Two Stratfor articles, "Geopolitical Journey: An Empty Highway in Spain," and "Europe: Unemployment and Instability," suggest that there is an underlying problem of social distance and lack of empathy that leads political elites, and the German public, to continue to insist on austerity, because they don't feel the effects the recession is having on others. Germans, for example, can get judgmental about the shiftless southern Europeans, and insist that only they know what's good for everyone: more austerity.
The US faces a similar problem, because of the widening disparity of wealth. The call for austerity among Republicans expresses the preferences of the very wealthy, who want lower taxes and see no utility in "coddling" what Romney labeled the dependent 47%. So, unemployment is not perceived as a problem, either in Germany (as yet), nor among Wall Street bankers, or their socioeconomic cousins, the very wealthy. That's why almost all the debate in Washington centers on austerity: how to accomplish the Sequester more rationally, how to cut more from social programs like SNAP (food-stamps), so that debt and deficits can be reduced. This debate continues, even though there is stubbornly high unemployment, and especially high long-term employment. "Conservatives" see no reason to stimulate job growth, since the stock market is surging, profits are high, and housing prices are rising.
In Europe, the result very well could be radical politics--or worse. Not only has Italy given 25% of its votes to a new untried political party, The Five Star Movement, led by a comedian, but Hungary's right-wing government has passed a law banning all political opposition!
Unemployment rates of 27% (Greece and Spain), or even around 15% (Lithuania, Portugal, Ireland) begins to look really scary, especially when you have youth unemployment at or more than double those rates. As the Stratfor articles mention, this was the climate that created Fascism and Nazism after WWI. The response this time could be as radical, and of either the right or the left (Greek extremist parties are at both ends of the political spectrum).
The apparent quiescence in Spain and other European nations in recession could easily explode, given the seeming hopelessness faced by the unemployed, especially the youth. If I were in their shoes, I'd be tinder for anyone who started yelling that he/she could solve it.
Meanwhile, austerity and the Sequester are destroying the future of both regions.
What this may mean is that the economic/political system in which we exist could undergo radical transformation sometime soon, and it might not be pretty. However, our elites (European, American, Chinese) don't seem to have a clue, which makes all our political systems that much more vulnerable to upheaval.
If there is no transformation, we could go the way of the Late Roman Empire: monopolized wealth by today's equivalent of Roman Senators, and immiseration for everyone else.
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Discarded World
Sunday at sunrise I saw a car parked in our parking lot along the dirt road, not far from houses and an equestrian center. A guy got out, did something with his leg, and then, as I approached, he got back in the car and drove off. There was someone in the passenger seat.
The driver had discarded something and its foil wrapper. He was probably proud of himself: it was an oversized used condom. On his way to church?
That pretty much epitomizes relations with our social, natural and international world. We trash the natural world, we trash each other; we also trash other nations: cancer has skyrocketed in Iraq because our depleted DU munitions litter the landscape. Our military is proud of them; they're more effective than lead or steel in penetrating tank armor. Who cares about the Iraqis?
Margaret Thatcher was known for popularizing a politics epitomized by: "Screw you, Jack! I've got mine." Our "conservatives" are less eloquent.
Sequestration was meant to force Democrats and Republicans to agree to something sensible, but the first adjustment insures that flights aren't delayed, so Congressmen and Senators can get home during their break. Meanwhile, cuts to Head Start, schools, health research, medical care, extended unemployment insurance and to so many other government programs cause far more damaging consequences: lives lost, children untaught, research not done, people driven homeless: long-term costs to everyone--except the wealthy.
And for what? Both the Alesina/Ardagna article on "expansionary austerity," and the Reinhart/Rogoff article positing the economic danger of a 90+% budget deficit--Economists' arguments promoting austerity--have been proven false, while real experiments with it in Greece, Spain, Ireland, the UK and Portugal have demonstrated its destructive effects.
I sent two of Krugman's anti-austerity articles to a fundamentalist friend; he refused to read them: said they were "all false," and "ideologies will never replace the wisdom and power of the Word of God." Facts didn't matter. To him, and apparently to a large contingent of Republicans in Congress, "debt is debt," an evil--except for Defense, or corporations, or mortgages, or….
My friend made money in California real estate, The austerian agenda makes sense to him: why should he pay for losers, driven homeless, and/or jobless by the burst housing bubble; he made money, so what's wrong with them?
People like him, and those much wealthier drive the political agenda. We don't live in a democracy; the powerful listen to the one-percent, not to the rest of us--except, maybe, the 5%. Our contemporary Roman Senatorial class has conquered. High unemployment benefits them: it makes workers compliant; bosses can cut wages and raise their own salaries: life is good.
It will last until either revolution or collapse, the latter from the instability inherent in extreme inequality; it contributed to Rome's fall in 476.
The driver had discarded something and its foil wrapper. He was probably proud of himself: it was an oversized used condom. On his way to church?
That pretty much epitomizes relations with our social, natural and international world. We trash the natural world, we trash each other; we also trash other nations: cancer has skyrocketed in Iraq because our depleted DU munitions litter the landscape. Our military is proud of them; they're more effective than lead or steel in penetrating tank armor. Who cares about the Iraqis?
Margaret Thatcher was known for popularizing a politics epitomized by: "Screw you, Jack! I've got mine." Our "conservatives" are less eloquent.
Sequestration was meant to force Democrats and Republicans to agree to something sensible, but the first adjustment insures that flights aren't delayed, so Congressmen and Senators can get home during their break. Meanwhile, cuts to Head Start, schools, health research, medical care, extended unemployment insurance and to so many other government programs cause far more damaging consequences: lives lost, children untaught, research not done, people driven homeless: long-term costs to everyone--except the wealthy.
And for what? Both the Alesina/Ardagna article on "expansionary austerity," and the Reinhart/Rogoff article positing the economic danger of a 90+% budget deficit--Economists' arguments promoting austerity--have been proven false, while real experiments with it in Greece, Spain, Ireland, the UK and Portugal have demonstrated its destructive effects.
I sent two of Krugman's anti-austerity articles to a fundamentalist friend; he refused to read them: said they were "all false," and "ideologies will never replace the wisdom and power of the Word of God." Facts didn't matter. To him, and apparently to a large contingent of Republicans in Congress, "debt is debt," an evil--except for Defense, or corporations, or mortgages, or….
My friend made money in California real estate, The austerian agenda makes sense to him: why should he pay for losers, driven homeless, and/or jobless by the burst housing bubble; he made money, so what's wrong with them?
People like him, and those much wealthier drive the political agenda. We don't live in a democracy; the powerful listen to the one-percent, not to the rest of us--except, maybe, the 5%. Our contemporary Roman Senatorial class has conquered. High unemployment benefits them: it makes workers compliant; bosses can cut wages and raise their own salaries: life is good.
It will last until either revolution or collapse, the latter from the instability inherent in extreme inequality; it contributed to Rome's fall in 476.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Stimulus or Austerity
What do we hear from the movers and shakers? Still, austerity.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The World Map: Moral Decline of Empire
Amnesty's map is gray, so much of it, gray because people are arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and/or dissenters are violently repressed. There are a few white spots; France, Germany, Spain. Ironically, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary. And then there's Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Australia, New Zealand.
The US is gray, as is the UK, China, India, Russia and South Africa, most of Africa, Asia and more than half of Latin America. Yes, America is not an exceptional island of humanity and civil liberties. Bolivia is, and so is Uruguay.
Two years after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, it's still open for business, still holding people without charges and without justification. And there are still reports of abusive treatment of prisoners. June 3, 2009, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih succeeded in committing suicide, somehow, despite being on a suicide watch: he and five others had been force-fed through their noses for years.
And then, of course, there is Bradley Manning, who has been confined for almost a year now, has been held in solitary most of that time, with extreme isolation enforced (not even allowed to exercise in his cell, not even allowed clothes some of the time), yet he is still not charged--with anything! Many torture specialists say isolation like this is worse than physical torture; it melts the mind.
Until this spring, we also sent some of our detainees to Mubarak, have him overtly torture for us. Thanks, Hosni! Still, when the Egyptian Spring happened, we reluctantly climbed on and threw Hosni under the bus.
So, the US, even under Barack Obama, is no oasis of humanity. Canada is; Costa Rica is; Chile is; even Paraguay is, but it almost looks, when you look at this gray map of the world, that only minor nations, ones without imperial or regional ambitions--with the exception of France and Germany--can any longer "afford" to honor human rights.
Was there a time when an American President could truthfully say, "We don't torture," "We don't detain people arbitrarily?" FDR could boast the first, but not the second (the Japanese-American detainment camps), but after WWII we could boast both, with the possible exception of Vietnam, until George W. But now, still, with Obama, champion of human rights and peace, both practices are even admitted. Obama has drawn a line: excluding most direct physical torture, including water-boarding, but the treatment of Manning is on his watch, and it's torture, too: for an American citizen who has yet to be charged with a crime!
Such is the cost of Empire. Americans, struggling now to dominate the world, (remember Full Spectrum Dominance?) are now so insecure we have to torture our own to insure our "security." We have to give up our rights and allow our leaders to imprison and torture us arbitrarily (oh, there are rules and regs about how to do it, but still it's arbitrary).
This is life in the American Empire, in its rapid decline.
The US is gray, as is the UK, China, India, Russia and South Africa, most of Africa, Asia and more than half of Latin America. Yes, America is not an exceptional island of humanity and civil liberties. Bolivia is, and so is Uruguay.
Two years after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, it's still open for business, still holding people without charges and without justification. And there are still reports of abusive treatment of prisoners. June 3, 2009, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih succeeded in committing suicide, somehow, despite being on a suicide watch: he and five others had been force-fed through their noses for years.
And then, of course, there is Bradley Manning, who has been confined for almost a year now, has been held in solitary most of that time, with extreme isolation enforced (not even allowed to exercise in his cell, not even allowed clothes some of the time), yet he is still not charged--with anything! Many torture specialists say isolation like this is worse than physical torture; it melts the mind.
Until this spring, we also sent some of our detainees to Mubarak, have him overtly torture for us. Thanks, Hosni! Still, when the Egyptian Spring happened, we reluctantly climbed on and threw Hosni under the bus.
So, the US, even under Barack Obama, is no oasis of humanity. Canada is; Costa Rica is; Chile is; even Paraguay is, but it almost looks, when you look at this gray map of the world, that only minor nations, ones without imperial or regional ambitions--with the exception of France and Germany--can any longer "afford" to honor human rights.
Was there a time when an American President could truthfully say, "We don't torture," "We don't detain people arbitrarily?" FDR could boast the first, but not the second (the Japanese-American detainment camps), but after WWII we could boast both, with the possible exception of Vietnam, until George W. But now, still, with Obama, champion of human rights and peace, both practices are even admitted. Obama has drawn a line: excluding most direct physical torture, including water-boarding, but the treatment of Manning is on his watch, and it's torture, too: for an American citizen who has yet to be charged with a crime!
Such is the cost of Empire. Americans, struggling now to dominate the world, (remember Full Spectrum Dominance?) are now so insecure we have to torture our own to insure our "security." We have to give up our rights and allow our leaders to imprison and torture us arbitrarily (oh, there are rules and regs about how to do it, but still it's arbitrary).
This is life in the American Empire, in its rapid decline.
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