The ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) online periodical, THE DRUM, commissioned me to write an article comparing and contrasting the policy responses to the Crisis of Japan and of the Eurozone. Click here for the ABC’s website. Or read on below… Continue reading
Taking stock: May Day video discussion with Unite Solidarity International
2 MayThe video recording of my discussion with Andrew Brady, of USI, below is for ‘true believers’ only. It is a talk from the heart about the Eurozone Crisis on the day when labour around the world heralds the obligation and asserts the right of working people to demand a re-think of the social relations governing production, distribution and governmance. On this, rather bleak, May Day, with rising unemployment and poverty taking their hideous toll in Europe, Andrew gave me an opportunity to express fully, and without a whiff of strategic rhetoric, my frustration regarding the European elites’ inability even to look after themselves properly. In a confessional mood, I told Andrew that Europe resembles a ship whose captain is interested far less in the seaworthiness of her vessel than in maintaining her firm grip on her crew. In the video I speak openly as a leftwinger who finds himself in the awkward, and quite schizophrenic, situation of trying to stop European capitalism from committing suicide when the stewards of European capitalism are sitting idly by, unwittingly encouraging a suicide which they will suffer from massively.
Before or after watching this video, please do visit USI’s webpage and contrbute if you can to their worthy campaign to throw bridges across our many, and growing, European divisions.
Intransigent Bundesbank: Mr Jens Weidmann’s surreptitious campaign to bring back the (greater) Deutsch Mark
27 AprAny fair minded reading of the Bundesbank’s latest Constitutional Court deposition must lead to one of two conclusions: Either the Bundesbank has failed to recognise the existentialist threat to the Eurozone (that was placed in suspended animation during the past eight months or so), or the Bundesbank has intentionally opted for a strategy that will, sooner or later, see the disbanding of the current Eurozone. Loath to assume naiveté on the Bundesbank’s part, I opt for the latter. Here is why: Continue reading
Bitcoin and the dangerous fantasy of ‘apolitical’ money
22 AprThe Crash of 2008 has infused our societies with enormous scepticism on the role of the authorities, both government and Central Banks. It is quite natural that many dream of a currency that politicians, bankers and central bankers cannot manipulate; a currency of the people by the people for the people. Bitcoin has emerged as the great white hope of something of the sort. Alas, the hope it brings to many people’s hearts and minds is false. And the reason is simple: While it is true that local communities have, in the past, generated successful communitarian currencies (that enabled them to improve welfare in their midst, especially at a time of acute economic crises), there can be no de-politicised currency capable of ‘powering’ an advanced, industrial society.
Greek Banksters in Action: On the latest twist in the story of mafia-style terror spreading through the Greek polity
19 AprLast November I posted a piece entitled A Small Victory for Press Freedom in Greece’s Struggle against Cleptocracy. That story concerned the courageous decision of Kostas Vaxevanis, one of Greece’s few, valiant investigative reporters, to publish the so-called Lagarde List; the list of Swiss bank account holders that Greece’s political class did its utmost to keep hidden, to pretend that either it never existed or that it had been ‘misplaced’. Since then, Vaxevanis has been arrested by Special Branch officers, was tried in the Greek Courts, was acquitted triumphantly, and, more recently, awarded one of international journalism’s top awards.
In an earlier piece, last July, (entitled Bankruptocracy in the Greek Sector of Bailoutistan) I had drawn my readers’ attention to the remarkable revelations of Reuters’ Stephen Grey regarding the ponzi scheme put together by Greek bankers for the purposes of usurping Europe’s bank recapitalisation rules, pretending that they managed to draw private capital into their insolvent banks which never really existed. My piece castigated the Greek media for maintaining a veil of silence on these corrupt and criminal practices, while highlighting the troika’s curious lack of interest in the shenanigans of bankers who are receiving billions of European taxpayers’ money (in the process of the so-called ‘recapitalisation’ process).
Today’s post links these two stories together in a manner that you, dear reader, will find startling, worrying, enraging, disconcerting. It comprises, mainly, the summary of a letter that Kostas Vaxevanis sent to a London based journalist last week (the translation and summarising from the Greek original is mine). With this letter Vaxevanis sought support, advice and an opportunity of spreading the news of the dire situation faced by Greeks (citizens and journalists) who refuse to keep silent in the face of deep seated, criminal corruption. I urge you to read on. Continue reading
