Landslide

The libratory Fidesz party has stirred ConHome readers - usually so Atlantic Bridgable - to a fervour of second campism; seeing the machinations of the EU, and for some, the EU's hidden puppet-masters in the US (wrong hymn-sheet shurely?) behind recent attacks on Orban's new constitution.

D.Singh comments: "So all the shouting in the international media boils down to this. The banking powers that collaborate with the World Bank and the IMF are worried about Hungarian Premier Orbán's refusal to bow to them and his aim to strengthen his country's economy, give people work, build up their shattered self-confidence and finally bring some modicum of justice to a people murdered, tortured and crushed under Communism ..."

Scenario familiar at all, you know, in recent European history? A humiliated population, economic chaos, secretive banking powers, high unemployment, fear of Communism ...

"The demonstrators you see on the news are former communists who fear prosecution for torturing and murdering people"

To which Fourth Republic replies:  "Really? Unlike you, I was present at the demonstration the day Orban celebrated his new constitution. I, like many there, wasn't even born in 1989. It is therefore highly unlikely that I am a "former communist", much less someone fearing "prosecution for torturing and murdering people'."

"I guess many of you reading this are anti-EU, fair enough. But our situation is different to yours. Imagine a Labour regime pledging to greatly restrict your media freedom, your economic freedom (I notice the writer of this piece omitted Orban's nationalisation of the private pension system) and finally judicial independence (the constitutional court is now full of his placemen)."

"You'd stand by and let it happen?"

Near on half of Hungary's working age population has no work. "By the time the financial crisis began, two-thirds of mortgage loans in Hungary were denominated in Swiss francs" (of all things!) and now the whole economy is cracking up.

But what are Fidesz' priorities?

Getting control over as many areas of how people live their lives as possible, including forcing women to have babies they can't look after, and cutting down on freedom of belief. The Wild Hunt has more information on that, see here. BTL Eric Scott portrays a dire view:

"The damning thing about all this is that their new constitution, if I understand it rightly, requires essentially every vote in the future to pass with a super-majority, from ratifying a new constitution to appointing a judge. Even if the populace puts the Socialists back into power next time, unless they also give them a super-majority - unlikely, to say the least - it will be impossible for the Socialists to do anything to fix the problems Fidesz has created. The bureaucracy will remain staffed by Fidesz operatives, which means that even if the Socialists are "in power," on the day to day level, Fidesz will still be running the country."

"And Fidesz didn't campaign on any of this, of course. They were elected over the Socialists because of the bad state of the economy. [And this despite the fact that Fidesz were in power during some of the time that the ground was laid for the current mess.] The idea of radically overturning the entire social order of the state was never mentioned... Until they had their supermajority, and could safely ignore the people who had elected them..."

Same old same old.

Occupational Therapy

It seems the authorities are tiring of their recent 'give em enough rope' approach to #occupy. In the meantime, Michael Albert has been using the breathing space productively to go visit people involved in the movement all across Europe. Here are his conclusions. Ta, P2P.

EU Finance: the Emperor’s New Haircut

The latest in the great Eurozone Crisis Saga.

And what is a haircut, you may ask?

"Gary Jenkins, head of fixed income at Evolution securities, outlined what a haircut would mean for Greek bond holders. ‘It involves a "voluntary" bond exchange with a nominal discount of 50% on notional debt held by private sector holders with €30 billion provided by the eurozone member states for credit enhancements, and it aims to reduce Greek debt to 120% by the end of the decade.’" Citywire.

Sounds like more of the usual paper-shuffling and prestidigitation to me.

How about recapitalisation?

"To what extent taxpayers have to plug the gap – and whether state aid rules then kick in – could depend on the timescale banks are given to raise the capital. Huertas told Newsnight that the EFSF would be there as a "last resort". He said: "The plan is for banks to access public markets first," before turning to nation states for support – and then the EFSF." Graun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ….

Maybe commenter Moggoid sums it up better, over at the Slog: “I stumbled upon this article – tying to find out what “recapitalisation of banks” actually means. And I gather it means that somewhere large amounts of money are found and then just given to the bank – Is that right?”

The banks love the deal, which should make anyone who’s not a banker suspicious. The much-courted and fawned over “Markets”* love the deal - but then they loved the glistening 2000s bubble that preceded the 2008 Crash, didn’t they. So what do they know.


*The "Markets" - basically a bunch of saddoes with nothing better to do than play Crackberry with large numbers and screw the rest of us.

Neither Left nor Right but Realism

So says Prof Steve Keen in addressing Occupy Sydney's last public event before the attempted suppression of dissent there. See video here. Unlike many other countries, Oz protesters were actually at the national Reserve Bank of Australia. Some of the usual suspects have suggested that the network of Central Reserve Banks is the most appropriate focus for blame, and reformation, in connection with the ongoing global crisis - now termed the "late-2000s financial crisis" by Wikipedia - yes, this Crisis keeps on growing bigger and deeper!

"[P]rotesters have joined Harvard law professor and Creative Commons board member Lawrence Lessig's call for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution made at a September 24–25, 2011 conference co-chaired by the Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator, in Lessig's October 5 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It, and at the Occupy protest in Washington, DC ..." Wikipedia entry on the Occupy Movement, 23/10/11.

"Vas Littlecrow, a tea party die-hard since the movement’s early days, let the Internet noise about Occupy Wall Street wash over her, leaving her alternately annoyed and intrigued. She went on Google Plus to debate the Occupiers, “and they started saying things that clicked with me,” she said. “This was deja vu with how I got into the tea party” ..." Read more at the Washington Post article "For Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, some Common Ground."

This is not a simplistic Left/Right issue, however much some of our leaders, with their customary divide and rule strategy, might like to make us believe it.

Amabhulu Anyama Asenzeli Iworry

"How can you claim to be a private citizen?” he fumed. “There is nothing like that. South Africa is ruled by the ANC. We all belong to the ANC, like it or not!” Comrade Mayor, South Africa 2011.

"There is something wrong that is happening in this country. That is not what we struggled for.” Archbishop Tutu, 2009.

The Archbishop's latest run-in with the ANC State, over the Dalai Lama being refused entry to South Africa, ought to have drawn quite a bit of unwanted high profile attention to that country's growing deficit in the values of freedom that the self-styled "Rainbow Nation" was once claimed to uphold.

When are those in the international community who supported the fight against Apartheid going to wake up to what's really being done in the ANC State now. As Pedro Alexis Tabensky wrote in February this year: "The poor are steadily getting angrier and they are preparing for something. They have relatively little to lose, except the hope that drives their movements, informed predominantly by desire for justice for those who are systematically dehumanized in our country today."

Toussaint Losier in a detailed piece from "Left Turn" further explains: "[O]nce elected, the ANC government failed to live up to its campaign promises, as commitments to neoliberal trade agreements and the paying-off of apartheid-era debt quickly overruled its social democratic proposals. In 1996, the ANC reiterated earlier agreements with South African capital and the International Monetary Fund by formally adopting the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy as its economic program."

"Reflecting a neoliberal approach to development, GEAR has promoted market deregulation, fiscal discipline, wage restraints, and the privatization of government services. In place of redistributive policies, GEAR relies on foreign direct investment and integration into the world market to ‘trickle down’ benefits to the poor and working class. As a result, the government has largely relied on bank-financing and private construction firms to meet the vast housing backlog."

With the new South Africa looking like a very scary chimaera of totalitarianism and neo-liberalism, little wonder then that it also presents naturally fertile ground for the blossoming #occupy global movement.

"We will occupy Grahamstown in the name of freedom. We insist that all people have the right to organise themselves according to their own free choices. We denounce the ANC for the murder of Andries Tatane and all the others. We denounce the ANC for the repression of the Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Landless People's Movement, the Anti-Eviction Campaign and all the others. We denounce the ANC for their attempts to censor the media. We denounce the ANC for continuing to claim that the movements of the poor are a Third Force. The ANC insult us by making us live like pigs and excluding us from all decision making and then, when we rebel, they insult us again by saying that it must be a white academic that is making us rebel. The ANC is incapable of understanding that poor black people can, like all other people, think for ourselves. The ANC is incapable of understanding that they do not and have never had a monopoly on struggle. The ANC is incapable of understanding that they are the real counter-revolutionaries."

From the Unemployed People's Movement Press Statement, 13th October 2011
@ Abahlali baseMjondolo

Hiding from Reality

Three weeks ago over a thousand environmental protesters were arrested outside the White House with barely a squeak from the MSM. Last week some British (so-called) newspapers pulled news of unrest in Rome off their pages, leaving here only the Daily Mirror to report actual news, afaics. This week the corporate media blackout of the Wall Street protests in the USA continues.

Some timely reportage at #occupywallstreet, amongst others.

Paul Harris' Grauniad blog gives some background info on the Wall St protests.

HT: Erich Vieth at Dangerous Intersection.

No Rest for the Wicked

Having already had their holidays delayed by one emergency session, on Wednesday July 20th, for a statement by the Prime Minister on the News of the World Hackgate Scandal, followed by lengthy discussion, Westminster politicians faced further mutterings as both European and North American economies experienced ever worsening crisis.

This then culminated in an emergency recall of both Houses today to shake heads over 4 days of civil disorder in cities across England, and yes, a statement from the Chancellor on the economy.

As Lord Knight put it in Lords of the Blog: "The Government faces a big challenge. It has to manage two crises. One of economic growth and the other of social breakdown. As the Prime Minister said in his statement, [get this!] “crime has a context, and we must not shy away from it”..."

“We can argue about whether some of the measures in response to the economic crisis will exacerbate the social crisis, but most important is the Government putting an absolute priority on tackling the twin challenges"

"Parliamentary time is limited between now and next May when the current session finishes. This unprecedented set of economic and social problems are such that I don’t think Parliament has the luxury of being able to legislate and debate anything else of substance."

In the current state of affairs we can only take bets as to whether hard-done-by parliamentarians will be able to spend the rest of their holidays in relative tranquillity, or no.

As for Eurocrats, they aren't having it much easier either, because "the Socialists & Democrats party bloc in the European Parliament has called for MEPs to be recalled from the summer recess to tackle the eurozone crisis."

Hey ho. 

Economic Senility

Way back on July 13^th economist Zanny Minton Beddoes suggested on Radio 4’s Today programme that although Italy had coped thus far with its large debt, that if (if!) problems occurred then the ECB could step in and start buying their bonds, that in turn being the likely start of federalising the debt.

And sure enough, as Berlusconi froths about the ‘locusts of international speculation’ (shades of the interwar era?) the West’s senile economies are only kept going by increasingly large doses of their chosen narcotics.

Over here Federal Europe may be beckoning. Declan Ganley will be pleased.

Dr Mountebank's Perpetual Motion Machine

Rob Dietz at think-tank CASSE highlights the work of a top economist whose "work has been highly influential among elite political and corporate leaders. Ronald Reagan is a prominent example. President Reagan once famously said, “There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.” That’s a close paraphrasing of Dr. Mountebank’s conclusion to his magnum opus, Infinity and Beyond: The Magical Triumph of Economics over Physics ..."

Read the full hagiography here.

Can Banking Be Good?

With the end of the tax on bankers bonuses, government borrowing this April the worst on record and small business still being held to ransom by the financial sector, NEF and Compass are holding a Good Banking Summit today, in a perhaps forlorn attempt to inject some realism into the discourse. There don't seem to be any details online, but Ann Pettifor at Debtonation blog is one of the speakers, doing a bit of last minute publicity.

Loans & Lies: Bankers and Politicians Out of Touch

Back in the day the local bank manager was a key figure. Someone who knew his patch and the people and businesses in it, who would be a good risk and who wouldn't. Nowadays that's all out of the window, as David Boyle explains:

"Neither the politicians nor the bankers will admit it - in fact they collude in this - but the big banks are no longer able to lend effectively to the SME sector. It isn't that they won't, it is that they have consolidated beyond the point where they can. They have no systems, no local managers, which would allow them to. But until the politicians accept this, and the bankers admit it - which they do privately - we can't move on ..."

"A friend of mine who has a small business approached their bank for a loan last week. They were told they had three options, a loan to buy a car, a loan to go on holiday or to put it on their credit card. This is another symptom of the Big Lie. It is time someone in frontline politics had the courage to nail it once and for all."

It's a Lock-in

The Screeching of Positive Feedback

It shouldn't be a surprise to see chaos in a part of the world where human numbers have been and continue to double in mere decades, and fertile land as well as water for growing food is already insufficient and depleting rapidly. So, amid renewed talk of oil-induced recession, the world seems to be going round in ever more vicious circles:

Lack of investment in agriculture and population increase -> Food price rises -> civil unrest including in oil producing countries -> oil price increases -> food price increases -> more unrest -> and so on and on …

Actionaid USA have produced an interactive map of the places under greatest stress from food import dependency. They note that:

"As a result, [of subsidies] U.S. farmers have diverted 40 percent of corn production from food and feed to fuel, and land once used for soybean production has been converted to corn to meet the demand for biofuels set out in the federal RFS. Seven times as much corn is sent to ethanol plants than is being kept in our national stockpiles. Over the last two years, the amount of corn fed to livestock fell by 3 million metric tons, while corn shipments to ethanol producers grew by 33 million tons. These shifts put pressure on food stocks until they cross a tipping point, driving prices up."

"Spending scarce taxpayer dollars to shift crops from food to biofuels at the expense of hungry people and already stressed resources like soil, water and air is unsustainable."

HT Worldwatch blog.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning blog points out that, "It's worth noting that the energy content of the human food supply is about a sixth of the energy content of the human fuel supply (about 86 mbd of liquid fuels, equivalent to somewhere in the neighborhood of 120-130mbd of ethanol). This is the core problem with converting food to fuel - we are taking from a small pool to try to make up for deficiencies in a large pool, and we will have a much bigger effect on the level of the small pool than the bigger pool."

Wealthy motorists and the private car lobby are literally driving the world into starvation and recession.

Live by the Dictator, Die by the Dictator

While the Establishment eagerly hope for a quick return to their Business-as-Usual model, doing their usual rounds of hob-nobbing with the international elite, luxury hotels and the attendant business jamborees, trade fairs and arms sales, others, like Humanist on Yahoo, are asking the obvious question: "Do Foreign evacuees from Libya remind you of rats leaving a sinking ship?"

Seems like some are happy to take stolen money and goods, but don't like the consequences of their actions when the people they've trodden over to get that wealth start objecting.

Price of Gold

Why is the price of everything going up and up? Could it be that the modern economic fantasy of perpetual motion growth is climaxing in its inevitable failure?

So, while the end-game lasts, why not stave off that nagging sense of futility by piling your gold ever higher and higher and paying off security guards to chase away any poor people who might get hungry and try to get a few crumbs off you, the filthy scrounging bastards!

Check out your investment ...

Yes, this is how the 'libertarians' 'real world' operates. Their sickness can only be cured by gold.

Getting Rid of All Those Poor People

When evictions become routine
 
There's far too much funny money sloshing around the crazy world of finance, greedily seeking high returns and excessive profits now. Are we in the last phases of a centuries-long, ever intensifying global exploitation binge?

Whatever, it's quite clear who are the real misanthropists: the transnational land grabbers taking advantage of poverty, war, corruption, failing governance and inadequate land rights, turning the poor off their land and taking it to grow agribusiness monocultures, often for export.

The BBC radio have at last started to catch up with the trend with their feature today on ‘Crossing Continents’ about stomach-turning events in Cambodia, where “an estimated 15% of the country is now leased to private developers and stories are filtering in from the country's most impoverished farmers who tell of fear, violence and intimidation as private companies team up with armed police to force them from their land.”

They talk with Loun Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap province where peasants have been "victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year [2009] which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them" according to the Ki-Media blog which reported on villagers' attempts at petitioning the government.

Already between 2006 and 2007 Adhoc, a Cambodian rights watchdog reported that "about 50,000 people throughout the country were evicted for development projects" and the problem just seems to be getting worse, with land in the capital being seized from the poor by a government working hand in glove with private companies to build luxury apartments and shopping malls.

Crisis Committee Coming to Britain

In case we had forgotten, Britain is on the list of STUPID, heavily indebted countries, and later this month we can expect a visit from the EU’s Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (CRIS) headed up by Wolf Klinz, onetime partner at McKinsey & Co and board member of the East German privatisation agency the Treuhandanstalt, so says Wpedia.

Herr Klinz opines (here pdf) that Europe is at a crossroads needing a "deepening of integration in the economic, budgetary, and social fields, more investments in infrastructure, a functioning labour market as well as a completion of the internal market ... a standstill of reforms in Europe would mean regression."

And on his blog he writes that:

"Reforms of the EU treaties are essential to master the crisis. By failing to address this issue, European leaders are pulling the wool over the eyes of European citizens. The heads of state should be honest to the citizens and they must act rapidly to address their concerns.

The solutions lie in more European integration. What Europe needs is a strengthening of the Community method and less intergovernmentalism."

I wonder if we will hear much about this visit from our media?

What a Lot of Bankers!

The Daily Mirror and Ann Pettifor have been investigating, and found that, guess what, the government which is very anxious that we shouldn't be so down on bankers, is made up of .....

Hungary Leads, But Whither?

Hungary, like Europe as a whole perhaps, is a place with a great heritage, but a distinctly uncertain future. After the Death of Communism, Hungarians fell in with a lot of dodgy loans in foreign currencies like Swiss francs, of all things. With predictable results. Two years ago they were already “on the verge of bankruptcy”, so their EU leadership now is surely beautifully apposite, given that the whole zone teeters there today.

Oh well, time to shoot the messenger of ill tidings!

Blackout4Hungary

Ht: IPwatch