European capitalism unravels big-A
Greek ti –bomb ticks in Europe
Sunday 20 May 2012
Greece, in popular fiction, is the cradle of democracy. Why fiction? It was a slave society with democracy confined to Greek males. Nevertheless, its thinkers made contribution for which we are grateful to this day. Now it is not the turnover in France but the startling (for bourgeois but not Marxist commentators) outcome of the May 6 elections in Greece that point the way the rest of Europe will go in the coming years. The applecart has been upturned and the well laid schemes of all the powers of European capitalism are unravelling. Whose applecart has been upturned? The programme put together by the troika, plus European banks and finance capital, plus the European leadership under the Merkel-Sarkozy high command. (Troika stands for the IMF, European Central Bank, European Commission, triumvirate). I call the sum total of the packages these agencies have put together the Brussels Compact (BC). BC aims to bail out distressed banks, governments and financiers, combined with harsh austerity and budget cuts for ordinary folk.
Living standards have fallen and social safety-nets are disappearing, unemployment has risen sharply (in Spain 25%) and youth unemployment has gone out of control – 21% on an EU-wide basis, 51% in Spain. The suicide rate in Greece has doubled in recent years. A Europe-wide double-dip now crowns the New Depression (ND). UK, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are in a second dip. The basket cases are Greece (five years in recession, that is output falling every year), in Ireland the economy did NOT contract in only two quarters since 2008, and Portugal has been in recession for six successive quarters. The ND is the longest period in the recorded history of the UK where, after a recession, the economy has still to recover to its pre-recession level! Even in the Great Depression of the 1930s, UK output recovered to the pre-crash level in four years. In Greece (83%), Spain (85%), Italy (89%), Ireland (91%) and Portugal (94%) the GDP is still below its 2007 or 2008 peak – the numbers in brackets give the comparison to the pre-crisis peak. Europe will slide into 1930s style self-destruction and invoke a world slump more serious then 2008 – fitting proof of my WobbleU thesis – unless it wipes out sovereign and household debt that big capital uses as a stranglehold.
The revolt in the Acropolis Full Story>>>
Greek ti –bomb ticks in Europe
Sunday 20 May 2012
Greece, in popular fiction, is the cradle of democracy. Why fiction? It was a slave society with democracy confined to Greek males. Nevertheless, its thinkers made contribution for which we are grateful to this day. Now it is not the turnover in France but the startling (for bourgeois but not Marxist commentators) outcome of the May 6 elections in Greece that point the way the rest of Europe will go in the coming years. The applecart has been upturned and the well laid schemes of all the powers of European capitalism are unravelling. Whose applecart has been upturned? The programme put together by the troika, plus European banks and finance capital, plus the European leadership under the Merkel-Sarkozy high command. (Troika stands for the IMF, European Central Bank, European Commission, triumvirate). I call the sum total of the packages these agencies have put together the Brussels Compact (BC). BC aims to bail out distressed banks, governments and financiers, combined with harsh austerity and budget cuts for ordinary folk.Living standards have fallen and social safety-nets are disappearing, unemployment has risen sharply (in Spain 25%) and youth unemployment has gone out of control – 21% on an EU-wide basis, 51% in Spain. The suicide rate in Greece has doubled in recent years. A Europe-wide double-dip now crowns the New Depression (ND). UK, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are in a second dip. The basket cases are Greece (five years in recession, that is output falling every year), in Ireland the economy did NOT contract in only two quarters since 2008, and Portugal has been in recession for six successive quarters. The ND is the longest period in the recorded history of the UK where, after a recession, the economy has still to recover to its pre-recession level! Even in the Great Depression of the 1930s, UK output recovered to the pre-crash level in four years. In Greece (83%), Spain (85%), Italy (89%), Ireland (91%) and Portugal (94%) the GDP is still below its 2007 or 2008 peak – the numbers in brackets give the comparison to the pre-crisis peak. Europe will slide into 1930s style self-destruction and invoke a world slump more serious then 2008 – fitting proof of my WobbleU thesis – unless it wipes out sovereign and household debt that big capital uses as a stranglehold.
The revolt in the Acropolis Full Story>>>
