Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Have the European Greens lost the plot?The Paris Declaration

We are living in delusional times. Our politicians and technocrats are on another planet. Angela Merkel in a speech to her Christian Democratic Union Party,stated that "If the euro fails then Europe will fail."The former central banker now in charge of Greece, Papademos in making his inaugural speech to parliament spoke of “Remaining in the euro zone is our only choice.”Similar noises are emanating out of many EU governments, and also in the Brussels bubble. .Olie Rehn the unelected technocrat running Euro matters has spoken in a similar vein.
The stakes are being raised. However ,these are the words of people with their backs to the wall and stripped bare save perhaps for a fig leave.(if that).

Against this backcloth, I read with incredulity the Paris Declaration of the European Greens issued in Paris just a week ago, which ends up essentially supporting the IMF,ECB, EC and Merkozism policy that is fixated with trying to make the Euro crisis a crisis of the European project.

The Paris Declaration http://europeangreens.eu/congress/?page_id=417
reads like the product of a schizophrenic mindset.On the one hand the analysis is clear and one with which I think most Greens would agree. So for example, it states:
“Unsustainable public finances or lack of competitiveness are not the main causes of the crisis we’re in: at the heart of the problem lies the global increasing inequality of incomes and wealth in the last decades and an over-leveraged and over-extended financial sector, addicted to debt and speculation and benefiting from implicit and explicit public guarantees.This has led to unsustainable credit growth and risk accumulation and a global increase of inequality of incomes and wealth in the last decades.”

In a similar vein it states:
"More equal societies perform better: all empirical evidence points at the fact that a more even income and wealth distribution is a key condition for individual and collective well-being; therefore, crisis solutions must turn-around the accelerating drive towards more income and wealth inequality."

This analysis is in my view spot on. However, the Declaration then flips into a mindset that ignores the above analysis. Incredibly, it states that :
“This entails that any scenario leading to the break-up of the Euro-zone, which would be the first step of the political disintegration of Europe is unacceptable to us.”
Having made the jump to equating the European project with Euro, the declaration then goes onto make a series of staggering recommendations: Whilst paying lip service to the Occupy movement and their support for these manifestations they come up with policy solutions that are in direct contradiction with their own analysis and indeed the demands of the Occupy movements.

The Declaration recommends:
"Recapitalisation of European banks : the amount – € 109 Bn – decided by the latest summits is at the lower end of what is actually need to make the European banking industry resilient; an amount of € 300 Bn is probably closer to the mark. Private sources must contribute first, but if public money is used, ownership rights and control must be transferred to the taxpayer (through temporary public control ‘thus enabling progress towards wider mutualisation within the European banking system)”.
And the need to
“ Rebalance the austerity-only approach: while we still see the need of sustainable public financing, according to the Treaties, some parts of the Troika emergency policies have been socially unjust; the conditionalities they impose must be rebalanced, insisting on effectively chasing revenue from the most affluent in society and breaking taboos and privileges such as immunity the defence establishment in Greece or for the Churches in countries such as Greece or Italy.”

In short , having correctly diagnosed that the problem is the dominant economic model and the policies currently being pursued, the European Greens end up with a watered down version of the same policies. Their policy mindset is driven by the idea that the Euro is the European project. What this forgets is that the Euro crisis has exposed the underlying reality, namely that we have created a bankers Europe that is profoundly undemocratic and unprogressive.

It is the Euro that is killing Europe, saving the Euro will kill off the European project.
The remedies being imposed to save the euro are blighting the lives of millions. Those responsible are still in control but their economic model is bust and no matter how they try to dress it up things will simply not work.The casino capitalism created by deregulation and liberalisation of the financial sector has created a financial Fukishima.

The “pass-the –parcel” (from Greece, to Portugal, to Ireland, to Spain , to Greece and now to Italy) crisis we are seeing is a fall out of the toxic shit we have allowed to be created in the very heart of our financial system.
Maybe bypass surgery might work, but this will; require the bypassing of democracy, which is what is taking shape in Greece and Italy. The way the remedies are being imposed is reinforcing the facelessness and unaccountability of EU institutions. The democratic deficit that has blighted the EU project is growing. That is the real deficit that needs to be reversed.Our politicians and technocratics are creating the fertile ground that will breed opposition to the EU project.

In short we have a recipe for disaster being presented as one that will save the Euro. We have to disentangle the Euro from the European project. Europe has existed for over 50 years, the Euro is but a baby of the European project not the same as the project. We need a movement of New Europeans to emerge and challenge the defunct vision of the current bunch of political pygmies and technocrats.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

We have to reclaim politics if we want a viable future.

The speed with which our political and financial classes have got rid of George Papandreou is really a sign of quick things can move when there is any note of dissent. His mistake was to raise the spectre of democratic decision making with the involvement of the people. His departure was forgone as soon as he retreated in the face of “Merkozism”. Their horror of his suggestion was rapidly translated into even higher spreads between Greek and German Government bonds and that marked the end of the man who up to six months ago was “doing a good job” Which translates as accepting the medicine being administered by mama Merkel and papa Sarkozy and their friends from the IMF. Already the circus has moved on to Berlusconi and the “Italians”. Lets wait and see how long he will be able to hold out especially after calling Merkel “an unfuckable lardarse”. I have no time for the crook and gangster that Berlusconi is but I do believe that the Italian people should decide when he goes and not the markets and “Merkozism”.
This reaction has exposed what up to now has been a latent characteristic of EU democracy, namely, the sidelining of EU citizens from the democratic process. Deals have been done between non-elected bodies such as the EC, IMF and the European Council. This form of corporate democracy has also exposed what demonstrators around the world have called the democracy wherein the interests of the few (1%) outweigh the interests of the rest (99%).
For me the events of the past week are not just about the crisis in Europe. Lets not forget the crisis in the USA. Where despite massive printing of money(that after all is what quantitive easing is) debt is $10.5trn. Nearer to home , even the UK debt is understated in that the debt accruing from PFI is somehow left out of the government balance sheet. Labour alone incurred £56bn of such debt. If this was included, which it should be then the UK government debt would be bigger relatively than that of Italy.
However, we need to see the bigger picture at this juncture. Its too easy and simple to follow the “pass the parcel” of blame which our leaders are doing , egged on by the markets as their weathervane.
Have we arrived at a watershed in the post second world model of party politics and financial liberalism? I believe we have, but the fact that we are in watershed will not translate automatically into a fundamental change of direction in terms of economic policy and how we do politics. It would be foolish to underestimate the power of our financial and political elites. However, it would be equally foolish to not realise that they are bankrupt in terms of vision and bankrupt in terms of how to “fix the problem” they have created.

The scale of their bankruptcy is in fact evidenced by their own actions. The Greek bailout, that they “fixed” just two weeks ago is in fact nothing less than dishonest. Dishonest for suggesting that somehow private investors were going to take some pain alongside the Greek people. The same private investors have been speculating on the Greek government debt and just 12 months ago they couldn’t buy up Greek debt fast enough . Let us also be clear that we are talking about the interests of just 1% of the population who now control 50% of all available credit. In effect we are being asked to minimize their losses.

The deal is also dishonest about what it claims will be the impact on Greek people. Pain for a few years , it is claimed will result in a refreshed and more dynamic Greek economy.This is the lie that in the end , perhaps (here I am being very charitable), that even the Greek prime minister could see was bullshit. The voice of the Greek people is far more honest. The austerity package will not work. The impact of the package will be further depression, which will simply increase the deficit rather than cutting it. Furthermore the costs of borrowing are high and rising . Given the fact that the Greek economy has already contracted by 15%, what is being offered is not a recovery but a slow and painful death.

The deal is also dishonest about the recapitalisation of banks. This will not “release credit for investment and innovation” as is claimed. It is simply another chunk of our money to plug the dishonest balance sheets of banks, which the so-called stress tests were meant to resolve. The price for this additional bailout will be more austerity in the public sector and thus even more pain for the “innocents”. Alongside this additional bailout comes the news that salaries for bosses in the top100 companies listed in the London stock exchange went up by 49% last year.

We are, as I said, at watershed. The crash of 2007/8 has been likened by many with the 1929 stock market crash. The situation in 2011 can be likened with the onset of the great depression. Writing in 1931, the words of Hjalmar Schacht(who had been Governor of Reichsbank) are just as appropriate for 2011. “Never has the incapacity of the economic leaders of the capitalist world so glaringly demonstrated as today…The guilt of the capitalist system lies in its alliances with the violent policies of imperialism and militarism …The ruling classes of the world today have as completely failed in political leadership as in economic”.
Events in Greece and Italy now have the possibility to not just determine the future for Greeks and Italians but for all of us. The debate is not about the euro zone. This is just part of the dishonest discourse created by Merkozism . Europe is awash with money, the euro zone can be fixed . What the future elections in Greece and Italy need to be about is whether we continue to swallow the bullshit or whether from the cradle of democracy comes a manifestation of the need for fundamental change in our economic and political model. My message to the Greek and Italian people is do not be deluded into thinking that their vote(whenever they are allowed to use it) is about the euro, it’s about what kind of Europe we want. It’s about scaling back our casino economy and reclaiming politics. Like the numerous protesters across the world we have to build a movement of dissent from the primacy of our economically driven way of thinking. Nothing less will do.