The “New Austerity” Road to Neoserfdom

[Karmadillo]

But don't fight back. Let your children worry about it.

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/06/europes-fiscal-dystopia-new-austerity.html

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In England, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has described a "euro mutiny" against regressive fiscal policy. But it is more than that. Beyond merely shrinking the economy, the neoliberal aim is to change the shape of the trajectory along which Western civilization has been moving for the past two centuries. It is nothing less than to roll back Social Security and pensions for labor, health care, education and other public spending, to dismantle the social welfare state, the Progressive Era and even classical liberalism.

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It is the rhetoric of fiscal and financial class war. The problem is that there is not enough economic surpluses available to pay the financial sector on its bad loans while also paying pensions and social security. Something has to give. The commission is to provide a cover story for a revived Rubinomics, this time aimed not at the former Soviet Union but here at home. Its aim is to scale back Social Security while reviving George Bush's aborted privatization plan to send FICA paycheck withholding into the stock market – that is, into the hands of money managers to stick into an array of junk financial packages designed to skim off labor's savings.

So Mr. Obama is hypocritical in warning Europe not to go too far too fast to shrink its economy and squeeze out a rising army of the unemployed. His idea at home is to do the same thing. The strategy is to panic voters about the federal debt – panic them enough to oppose spending on the social programs designed to help them. The fiscal crisis is being blamed on demographic mathematics of an aging population – not on the exponentially soaring private debt overhead, junk loans and massive financial fraud that the government is bailing out.

What really is causing the financial and fiscal squeeze, of course, is the fact that that government funding is now needed to compensate the financial sector for what promises to be year after year of losses as loans go bad in economies that are all loaned up and sinking into negative equity.

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Somebody must take a loss on the economy's bad loans – and bankers want the economy to take the loss, to "save the financial system." From the financial sector's vantage point, the economy is to be managed to preserve bank liquidity, rather than the financial system run to serve the economy. Government social spending (on everything apart from bank bailouts and financial subsidies) and disposable personal income are to be cut back to keep the debt overhead from being written down. Corporate cash flow is to be used to pay creditors, not employ more labor and make long-term capital investment.

more...

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. You better factor in population and natural resources.

[Greyhound]

2. K&R. Whistling past the graveyard has become our national pastime.

[grasswire]

3. the author is a liar

"The problem is that there is not enough economic surpluses available to pay the financial sector on its bad loans while also paying pensions and social security. Something has to give."

End foreign wars. End imperialism. That's the "something".

[inna]

4. No, he is not. You missed the point.

He was explaining "the rhetoric of fiscal and financial class war".


K&R, good OP.

[WillyT]

5. HUGE K & R !!!

:mad:

:kick:

[xchrom]

6. A neo-liberal -- a neo-conservative -

They have remarkable common ground.

[cdsilv]

7. Hm. In additon to 'kill all the lawyers', we need 'kill all the banksters'...

at some point the torches, pitchforks, guns that the Supremes so conveniently affirmed that it is our RIGHT to own and USE, come out.

We're just defending ourselves. When the rich are dead, eventually their wealth will 'trickle down', or perhaps 'tinkle down'.

Attempting to cannibalize the 'middle class' is always going to be a losing proposition for the rich, because there are more of us than them.

We will in the end, prevail but there will be a lot of pain between here and there.

It really is class warfare, brought to you by the GOP - they trained an incredibly efficient killing force in AfPak and Iraq and will eventually bring them home. To what?

[hootinholler]

9. I've noted that on occaision as well. n/t

[amborin]

8. K&R

[Karmadillo]

10. Kick

nt

[hobbit709]

11. Funny how the "austerity" they want to impose never applies to themselves.

[raccoon]

12. +1000. nt