European and US Working Class Politics: Right, Left and Neutered
James Petras
The deepening economic crises in Europe and the United States are provoking contrasting socio-political responses from the working and middle classes. In Europe, especially among the Mediterranean countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy) unemployed youth, workers and lower middle class public employees have organized a series of general strikes, occupations of public plazas and other forms of direct action. At the same time, the middle class, private-sector employees and small business people have turned to the “hard right” and elected, or are on the verge of electing, reactionary prime ministers in Portugal, Spain, Greece and perhaps even in Italy. In other words, the deepening crises has polarized Southern Europe: strengthening the institutional power of the hard right while increasing the strength of the extra-parliamentary left in mobilizing ‘street power’.
PermalinkPASOK: Pan Hellenic Socialist Kleptocrats
James Petras
“George Papandreou is not bought, he is rented. He sells public enterprises to the multinationals. He reduces wages, pensions and employment at the behest of the IMF. He turns over the public treasury to the European banks. He supports NATO’s war against Libya. He directs the Greek Coast Guard to enforce Netanyahu’s blockade of Gaza.” - According to a demonstrator in Syndigma Square, Athens, July 3, 2011
Introduction
A self-proclaimed “Socialist” Government in Greece is imposing by ballots and clubs the most far reaching reversals of wages, pensions, jobs, educational, health and tax programs in the history of Western Europe.
Icelanders egg PM as global protests condemn corruption, banksters
By Rady Ananda
As proceedings begin against Iceland's former Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, for the banking crisis of 2008, at least two thousand Icelanders took to the streets in two days of protest this weekend. Iceland joins over a dozen other nations protesting economic measures taken out on the public while banks and large corporations receive bailouts. Class war is on, and it's gone global.
Economic Warfare? Europe versus Wall Street
(March 10) Wall Streets is headed toward international pariah status thanks to two recent actions by the European Union (EU).
On Tuesday, the EU announced that it was banning Wall Street banks from the lucrative government bond business in Europe. They didn't express official concern or fire off a warning shot. They simply banned Wall Street from financing government bond deals like the one Goldman Sachs sold to Greece. The Guardian pointed out that Wall Street bond business from European governments has gone down over the last two years. Now the business is gone period. In effect, the EU has labeled Wall Streets business tactics as too dangerous for their governments to handle.
Then on Wednesday, the President of the European Commission said that the EU was considering a ban on government debt speculation through Credit Default Swaps (CDS) President José Manuel Barroso announced that, "the Commission will examine closely the relevance of banning purely speculative naked sales on Credit Default Swaps of sovereign debt." While not an outright ban, the threat of banning CDS on national debt would be a major loss for the world's financial speculators, particularly those in the United States and Great Britain.
The Hoi Poloi v. Goldman Sachs
Numerian (Feb 15) Posted by Michael Collins with permission of the author
Ask yourself who knows how much has really been borrowed by various governments around the world?
Greece is turning into a battle royal between the global financial elites and the average worker in the industrial West. This started out as a more limited struggle, pitting the finance ministers and central banks of the European Union against the Greek unions, but the fight has unexpectedly broadened with news of the surreptitious involvement of Goldman Sachs in helping Greece avoid borrowing constraints.
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