Nikos Pantelis forwarded the so-called Lagarde list to the Greek Parliament through the Minister of Justice, Antonis Roupakiotis, to investigate potential criminal liability. Meanwhile, in the Greek courts, members of the big cartels whose names are on the list are fighting to retain their anonymity and immunity for their crimes.

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- From the Organization Doctors of the World – Greek branch:

We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe every day in the social medical clinics. All over Greece, doctors and patients are experiencing the hardest winter in decades. Doctors see daily queues of people crowding outside polyclinics in Athens, Perama, Thessaloniki, Patras and Chania. Healthcare in Greece cannot be obtained without being employed. [ed. note: Unemployment stands at over 25% on Greece]

Everyday people, pensioners and the unemployed have put their inhibitions aside to seek help. The ‘austerity era’ has changed people, who have pushed aside their dignity in order to get the medical care and medicines they need to survive. From healthcare to food, there is no longer shame in seeking help. Times have changed.

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- Last weekend in Athens, about 70 people organized themselves to help ease the humanitarian catastrophe surrounding them. They cooked meals in their homes and brought the food to a local park to feed the hungry. About 90 grateful people came to eat at the free, all-volunteer open-air kitchen.

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- Thousands of homes all over Greece continue to have their electricity cut off every day. Presently, there are hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity. The mass media refuse to report on the issue at all.

Tensions arose outside the central office of the electricity corporation in the city of Patras. Many citizens gathered outside the central office of the electricity corporation, shouting angrily about how ruthlessly the electricity is cut off in the homes of poor people.

People are unable to pay their bills due to the high unemployment rate, wage and pension cuts and government-of-the-regime extortion via ‘emergency taxes’ which are attached to utility bills.

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- Citizens in the southern suburbs of Athens reacted strongly to a group of 20-30 Golden Dawn members who appeared in their neighborhood, presumably to show their presence and gain support from the locals.

People of all ages were unafraid, despite the daily violence perpetrated by Golden Dawn members. The locals closely followed the neo-Nazi march, shouting the slogan, “Fascism – Never Again!” until Golden Dawn members dispersed and left the town.

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- In Brussels, the 17-member Eurogroup met for the third time in two weeks to discuss the “Greek issue.” After exiting the summit, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici made statements to the press.

“Yesterday, we made strong progress, which means that tomorrow, Europeans should have a common position. We are very close to a solution.”

Moscovici said that Greece has fulfilled its obligations and promises. The program submitted to the Eurogroup is credible and Greece has made material efforts. All the parameters of the issues are known to everyone and all the issues are on the table. Moscovici added that the Eurogroup would leave the summit with an agreement.

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ONGOING FUNDRAISER FOR StopCartel Livestream: http://stopcarteltv.chipin.com/stopcarteltv

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StopCartel TV broadcasts live from Athens, Greece on Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm Athens time @ http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr

October 13 against debt – International communication

Submitted Article No Responses »

Oct 192012

By SnakeArbusto, 99GetSmart

To the financial institutions of the world, we have only one thing to say: we owe you NOTHING!

To our friends, families, our communities, to humanity and to the natural world that makes our lives possible, we owe you everything.

To the people of the world, we say: join the resistance, you have nothing to lose but your debts.

On O13, in the context of the worlwide “globalnoise” mobilisation, and within the Global Week of Action against Debt, we will mobilise against debt in several cities of the world: Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, Paris, New York…

The state response to the financial and economic crisis is the same everywhere: cuts in expenditure and austerity measures under the pretext of reducing deficits and the repayment of a public debt which is the direct outcome of decades of neoliberal policies. The same neoliberal policies that have plundered economic and natural resources and exploited human lifes in Latin America, Asia and Africa for decades, are now also being imposed on the people of Europe and North America.

Governments in the service of finance are using this pretext to further reduce social spending, lower wages and pensions, privatize public utility and goods, dismantle social benefits and deregulate labour laws, and increase taxes on the majority, while social and tax giveaways are generalized for the big companies and the highest income households, the rich, the 1%.

The campaign to subdue the world to public and private debt is a calculated attack on the very possibility of democracy. It is an assault on our homes, our families, our social services and benefits, our communities and on the planet’s fragile eco-systems—all of which are being destroyed by endless production to pay back creditors, who have done nothing to hog the wealth they demand we make for them.

Faced with such coordinated attacks on our social gains, resistance is getting organized around the world, there are national general strikes and the ‘indignados’ movements are increasingly active. In Iceland, the people refused to pay the Icesave debt to the UK and the Netherlands. In Ecuador the people pushed the government into a Debt Audit that saved the country millions of dollars in debt payments. In Argentina, Brasil, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Mali, Burkina Faso, Indonesia or the Philipines, among many other countries, people have been resisting and opposing debt for decades. In Spain, and in Portugal, from the 15th of September, enormous demonstrations against debt have gathered more than 1 million people, and a movement of major scale is growing around the surrounding of the Parliament in Madrid to demand a Constituent process.

We from the Occupy / Real Democracy Now / 15M / AntiDebt movement call for public and private debt resistance and refusal/repudiation. Debt resistance includes: fighting for free public education, free healthcare, defending foreclosed homes, demanding higher wages and providing mutual aid. But also a first step toward building a new economy, based on the principles of equality, solidarity and cooperation, and not greed, accumulation and competition.

In Europe as in Egypt and Tunisia, learning from our colleagues in Latin America, South Saharan Africa and Asia, initiatives for a citizens’ audit of public debt analyze how much of the public debt is illegitimate, odious or unsustainable, and must therefore be cancelled. Paying such creditors means stealing what rightfully belongs to the population and payments will continue to be the cause of college and hospital closures, wage cuts, pension cuts, and so on and on. And the debt feeds the debt.

We Don’t Owe, So We Won’t Pay! Were Are Not a Loan. Bad laws allowed all this debt. Let’s rewrite them together.

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