In the past 12 months, four European premiers have lost their jobs because they failed to fix their countries’ mounting debt problems. A fifth could join the list on Nov. 20, when Spain holds a general election.
The take-away: When leaders fail to address urgent fiscal matters, the capital markets will punish -- and ultimately remove -- them by making the cost of financing debt prohibitively high.
Heads started rolling this year when Ireland’s and Portugal’s prime ministers lost elections soon after being forced to accept EU bailouts. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Greece’s George Papandreou are the latest victims; both have been replaced by economic technocrats with no particular party loyalty.
....
The ability to say no will come in handy. Italy must reduce its long-term spending and reform its stalled economy enough to reinvigorate growth. It must do all this in time to roll over, by April, about 200 billion euros ($272 billion) in maturing bonds -- at reasonable rates. The interest rate demanded by investors last week punched through the 7 percent mark, the level reached by Greece, Ireland and Portugal when they sought bailouts.
European markets were not totally appeased yesterday: Stocks declined overall, and 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) of five-year Italian notes sold at a 6.29 percent yield, the highest since June 1997, pushing Italy’s total debt up even more. If Italy is forced to continue to pay such astronomical rates, it won’t be able to refinance all its debt, and default will follow.
To avoid that, Monti is likely to pursue policies that will make Italy more growth-oriented and less crisis-prone. As an economist, he understands that what Italy does to help its economy is also crucial to preventing a global recession. His reforms must include eliminating red tape and loosening the stranglehold that professional unions have over the job market. He also must revamp Italy’s tax code to make evasion much harder and further reform an overburdened public pension system.
....
One hopes these shifts have not been lost on President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress. The U.S. certainly doesn’t face anything like the dire situations confronting Greece and Italy. Still, it would be foolhardy to assume the U.S. can’t be similarly manhandled by the capital markets, even with 10-year Treasury yields at a low 2.04 percent.
Failure by the congressional supercommittee, say, to come up with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and revenue increases over 10 years, thereby triggering larger automatic cuts, could easily open a new chapter of vulnerability. The deep cuts triggered by the failure would certainly mark the apogee of political dysfunction.
there is some weird ideology here. the second paragraph is bizarre because elsewhere we read:
(Reuters) - France and Germany, Europe's two central powers, clashed on Wednesday over whether the European Central Bank should intervene more forcefully to halt the euro zone's accelerating debt crisis after modest bond purchases failed to stop the rout.
....
Financial markets are skeptical that unelected technocrats will have the political clout to impose unpopular reforms, the two-year-old debt crisis risks engulfing the entire currency bloc and hurting global growth.
And there are growing signs of strain in the money market, the plumbing of the international financial system.
Banks in the euro zone face increasing difficulties in obtaining dollar funding, and while the stresses are nowhere near as acute as they were in the 2008 financial crisis, they have continued to mount despite ECB moves to provide unlimited liquidity to banks.
"Markets are clearly expecting a circuit breaker to alleviate pressure on periphery bond yields," said David Scutt, a trader at Arab Bank Australia in Sydney. "If no announcement is forthcoming in the days ahead, one suspects that the situation could unravel fairly quickly.
it's operating purely on instinct now. contradictions heightening, etc.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/22c46df8-1060-11e1-8010-00144feabdc0.html
Corrado Passera, who on Wednesday was named a “superminister” responsible for economic development in Mario Monti’s technical government, has long been considered the most ready to make a move into politics of any member of Italy’s business elite.
Mr Passera, chief executive of Italy’s largest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo, has significantly more industry clout and experience than Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the Ferrari boss who has been courting the idea of a political career.
....
Mr Passera was brought into Banco Ambrosiano when it was mired in scandal and inquiries into Mafia associations, after the Catholic banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge. Close acquaintances say Mr Passera’s subsequent interlude at Poste Italiane, a bulwark of the Italian state and now a formidable banking rival to Italy’s private lenders, honed his political skills.
it does not get much more shady than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi
potushead posted:
punishment and appeasement: play the "capital markets or angry god" game
yes, exactly. they are making futile attempts to appease themselves through the ECB while carrying out the punishment for failing to appease them. that is apparently the "political" direction now. this is what Thomas Friedman means by "radical centrism" and the press longs for when lamenting the "political deadlock" in the US (the equivalent of "governance problems" in the EU).
dm posted:
wow, Italy....
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/22c46df8-1060-11e1-8010-00144feabdc0.htmlCorrado Passera, who on Wednesday was named a “superminister” responsible for economic development in Mario Monti’s technical government, has long been considered the most ready to make a move into politics of any member of Italy’s business elite.
Mr Passera, chief executive of Italy’s largest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo, has significantly more industry clout and experience than Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the Ferrari boss who has been courting the idea of a political career.
....
Mr Passera was brought into Banco Ambrosiano when it was mired in scandal and inquiries into Mafia associations, after the Catholic banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge. Close acquaintances say Mr Passera’s subsequent interlude at Poste Italiane, a bulwark of the Italian state and now a formidable banking rival to Italy’s private lenders, honed his political skills.
it does not get much more shady than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi
haha man its not just shady its positively subterranean
Claims have been made that factors in Calvi's death were the Vatican Bank, Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder; the Mafia, which may have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering; and the Propaganda Due or P2 clandestine Masonic Lodge.
the more things change....
the populace of my own country are docile like cows, but i have hopes that other european peoples arent stupid & that we'll see ~technocrats hanging from piano wire before this things out
mistersix posted:dm posted:
wow, Italy....
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/22c46df8-1060-11e1-8010-00144feabdc0.htmlCorrado Passera, who on Wednesday was named a “superminister” responsible for economic development in Mario Monti’s technical government, has long been considered the most ready to make a move into politics of any member of Italy’s business elite.
Mr Passera, chief executive of Italy’s largest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo, has significantly more industry clout and experience than Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the Ferrari boss who has been courting the idea of a political career.
....
Mr Passera was brought into Banco Ambrosiano when it was mired in scandal and inquiries into Mafia associations, after the Catholic banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge. Close acquaintances say Mr Passera’s subsequent interlude at Poste Italiane, a bulwark of the Italian state and now a formidable banking rival to Italy’s private lenders, honed his political skills.
it does not get much more shady than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvihaha man its not just shady its positively subterranean
Claims have been made that factors in Calvi's death were the Vatican Bank, Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder; the Mafia, which may have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering; and the Propaganda Due or P2 clandestine Masonic Lodge.
the more things change....
speaking of P2
When searching Licio Gelli's villa, the police found a document called the "Plan for Democratic Rebirth", which called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli#2003_interview
In 2003, Gelli told La Repubblica that it seemed that the P2 "democratic rebirth plan" was being implemented by Silvio Berlusconi:
Every morning I speak to my conscience and the dialogue calms me down. I look at the country, read the newspaper, and think: "All is becoming a reality little by little, piece by piece. To be truthful, I should have had the copyright to it. Justice, TV, public order. I wrote about this thirty years ago... Berlusconi is an extraordinary man, a man of action. This is what Italy needs: not a man of words, but a man of action.
aerdil posted:
its been seriously fascinating watching how quickly democracy is shunted in favor of unelected technocrats. political democracy is such an illusion they arent even trying to hide it anymore in the eurozone
yeah, there was this incredible article in the FT that i can't find now and they were kinda reflecting on how bad it looked.
mistersix posted:
haha man its not just shady its positively subterranean
Claims have been made that factors in Calvi's death were the Vatican Bank, Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder; the Mafia, which may have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering; and the Propaganda Due or P2 clandestine Masonic Lodge.
the more things change....
Calvi was laundering money to fund P2 because the Vatican is/was an "offshore" tax haven/financial center thanks to guess who: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty
dm posted:
yeah, there was this incredible article in the FT that i can't find now and they were kinda reflecting on how bad it looked.
Calvi was laundering money to fund P2 because the Vatican is/was an "offshore" tax haven/financial center thanks to guess who: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty
lmao
i think this is the article you refer to http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/000cb4ae-0abc-11e1-b9f6-00144feabdc0.html
but i think he sort of misses the point. from a sufficiently advanced viewpoint, the wall street journal will look like a trade publication with bad writing, but its paul krugman who will be taken as symptomatic of capitalism in crisis. why? because he is the one who (most of the time) pushes the idea that there are simple regulatory and administrative actions that could be taken to sustain capitalism. krugman is convinced that corruption is undermining sensible postkeynesian policies, when in reality that's the true utopianism, that such thing as a balanced capitalist society is possible. Krugman sorta realizes that at some level but he doesn't have any capacity to express how to move beyond that because he is a liberal. so in the future people will point to krugman as the west's failure, not the wall street journal.
dm posted:
"Financial markets are skeptical that unelected technocrats will have the political clout to impose unpopular reforms, the two-year-old debt crisis risks engulfing the entire currency bloc and hurting global growth. "
it's operating purely on instinct now. contradictions heightening, etc.
what im wondering is to what extent capital acting baldly on national interests without political intermediaries, capital decoupled from the nation, can be sustained when the application of force is still so thoroughly a nationalist asset.
what i mean is that in the past capital has controlled the state and the state has controlled force and this is ultimately the tool which extracts value. in the current crisis, with this "technocrat" stuff especially its as if there is an attempt at stripping the administrative middleman down to a skeleton with a bludgeon, all the human functions flensed from the political with the exception of those that enable more efficient extraction. but its those other functions that make the government palatable to the governed and "politics is the art of the possible" and these skeleton dudes are not exactly artists.
further, while international financial collusion is nothing new the deterritorialization of capital has increased such that its not exactly collusion between the capitalist classes of different countries but the action of fundamentally transnational entities; so instead of american banks coordinating with italian banks there is Goldman Sachs. heres part of a kinda disjointed essay by Sakai that im getting some of this idea from:
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/texts/mcantiwar.html
Globalization is taking a crow bar to the old capitalist class structure, that’s for sure. The relationship between big capital – world banks and transnational corporations – and their former home nations and former subject classes is splintering. The growth in the economy is in these transnational corporations, who are constantly churning and shifting economic relationships – bankrupting many smaller capitalists and farmers and entire local economies. So smaller local bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie are now trying to recapture their “abandoned” regions and neo-colonies, and are starting “anti-imperialist” campaigns and wars of morphed nationalism against global imperialism. These struggles -- which everywhere attract mass support from the dispossessed male classes -- can range politically from neo-fascist and clerical fascist to the authoritarian left, but are usually far right. These are intra-capitalist wars of local capitalist insurgencies trying to win back control of “their” nations from the Great Powers.
i dont entirely agree with the trend of reaction being overarchingly fascist (i dont think the arab spring had happened when this was written) but i do agree that its a significant component, and i thoroughly agree with the nationalist element.
so what i see is an attempt by capital to extract more directly with less civic middle management interfering and diverting profit, yet i don't see any sort of corresponding restructuring of police and military assets out of the governmental sphere. immediately before that paragraph from sakai is one criticizing negri & hardt's notion of a single transnational (Imperial) capitalist class by saying the actual situation is more like a flux of independent yet communicating fragments,
Not one unified world empire but for the next period “anarcho-capitalism” as a new order of disorder. Not one world mega-nation but many more small states, semi-autonomous areas and many, many more armies and para-military mafias
now clearly theres some increase in this (eg xe) but im not sure there's been ENOUGH. it's as if they're trying to up the level of extraction past the politically possible without taking into account that it is ultimately physical, personal force that enables this and the instruments of physical force are still an organ of the civic/political apparatus they are sapping, a nationalist organ when there is a strong nationalist reaction against them. switching out the generals like they did in greece is great, but the military itself is not a general that can be switched.
In the immediate aftermath of the first OWS SF crackdown i read an article (which theres no way i can find again with wddp down sorry) talking about how disastrous it was for the city, in terms of publicity / cost / and the fact that police morale was thoroughly sapped -- the city police were augmented with other (county i think) forces which were apparently largely responsible for starting the violence, the administration distanced itself from the action, the cops were basically forced to take the repercussions of something they didnt particularly want to do in the first place.
It went on to suggest that police morale in some cities coudl break before the protesters do; i thought this was overly optimistic considering increasing DHS coordination and of coruse outside forces can be rotated in. But what i'm thinking is that there is an affinity between capital and the state and between the state and the actual individual agents of force, but there is no direct affinity between capital and these agents, and one of the contradictions which could be heightening is that with the withering of the state as intermediary the agents are being controlled by an interest they have no affinity for, whereas the movements they are tasked to act against have a nationalist cast to which there is a militaristic affinity.
Edited by discipline ()
aerdil posted:
its been seriously fascinating watching how quickly democracy is shunted in favor of unelected technocrats. political democracy is such an illusion they arent even trying to hide it anymore in the eurozone
i dont like the term technocrat but ya
mistersix posted:
yeah, there was this incredible article in the FT that i can't find now and they were think this is the article you refer to http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/000cb4ae-0abc-11e1-b9f6-00144feabdc0.html
YES, thank you!
If ever modern Europe needed brave, charismatic leaders to carry their nation through turbulent times, it would seem to be now. Instead, it is as if the crew of the Starship Enterprise had concluded that Captain Jean-Luc Picard is no longer the man for the job and that it is time to send for the Borg. Efficient, calculating machines driving through unpopular measures across the eurozone with the battle cry “resistance is futile” are apparently the order of the day. Faced with a deep crisis, once-proud European nations are essentially preparing to hand over power to Ernst & Young.
and here is where we really get to the ~aesthetics~ of the thing:
....The premise is that only such men will take the necessary decisions that cowardly political parties are unable or unwilling to make. Great, brave politicians may be preferred but alas, – it may be noted – they do not seem to be in plentiful supply. The return of the technocrats represents the failure of the political class.
this notion that "politics has failed" and more drastic measures need to be taken in anticipation of something. but there were no real politics in the first place, which fits with the politicians' alleged indecisiveness. indeed, the closest thing to a political act was Greece's referendum and we know how that went.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
it doesn't look right. what is is different from that which appears. we look to that which presents presentation (of what is not in this case), or "shows itself in itself"
Good politicians are able to empathise with their voters. We may affect to despise politicians for being too easily blown by the winds of public opinion, but there is sense and stability in selecting those with a feel for what the voters will accept.
Tsargon posted:
ive been calling these "technocrats" compradors for a bit now irl but i think viceroys would be better, has more imperial punch to it
yeah i think the term "technocrat" is inappropriate. i don't like "real technocrats" either, but these guys have no techne.
infrateal posted:
In the immediate aftermath of the first OWS SF crackdown i read an article (which theres no way i can find again with wddp down sorry) talking about how disastrous it was for the city, in terms of publicity / cost / and the fact that police morale was thoroughly sapped -- the city police were augmented with other (county i think) forces which were apparently largely responsible for starting the violence, the administration distanced itself from the action, the cops were basically forced to take the repercussions of something they didnt particularly want to do in the first place.
It went on to suggest that police morale in some cities coudl break before the protesters do; i thought this was overly optimistic considering increasing DHS coordination and of coruse outside forces can be rotated in. But what i'm thinking is that there is an affinity between capital and the state and between the state and the actual individual agents of force, but there is no direct affinity between capital and these agents, and one of the contradictions which could be heightening is that with the withering of the state as intermediary the agents are being controlled by an interest they have no affinity for, whereas the movements they are tasked to act against have a nationalist cast to which there is a militaristic affinity.
those are the basic conditions for a junta, but you have to actually have some prerequisites for it. this is why it makes capitalists so uncomfortable. i read something where they actually made an estimate for how long Monti could be kept in place to try to make the cuts and it was three months
animedad posted:
hahahah http://exiledonline.com/austerity-fascism-in-greece-the-real-1-doctrine/
yesterday i clicked on this and then started writing my post and i really wish i had READ the damn thing first because lol 
Looking back at the last-minute maneuvers, it seems pretty clear that Papandreou’s decision to fire all the military leaders on the day he announced his referendum on austerity—his attempt to counterbalance Western banker power and local military power with democratic people power–was essentially an imperialist power-struggle in an uppity colony, whose inhabitants are seen as little more than sources of extraction for banker profits. So we have the creditor nations trying to buy off the military as Banker D(efault)-Day approaches, and Papandreou trying to counter that by both bending to their will, realizing he’s through, and trying to save himself by empowering the people in his country. But Papandreou was far too weak and far too compromised. Ultimately he was no match; he never had a chance. And the popular will of Greece’s citizens is barely an afterthought.
with the 400 tanks and shit they actually were going for the whole military... and putting fascists into power to counteract democratic nationalism.. i think the area under my analysis' stairs will be experiencing very little heat loss 
havent even read the other posts yet flerugggh
xipe posted:
agreed.
getfiscal posted:david frum wrote this thing a bit ago as a letter to his conservative friends being like, okay folks, if we were in the future looking back at this economic crisis, who would we think was a more reliable source of advice in retrospect, the last decade of editorials from the wall street journal, or the last decade of articles by paul krugman. and he's like maybe we need to admit that you guys were fucking wrong a lot and that that has consequences.
but i think he sort of misses the point. from a sufficiently advanced viewpoint, the wall street journal will look like a trade publication with bad writing, but its paul krugman who will be taken as symptomatic of capitalism in crisis. why? because he is the one who (most of the time) pushes the idea that there are simple regulatory and administrative actions that could be taken to sustain capitalism. krugman is convinced that corruption is undermining sensible postkeynesian policies, when in reality that's the true utopianism, that such thing as a balanced capitalist society is possible. Krugman sorta realizes that at some level but he doesn't have any capacity to express how to move beyond that because he is a liberal. so in the future people will point to krugman as the west's failure, not the wall street journal.
that's true, but Krugman does have a far more realistic plan involving stirring up nationalism with artificial military threats as an excuse to do a little pump-priming in the private sector. he is deluded in the belief that pump-priming will work, but that particular pump has a tendency to take on a life of its own with, you know, fascism.
xipe posted:
lol
dm posted:getfiscal posted:david frum wrote this thing a bit ago as a letter to his conservative friends being like, okay folks, if we were in the future looking back at this economic crisis, who would we think was a more reliable source of advice in retrospect, the last decade of editorials from the wall street journal, or the last decade of articles by paul krugman. and he's like maybe we need to admit that you guys were fucking wrong a lot and that that has consequences.
but i think he sort of misses the point. from a sufficiently advanced viewpoint, the wall street journal will look like a trade publication with bad writing, but its paul krugman who will be taken as symptomatic of capitalism in crisis. why? because he is the one who (most of the time) pushes the idea that there are simple regulatory and administrative actions that could be taken to sustain capitalism. krugman is convinced that corruption is undermining sensible postkeynesian policies, when in reality that's the true utopianism, that such thing as a balanced capitalist society is possible. Krugman sorta realizes that at some level but he doesn't have any capacity to express how to move beyond that because he is a liberal. so in the future people will point to krugman as the west's failure, not the wall street journal.that's true, but Krugman does have a far more realistic plan involving stirring up nationalism with artificial military threats as an excuse to do a little pump-priming in the private sector. he is deluded in the belief that pump-priming will work, but that particular pump has a tendency to take on a life of its own with, you know, fascism.
xipe posted:
lol
lmao is he already pushing military threats? i avoid him, i probably shouldnt, but i do.
who, china?