Really, you should just read everything Paul Krugman writes in the NY Times…

Have You Left No Sense Of Decency?: “30 years ago people with high but not super-high incomes generally felt ashamed of themselves for griping — or at least, felt that they would be ridiculed if they gave voice to their gripes. Today, all restraints are off… (via NYTimes.com.)

Read This: Anger is sweeping America…

Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away….

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage … you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

read the rest from Paul Krugman: The Angry Rich and Taxes – NYTimes.com.

Seven more US banks collapse

Seven more US banks collapse on day of Europe’s stress tests: More than 100 banks in the US have now collapsed so far this year after another seven were taken over by regulators late on Friday – the same day that seven European banks failed a financial health check… (via The Observer.)

Greece Now and Then, and the Euro Crisis

Another round up of posts, links and ledes on Greece – responses to the bank deaths, some history of Greek protests, and a few items on the crisis with the euro, which is being fueled by the situation in Greece…

Bruce Cockburn, “Call It Democracy” (lyrics)- from the album World of Wonders (1986) – a music attack on the IMF

Greece Now – with particular attention to the bank deaths

Who knew the European Union had so much power over its member states?: “For the time being, the markets have been pacified. For the moment, the riots in Athens have subsided. Only ‘hundreds’ of demonstrators came out over the weekend, fewer than the 50,000 who killed three people during a violent petrol-bomb attack on a bank last week. But this temporary truce in Greece has been bought at a high price—by which I don’t just mean that it was expensive….”

(via Slate Magazine.)

The welfare state’s death spiral: “Washington Post – By Robert J. Samuelson – May. 10 (Opinion) – What we’re seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn’t Greece’s problem alone, and that’s why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven’t fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies….”

(via NewsTrust.)

Austerity measures approved in Greece, protests continue: “The new measures have been voted in the Greek Parliament yesterday by a majority of 172 votes out of a total 300, these including the votes of the ruling Socialist Party (PASOK) and the extreme-right party of junta nostalgic creeps, LAOS.

The Conservative party, the Communist Party and the Radical Coalition of the Left voted against the measures. The procedure was not without surprises as 3 PASOK MPs cast a blank vote, leading to their expulsion from the Party. One of them a veteran Socialist politician and Olympic Games champion Mrs Sacorafa is refusing to hand over her seat in Parliament. At the same time the ex-Foreign Affairs Minister, daughter of the ex- PM Konstantinos Mitsotakis, and defeated candidate for the leadership of the Conservatives, Mrs Bakoyanni voted for the measures leading to her immediate expulsion from the Party – a move expected to lead the Conservatives to a major crisis. The demand of the Left for a 180 vote majority for the measures to be passed (a rule applied for constitutional reform) was not accepted by the government….

(via libcom.org.)

The Fair Uprising of 120,000 Demonstrators in Athens, Greece.
From Anarchist Coil.

THE FAIR UPRISING OF 120,000 DEMONSTRATORS, THE RAID AGAINST THE PARLIAMENT BY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ENRAGED PEOPLE HAD NOTHING AND COULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PARA-STATE GANG WHO MURDERED THREE PEOPLE IN A BANK IN STADIOU STR. AND TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY TO DO THE SAME AT THE BOOKSTORE IANOS

“Oh sky, your mirror image can be seen on the mud also”.

At first, we want to make it clear that our anger is indescribable, for the cowardly para-state gang who is responsible for murdering three people, two women, one pregnant on the fourth month, and a man who worked at Marfin bank at Stadiou Str., as well as for the gang of politicians and journalists who rushed to associate the fair uprising of hundreds of thousands of people in Athens and other cities with this atrocious murder.

But the truth cannot be erased. An angry river of protesters surrounded the Parliament and for hours and hours attempted to invade during a ferocious battle with the forces of repression….

(via Anarchist news dot org.)

In critical and suffocating times: “The Ta Paida Tis Galarias (The Children of The Gallery) group report on the recent demonstrations in Athens against austerity measures, including the events leading to the tragic deaths of three bank workers and its implications for the movement of opposition.

Greece – More Ledes and Links

Everybody gets so much information all day long
that they lose their common sense.
~ Gertrude Stein

Another round up of recent headlines, ledes, blog posts and soundbites from around the internet on the situation in Greece…

The Global Financial System Sucks

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Remember the “rogue trader” who wiped out Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London – and hence one of the oldest banks in the world – when he lost well over $1 billion speculating on futures contracts? How about Jérôme Kerviel, who “lost” almost $7 billion playing with futures in 2008? What about the American S&L Crisis that began in the 1980s? That ended up producing losses of around $160 billion – most of which was paid for by a government bailout under President George H. W. Bush, directly contributing to the budget deficit blowout of the early 1990s.

Rogue traders, futures, options and derivatives, housing bubbles, Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff, Bear Stearns, AIG, Washington Mutual, Goldman Sachs, the list goes on and on. In the most recent outrage from the financial sector, it looked like some schmuck said “billion” instead of “million” and sent the stock market into one of its worst nosedives in history, though now it seems like out-of-control software may have been to blame. Either way – stupid and sucky.

Stock Selloff May Have Been Triggered by Trader Error: “CNBC.com – May. 06 () – In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses in what possibly could have been a trader error.”

(via NewsTrust.)

How many more examples of the greed, corruption and ineptitude of the global financial system and the people who run it – and on which so much now depends (know anyone who’s lost a job or a house recently?) – do we need before we decide that a root-and-branch overhaul is needed of the whole rotten setup?

And it is clear that Obama – our sexy black president – is not the man for the job. But are we surprised? He’s an American politician, a committed part of a system which is deeply enmeshed with the American and global financial system. And he is perhaps even more in thrall to Big Money than some other presidents. He’s so excited to be making the big bucks and playing with the big boys.

And now he has to worry about the mid-term elections, and after that his own re-election. He’ll be campaigning from now on, more or less continuously, and while bashing banks may have a certain populist appeal, it doesn’t seem to be doable in Congress – too many Congressmen get too much money from those guys, or are those guys or want to be those guys when they get kicked out of office – and failure of another major policy push would be very damaging.

He’ll do good things, no doubt – but to expect a real overhaul of this rotten system is unrealistic. Expect bandaid reform: something that can be sold to voters as reform, but that doesn’t really hit the megabanks and money houses where they live – in their pocketbooks, power and penis-substitutes – and does little to correct the systemic dysfunctionality.

Greek Bailout – some people are riding higher in the boat…

© Copyright 2010 Arend van Dam – All Rights Reserved.

via PoliticalCartoons.com.

Crisis in Greece – with Statement on Bank Deaths

Everybody gets so much information all day long
that they lose their common sense.
~ Gertrude Stein

Another roundup of news articles and blog posts on the situation in Greece, with particular attention to the deaths in the bank fire… Obviously, there’s a vast amount of material out there, far more than I could ever repost/link to here. I’m trying to select significant articles from mainstream, but not too bad news sources along with useful inputs from left perspectives – but basically what you are getting is what I read that I found helpful, enlightening, provocative or enraging.

Greek Protests Claim First Fatalities – Slide Show
Demonstrations against tough new austerity measures in Greece claimed their first fatalities with three people reported to have died inside a bank building set ablaze by protesters. Protesters marched in Athens on Wednesday.

(via NYTimes.com.)

Debt crisis: The EU is waterboarding Greece | Poul Nyrup Rasmussen: “The austerity measures forced on to the Greeks are not only unfair, they set a bad precedent for the rest of Europe

On the day of the eurozone leaders’ meeting in Brussels, it is essential that we look at what is really going on in the European Union. The Conservative majority in the EU has again lost sight of the big picture. Its punishment of Greece is like the nation-state equivalent of waterboarding….”

(via Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.)

Greek Lawmakers Pass Austerity Plan: “The crucial vote stirred immediate concerns about unrest among the thousands of protesters massed in Athens.”
(via NYT > Home Page.)

It’s Not About Greece Anymore: “The Greek rescue package announced last weekend is far from enough to stabilize the euro zone, two economists write.”
(via NYT > Home Page.)

Greece Riots as Seen on Twitter, YouTube: “As riots explode in Greece, pictures and videos are flying around the social web, shared from news sources and folks on the ground. The images and videos we’re seeing are nothing short of otherworldly and terrifying. Riot police don gas masks, violent protesters take over the streets, gun shots ring out and open flames burn in the streets.

Readers should be aware that some folks may find the content below, particularly video content, shocking, disturbing or offensive. Please keep this in mind when you decide whether or not to watch these videos.”

(via Mashable!.)

“The management of the bank strictly barred the employees from leaving today … while they also forced the employees to lock up the doors” – Statements on the deaths in Athens: “Following the deaths of three workers in a fire at a bank in central Athens yesterday, we reproduce for reference the statements of a worker at the Marfin bank on the incident, and the communiques of the bank workers’ union OTOE and the Skaramanga squat in Athens. The bank workers union struck today in response to the deaths, blaming the goverment and employers for the fatalities.

The statement of an employee of the Marfin bank on the deaths:

Quote:
‘I feel an obligation toward my co-workers who have so unjustly died today to speak out and to say some objective truths. I am sending this message to all media outlets. Anyone who still bares some consciousness should publish it. The rest can continue to play the government’s game.” more

(via libcom.org.)

State terror in Exarcheia: “In an orgy of collective punishment the Greek police unleashed a brutal attack on Exarcheia, after the end of yesterday’s protest march, destroying shops and social centres, evacuating a squat at gunpoint and brutalising the locals.

The police brutality seen on the streets of Exarcheia last evening after the end of the general strike protest march in Athens has been unprecedented and casts serious doubts on the nature of the present regime in Greece which is casting away its democratic veil to expose itself as what it really is: the continuation of the colonel’s junta.”

(via libcom.org.)

What do we honestly have to say about Wednesday’s events?: “What do the events of Wednesday (5/5) honestly mean for the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement? How do we stand in the face of the deaths of these three people – regardless of who caused them? Where do we stand as humans and as people in struggle? Us, who do not accept that there are such things as “isolated incidents” (of police or state brutality) and who point the finger, on a daily basis, at the violence exercised by the state and the capitalist system. Us, who have the courage to call things by their name; us who expose those who torture migrants in police stations or those who play around with our lives from inside glamorous offices and TV studios. So, what do we have to say now?

(via After the Greek Riots › Irregular updates and articles on the situation in Greece, in English.)

Greece at the Brink of the Abyss

Everybody gets so much information all day long
that they lose their common sense.
~ Gertrude Stein

A roundup of news articles and blog posts on the situation in Greece…

Lots of attention to the protests, but also an increasing sense that the bailout so far approved will not be enough for Greece, and that the financial problems may yet extend to other countries in the eurozone. Meanwhile, it is still difficult to find serious, indepth discussions of the austerity measures from the perspective of the average Greek.

A story has also been circulating that the country’s financial problems could be substantially ameliorated by getting tax evaders to pony up their fair share – such as 1000s of swimming pool owners in Athens. But other articles dispute the value of this as a solution.

Regarding the protests, there are the usual responses in the news media – some decrying the violence of anarchists and young people, others dismissing the protests as insignificant. But when the protesters are farmers, civil servants and school teachers, it is clear that this is not just a case of student radicals always ready to leap to the barricades, that something significant is indeed going on. Particularly when the President of the country describes it as “at the brink of the abyss.” But his abyss might be your threshold, a path to a different future.

Hopefully, we will soon see articles from more mainstream but progressive news outlets gaining traction with stories about what is really going on – both with the protests, and with the attempts to rescue the Greek economy. In the meantime…

Read This: A May Day distress call

A May Day distress call | Brendan Barber: “Uncertainty – about our job, pension and kids’ future – is now the fate of all workers, and some are making a killing out of our fears

Around the world uncertainty is becoming the single unifying characteristic of working life. And for anyone who’s not independently wealthy, uncertainty about work means uncertainty about everything.

It’s been over a generation since we were told about the end of the job for life. Now people are uncertain about whether they’ll have a job at all, whether they’ll get a pension at the end of their working lives, and whether their kids will grow up – as every parent wants – to be healthier, wealthier and wiser than them.”

(via Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.)

“The biggest international bailout ever” – more on Greece

Everybody gets so much information all day long
that they lose their common sense.
~ Gertrude Stein

A round up of recent headlines, ledes and soundbites from around the internet on the economic bailout of Greece, austerity measures that are being suggested, and social fallout…

FaceBook and the McDonalds-izing of the Internet – plus Greece and Arizona

“Arizona is … a warning of what a state can look like when it’s run by talk-radio demagogues and their television cohorts.”
(Too bad they went with Rush Limbaugh and Chris Beck and not Jon Stewart.)

Here, for your horror and amusement, a roundup of some headlines and excerpts from the news of the last couple of days concerning FaceBook, Greece and Arizona – all in the one post as I am probably as sick of reading and writing about this stuff as you are of reading and thinking about it.

The truth is, I found the topics mostly either too aggravating (Arizona) or too complicated/outside my area of competence (Greece) to really have much worthwhile to offer beyond a handy crib sheet / set of links to what I found useful and interesting in my own reading.

I did feel that I might have something to offer on the matter of FaceBook. Most of the commentary I read focused on the threat to privacy angle or on FaceBook’s ambitious growth strategy – and covered these topics fairly well.

But I also thought these were not perhaps the most interesting or troubling aspect of FaceBook’s recent moves. The most interesting – and most negative – aspect was what I guess we could call the McDonalds-izing of the internet – which seems to be not just a scary scenario but actually the heart of their strategy:

McDonalds – it’s everywhere you go, from San Francisco to Shanghai to Skopje, from New York to New Delhi to Old Blighty, and everywhere pretty much the same. It’s unhealthy, bland, culturally and nutritionally denuded and pumped full of pretty packaging and preservatives, salt and sugar to make up for its lack of taste, appeal and interest. It’s very cheap, and not worth it – but nonetheless becomes a big part of the diet of people who are locked out, scared off or ignorant of better choices. McDonalds: bland, banal, unhealthy, homogenized, corporate, ubiquitous.

To the extent that FaceBook succeeds in its ambitions, the internet will become a blander, more homogenized, and more regimented and commodified experience.

The computer world has seen other monopolies and hegemonies come (and sometimes go): Windows is not quite the force it once was, though it’s still pretty powerful; likewise Microsoft Office. Google clearly has hegemonic aims and seems to be doing a good job of achieving them, but that battle is not yet over.

But somehow, the idea of a hegemonic FaceBook seems to me somewhat more serious. I suppose because it is a social network, and has to a large extent taken over from IMing and email as a central means of communication for many people. And also become a major force in organizing groups, inviting people to events, sharing photographs, indicating likes and dislikes in shopping and other forums, and so on.

These were all activities that used to be enacted through separate platforms, sites and applications. Smaller sites operating in more competitive arenas, and generally with more responsiveness to their users than FaceBook has shown. And in many cases, at least initially, much less commercial, much less “monetized” and surveilled.

FaceBook hopes to end all of that, bringing all of those activities into its grasp, and analyzing and monetizing our every activity, and targeting us with ads tailored to our precise demographics and desires.

“One Site to rule them all…”

FaceBook

Despite my personal apprehensions (which are, naturally, well-founded and not at all the paranoid fantasies of some left-wing conspiracy theorist), the rest of the blogosphere has quieted down a bit where FaceBook is concerned, after the first rush of responses – positive and negative – to announcements at FaceBook’s developers’ conference. The two main interests continue to be the privacy issue, on the one hand, and evaluations of the new developments from a technical and business perspective on the other; on both, we may have to wait a little while for more in-depth discussions.

In the meantime, here’s PC Magazine chiming it with its advice on securing some privacy in the wake of FaceBook’s changes:

Facebook Privacy: 8 Ways to Protect Yourself: pcmag.com — You want to use Facebook, but you also want to keep your private information from being spread all over the Internet. The key is to understand how Facebook works, where your information is going, and how to navigate the service’s labyrinth of privacy controls.

(via Digg.com.)

Early last month, before FaceBook’s developers’ conference, Bruce Schneier, one of the most respected commentators on computer security, wrote of the issue of privacy and control, specifically addressing FaceBook:

In January, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg declared the age of privacy to be over. A month earlier, Google Chief Eric Schmidt expressed a similar sentiment. Add Scott McNealy’s and Larry Ellison’s comments from a few years earlier, and you’ve got a whole lot of tech CEOs proclaiming the death of privacy — especially when it comes to young people.

It’s just not true. People, including the younger generation, still care about privacy.

Read the whole discussion of “Privacy and Control” in Schneier on Security.

An article in The New York Times on a new extreme sport fun run – “Tough Mudder” – parenthetically provided a concise picture of just how targeted FaceBook ads already were, how well they knew us, before this current round of changes:

The [Tough Mudder] Web site went online in early February, and $8,300 was spent on Facebook ads aimed at specific demographics — young professionals, runners and extreme athletes, police officers and firefighters, and those in the military who lived in the vicinity of Allentown and within 50 miles of New York and Philadelphia.

(via NYTimes.com.)

Imagine what they’ll be able to do once they know your every like, your every move.

Enough of that… Here’s what’s been happening in the less important realm of offline events. (For some reason, the mainstream news media has been paying a lot more attention to Greece and Arizona than FaceBook…)

Greece – More on the Situation There, and the IMF

The situation with Greece’s economic condition seems to be rapidly worsening, and there are increasing fears that the crisis will spread, not just to the other troubled economies of Southern Europe, but to the rest of the region, and to the euro, and even outside the eurozone to the UK.

Some are comparing the situation to the panic that gripped the financial sector, particularly in the USA, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008.

And fears about the impact of austerity measures – and protests – are spreading.

Below are some selections from recent news reports…

Greece – Too Big to Fail?

Paul Krugman – Learning From Greece: “The debt crisis in Greece is approaching the point of no return. As prospects for a rescue plan seem to be fading, largely thanks to German obduracy, nervous investors have driven interest rates on Greek government bonds sky-high, sharply raising the country’s borrowing costs. This will push Greece even deeper into debt, further undermining confidence. At this point it’s hard to see how the nation can escape from this death spiral into default.
(via NYTimes.com.)

Greece activates €45bn loans: “Papandreou’s move was immediately welcomed by markets across Europe where stocks marked a sharp rise after weeks of uncertainty. The premium on Greek 10-year bonds fell 60 basis points to 8.2% on the news and the euro strengthened slightly against the dollar and the pound.
But the Greek government’s request is likely to also lead to calls for further austerity measures, demands that will almost certainly worsen public unrest in Greece.”
(via guardian.co.uk.)

With Greece facing austerity measures imposed by the international financial system the like of which haven’t really been seen before in Western Europe, we can expect to see the “public unrest” (read, “riots,” massive anger in the streets, police brutality, bombs) to dwarf that of the past year. Greek radical militancy has a long, proud and aggressive history and militants there will react with understandable fury to the social impact of the anticipated austerity measures. It looks like it may be a long, hot summer on the Mediterranean.

Update on the tensions and continued social crisis in Greece
“Greece is going to hell, it is going to hell and I am glad it is so that we can comeback and start things from the beginning” These were the last words of an anarchist comrade in Greece as we spoke about events that have taken place in recent weeks because of the austerity measures introduced by the Government to tackle Greece’s enormous debt.

Greece’s Premier has likened the Greek economic situation to that of a country in “wartime”, in which he announced that the public must come together in order to “survive”.

Although this wartime reference was used as a metaphor, Papandreou might only too soon find his Government locked in a state of war with the working classes.
(via Freedom Press.)

Austerity measures, IMF and World Bank-imposed policies, and structural adjustment programs have met with increasingly levels of resistance over the years, particularly in developing countries that have been most subject to these “measures.” But in recent years, as part of the broader alter-globalization movement, there have been more and more protests against the IMF and World Bank in the developed nations of the North as well:

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Since the first announcement that Greece would accept the €45b bailout, more information has come out about the anticipated role of the IMF, Europe’s anxiety about a financial failure in Greece leading to further failures in Portugal and elsewhere, uncertainty about German support for a measure that is unpopular with the public, and the response elsewhere in Europe and in the global financial community. And the situation – or at least the assessment – has worsened, with Greece now looking like it will need substantially more than the initially proposed €45b:

IMF chief Strauss-Kahn tries to ease Greece fears: “Inevitably, the prospect of IMF involvement in the Greek rescue has some people worried. The reputation is for painful cuts in public spending, which are unwelcome in their own right and seen by some critics as likely to aggravate an economic downturn.” [emphasis added]
(Via BBC News.)

Greek bailout ‘not limited to €45bn’: “The bill to bail out the stricken Greek economy could mushroom, after world leaders admitted that the €45bn (£39bn) already pledged was just the start.
The country’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, said that bailout talks at the weekend with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European partners had gone well, and he was confident Greece would secure the necessary aid by May to finance its crippling public debt without any problem.”
….
“Over the weekend, French and German leaders turned the screws on Greece, insisting that the €45bn international bailout would not go ahead without further austerity measures to slash the country’s ballooning budget deficit.
Lagarde also warned that contributors to the eurozone’s first rescue package would pull the plug if Greece did not honour the terms. She promised to hold Greece accountable for ‘unsuitable economic policies‘.” [emphasis added]
(Via guardian.co.uk.)

Merkel keeps Greece in suspense over rescue: “The German Chancellor was forced yesterday to issue an emergency statement promising aid to Greece — but her words failed to quell bond market speculation that Berlin might not support the eurozone’s €30 billion rescue package.
(via Times Online.)

It’s important to be clear about what these austerity measures and unsuitable economic policies really are. If past experience is anything to go by they will be a major curtailment of social welfare programs – health, education and welfare – combined with an unprecedented opening up of the country to exploitation by multinational corporations. In the past, the IMF and World Bank have acted like Viking raiders – raping, looting and pillaging.

Some Background

One of the better known instances of this kind of assaults, and of the popular resistance to such imposed economic measures, is what took place in Bolivia in the late 1990s:

The Politics of Water in Bolivia: “Etched deeply into the granite walls just inside the entrance of the World Bank headquarters in Washington are the words, “Our dream, a world free of poverty.” Earlier this month in Bolivia, the citizens of South America’s poorest country sent the bank a message once again that the poor aren’t too keen on the part of that dream that involves handing their water over to foreign corporations.
On January 10 the citizens of El Alto took to the streets en masse to demand that their water system, privatized in 1997 under World Bank pressure, be returned to public hands.”
(via The Nation.)

Some Reading

Along with the more general global financial crisis of which it is a part, the situation in Greece is fairly complex, and the role of the IMF and its bailout activities – and their often devastating effects – are similar difficult to make sense of with the limited information given in news coverage. Here are a few resources to consult to begin making sense of these issues and events.

• Greece News – The New York Times
• Bailing out Greece: An extreme necessity | The Economist
• Germany, Greece, and Europe’s future | openDemocracy
• The World Economic Crisis– from The Global Policy Forum
• Bretton Woods Project – critical voices on the IMF and World Bank

Paul Krugman is a Sexy Beast

“Let’s face it: Financial reform is a hard issue to follow. It’s not like health reform, which was fairly straightforward once you cut through the nonsense. Reasonable people can and do disagree about exactly what we should do to avert another banking crisis.

So here’s a brief guide to the debate — and an explanation of my own position….”

Read about it at: Op-Ed Columnist – Financial Reform 101 – NYTimes.com.