[P2P-F] Fwd: [gang8] Trichet's financial fascism

Sat Jun 4 14:32:17 CEST 2011

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From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:58 PM
Subject: Fwd: [gang8] Trichet's financial fascism
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From: Michael Hudson <michael.hudson at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 3:25 PM
Subject: [gang8] Trichet's financial fascism
To: GANG8 <gang8 at yahoogroups.com>

Here’s my Counterpunch/UMKC blog/Naked Capitalism article for today.

*Replacing Economic Democracy with Financial Oligarchy *

  Michael Hudson

            Soon after the Socialist Party won Greece’s national elections
in autumn 2009, it became apparent that the government’s finances were in a
shambles. In May 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead in
rounding up €120bn ($180 billion) from European governments to subsidize
Greece’s unprogressive tax system that had led its government into debt –
which Wall Street banks had helped conceal with Enron-style accounting.

            The tax system operated as a siphon collecting revenue to pay
the German and French banks that were buying government bonds (at rising
interest risk premiums). The bankers are now moving to make this role
formal, an official condition for rolling over Greek bonds as they come due,
and extend maturities on the short-term financial string that Greece is now
operating under. Existing bondholders are to reap a windfall if this plan
succeeds. Moody’s lowered Greece’s credit rating to junk status on June 1
(to Caa1, down from B1, which was already pretty low), estimating a 50/50
likelihood of default. The downgrade serves to tighten the screws yet
further on the Greek government. Regardless of what European officials do,
Moody’s noted, “The increased likelihood that Greece’s supporters (the IMF,
ECB and the EU Commission, together known as the “Troika”) will, at some
point in the future, require the participation of private creditors in a
debt restructuring as a precondition for funding support.”[1] <#_ftn1>

            The conditionality for the new “reformed” loan package is that
Greece must initiate a class war by raising its taxes, lowering its social
spending – and even private-sector pensions – and sell off public land,
tourist sites, islands, ports, water and sewer facilities. This will raise
the cost of living and doing business, eroding the nation’s already limited
export competitiveness. The bankers sanctimoniously depict this as a
“rescue” of Greek finances.

            What really were rescued a year ago, in May 2010, were the
French banks that held €31 billion of Greek bonds, German banks with €23
billion, and other foreign investors. The problem was how to get the Greeks
to go along. Newly elected Prime Minister George Papandreou’s Socialists
seemed able to deliver their constituency along similar lines to what
neoliberal Social Democrat and Labor parties throughout Europe had followed
–privatizing basic infrastructure and pledging future revenue to pay the
bankers.

            The opportunity never had been better for pulling the financial
string to grab property and tighten the fiscal screws. Bankers for their
part were eager to make loans to finance buyouts of public gambling,
telephones, ports and transport or similar monopoly opportunities. And for
Greece’s own wealthier classes, the EU loan package would enable the country
to remain within the Eurozone long enough to permit them to move their money
out of the country before the point arrived at which Greece would be forced
to replace the euro with the drachma and devalue it. Until such a switch to
a sinking currency occurred, Greece was to follow Baltic and Irish policy of
“internal devaluation,” that is, wage deflation and government spending
cutbacks (except for payments to the financial sector) to lower employment
and hence wage levels.

            What actually is devalued in austerity programs or currency
depreciation is the price of labor. That is the main domestic cost, inasmuch
as there is a common world price for fuels and minerals, consumer goods,
food and even credit. If wages cannot be reduced by “internal devaluation”
(unemployment starting with the public sector, leading to falling wages),
currency depreciation will do the trick in the end. This is how the Europe’s
war of creditors against debtor countries turns into a class war. But to
impose such neoliberal reform, foreign pressure is necessary to bypass
domestic, democratically elected Parliaments. Not every country’s voters can
be expected to be as passive in acting against their own interests as those
of Latvia and Ireland.

            Most of the Greek population recognizes just what has been
happening as this scenario has unfolded over the past year. “Papandreou
himself has admitted we had no say in the economic measures thrust upon us,”
said Manolis Glezos on the left. “They were decided by the EU and IMF. We
are now under foreign supervision and that raises questions about our
economic, military and political independence.”[2] <#_ftn2> On the right
wing of the political spectrum, conservative leader Antonis Samaras said on
May 27 as negotiations with the European troika escalated: “We don’t agree
with a policy that kills the economy and destroys society. … There is only
one way out for Greece, the renegotiation of the [EU/IMF] bailout deal.”[3]
<#_ftn3>

            But the EU creditors upped the ante: To refuse the deal, they
threatened, would result in a withdrawal of funds causing a bank collapse
and economic anarchy.

            The Greeks refused to surrender quietly. Strikes spread from the
public-sector unions to become a nationwide “I won’t pay” movement as Greeks
refused to pay road tolls or other public access charges. Police and other
collectors did not try to enforce collections. The emerging populist
consensus prompted Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker to make a
similar threat to that which Britain’s Gordon Brown had made to Iceland: If
Greece would not knuckle under to European finance ministers, they would
block IMF release of its scheduled June tranche of its loan package. This
would block the government from paying foreign bankers and the vulture funds
that have been buying up Greek debt at a deepening discount.

            To many Greeks, this is a threat by finance ministers to shoot
themselves in the foot. If there is no money to pay, foreign bondholders
will suffer – as long as Greece puts its own economy first. But that is a
big “if.” Socialist Prime Minister Papandreou emulated Iceland’s Social
Democratic Sigurdardottir in urging a “consensus” to obey EU finance
ministers. “Opposition parties reject his latest austerity package on the
grounds that the belt-tightening agreed in return for a €110bn ($155bn)
bail-out is choking the life out of the economy.”* *(*Ibid*.)

             At issue is whether Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the
rest of Europe will roll back democratic reform and move toward financial
oligarchy. The financial objective is to bypass parliament by demanding a
“consensus” to put foreign creditors first, above the economy at large.
Parliaments are being asked to relinquish their policy-making power. The
very definition of a “free market” has now become centralized planning – in
the hands of central bankers. This is the new road to serfdom that
financialized “free markets” are leading to: markets free for privatizers to
charge monopoly prices for basic services “free” of price regulation and
anti-trust regulation, “free” of limits on credit to protect debtors, and
above all free of interference from elected parliaments. Prying natural
monopolies in transportation, communications, lotteries and the land itself
away from the public domain is called the *alternative* to serfdom, not the
road to debt peonage and a financialized neofeudalism that looms as the new
future reality. Such is the upside-down economic philosophy of our age.

            Concentration of financial power in non-democratic hands is
inherent in the way that Europe centralized planning in financial hands was
achieved in the first place. The European Central Bank has no elected
government behind it that can levy taxes. The EU constitution prevents the
ECB from bailing out governments. Indeed, the IMF Articles of Agreement also
block it from giving domestic fiscal support for budget deficits. “A member
state may obtain IMF credits only on the condition that it has ‘a need to
make the purchase because of its balance of payments or its reserve position
or developments in its reserves.’ Greece, Ireland, and Portugal are
certainly not short of foreign exchange reserves … The IMF is lending
because of budgetary problems, and that is not what it is supposed to do.
The Deutsche Bundesbank made this point very clear in its monthly report of
March 2010: ‘Any financial contribution by the IMF to solve problems that do
not imply a need for foreign currency – such as the direct financing of
budget deficits – would be incompatible with its monetary mandate.’ IMF head
Dominique Strauss-Kahn and chief economist Olivier Blanchard are leading the
IMF into forbidden territory, and there is no court which can stop them.”[4]
<#_ftn4>

            The moral is that when it comes to bailing out bankers, rules
are ignored – in order to serve the “higher justice” of saving banks and
their high-finance counterparties from taking a loss. This is quite a
contrast compared to IMF policy toward labor and “taxpayers.” The class war
is back in business – with a vengeance, and bankers are the winners this
time around.

            The European Economic Community that preceded the European Union
was created by a generation of leaders whose prime objective was to end the
internecine warfare that tore Europe apart for a thousand years. The aim by
many was to end the phenomenon of nation states themselves – on the premise
that it is nations that go to war. The general expectation was that economic
democracy would oppose the royalist and aristocratic mind-sets that sought
glory in conquest. Domestically, economic reform was to purify European
economies from the legacy of past feudal conquests of the land, of the
public commons in general. The aim was to benefit the population at large.
That was the reform program of classical political economy.

            European integration started with trade as the path of least
resistance – the Coal and Steel Community promoted by Robert Schuman in
1952, followed by the European Economic Community (EEC, the Common Market)
in 1957. Customs union integration and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
were topped by financial integration. But without a real continental
Parliament to write laws, set tax rates, protect labor’s working conditions
and consumers, and control offshore banking centers, centralized planning
passes by default into the hands of bankers and financial institutions. This
is the effect of replacing nation states with planning by bankers. It is how
democratic politics gets replaced with financial oligarchy.

             Finance is a form of warfare. Like military conquest, its aim
is to gain control of land, public infrastructure, and to impose tribute.
This involves dictating laws to its subjects, and concentrating social as
well as economic planning in centralized hands. This is what now is being
done by financial means, without the cost to the aggressor of fielding an
army. But the economies under attacked may be devastated as deeply by
financial stringency as by military attack when it comes to demographic
shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight.

            This attack is being mounted not by nation states as such, but
by a cosmopolitan financial class. Finance always has been cosmopolitan more
than nationalistic – and always has sought to impose its priorities and
lawmaking power over those of parliamentary democracies.

            Like any monopoly or vested interest, the financial strategy
seeks to block government power to regulate or tax it. From the financial
vantage point, the ideal function of government is to enhance and protect
finance capital and “the miracle of compound interest” that keeps fortunes
multiplying exponentially, faster than the economy can grow, until they eat
into the economic substance and do to the economy what predatory creditors
and *rentiers* did to the Roman Empire.

            This financial dynamic is what threatens to break up Europe
today. But the financial class has gained sufficient power to turn the
ideological tables and insist that what threatens European unity is national
populations acting to resist the cosmopolitan claims of finance capital to
impose austerity on labor. Debts that already have become unpayable are to
be taken onto the public balance sheet – without a military struggle,
needless to say. At least such bloodshed is now in the past. From the
vantage point of the Irish and Greek populations (perhaps soon to be joined
by those of Portugal and Spain), national parliamentary governments are to
be mobilized to impose the terms of national surrender to financial
planners. One almost can say that the ideal is to reduce parliaments to
local puppet regimes serving the cosmopolitan financial class by using debt
leverage to carve up what is left of the public domain that used to be
called “the commons.” As such, we now are entering a post-medieval world of
enclosures – an Enclosure Movement driven by financial law that overrides
public and common law, against the common good.

            Within Europe, financial power is concentrated in Germany,
France and the Netherlands. It is their banks that held most of the bonds of
the Greek government now being called on to impose austerity, and of the
Irish banks that already have been bailed out by Irish taxpayers.

            On Thursday, June 2, 2011, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet
spelled out the blueprint for how to establish financial oligarchy over all
Europe. Appropriately, he announced his plan upon receiving the Charlemagne
prize at Aachen, Germany – symbolically expressing how Europe was to be
unified not on the grounds of economic peace as dreamed of by the architects
of the Common Market in the 1950s, but on diametrically opposite oligarchic
grounds.

            At the outset of his speech[5] <#_ftn5> on “Building Europe,
building institutions,” Mr. Trichet appropriately credited the European
Council led by Mr. Van Rompuy for giving direction and momentum from the
highest level, and the Eurogroup of finance ministers led by Mr. Juncker.
Together, they formed what the popular press calls Europe’s creditor
“troika.” Mr. Trichet’s speech refers to “the ‘trialogue’ between the
Parliament, the Commission and the Council.”

            Europe’s task, he explained, was to follow Erasmus in bringing
Europe beyond its traditional “strict concept of nationhood.” The debt
problem called for new “monetary policy measures – we call them ‘non
standard’ decisions, strictly separated from the ‘standard’ decisions, and
aimed at restoring a better transmission of our monetary policy in these
abnormal market conditions.” The problem at hand is to make these conditions
a new normalcy – that of paying debts, and re-defining solvency to reflect a
nation’s ability to pay by selling off its public domain.

            “Countries that have not lived up to the letter or the spirit of
the rules have experienced difficulties,” Mr. Trichet noted. “Via contagion,
these difficulties have affected other countries in EMU. Strengthening the
rules to prevent unsound policies is therefore an urgent priority.” His use
of the term “contagion” depicted democratic government and protection of
debtors as a disease. Reminiscent of the Greek colonels’ speech that opened
the famous 1969 film “Z”: to combat leftism as if it were an agricultural
pest to be exterminated by proper ideological pesticide. Mr. Trichet adopted
the colonels’ rhetoric. The task of the Greek Socialists evidently is to do
what the colonels and their conservative successors could not do: deliver
labor to irreversible economic reforms.

            Arrangements are currently in place, involving financial
assistance under strict conditions, fully in line with the IMF policy. I am
aware that some observers have concerns about where this leads. The line
between regional solidarity and individual responsibility could become
blurred if the conditionality is not rigorously complied with.
             In my view, it could be appropriate to foresee for the medium
term two stages for countries in difficulty. This would naturally demand a
change of the Treaty.
             As a first stage, it is justified to provide financial
assistance in the context of a strong adjustment programme. It is
appropriate to give countries an opportunity to put the situation right
themselves and to restore stability.
             At the same time, such assistance is in the interests of the
euro area as a whole, as it prevents crises spreading in a way that could
cause harm to other countries.
             It is of paramount importance that adjustment occurs; that
countries – governments and opposition – unite behind the effort; and that
contributing countries survey with great care the implementation of the
programme.
             *But if a country is still not delivering, I think all would
agree that the second stage has to be different. Would it go too far if we
envisaged, at this second stage, giving euro area authorities a much deeper
and authoritative say in the formation of the country’s economic policies if
these go harmfully astray? A direct influence, well over and above the
reinforced surveillance that is presently envisaged?* … (my emphasis)

            The ECB President then gave the key political premise of his
reform program (if it is not a travesty to use the term “reform” for today’s
counter-Enlightenment):

            We can see before our eyes that membership of the EU, and even
more so of EMU, introduces a new understanding in the way sovereignty is
exerted. Interdependence means that countries de facto do not have complete
internal authority. They can experience crises caused entirely by the
unsound economic policies of others.
             With a new concept of a second stage, we would change
drastically the present governance based upon the dialectics of
surveillance, recommendations and sanctions. In the present concept, all the
decisions remain in the hands of the country concerned, even if the
recommendations are not applied, and even if this attitude triggers major
difficulties for other member countries. In the new concept, it would be not
only possible, but in some cases compulsory, in a second stage for the
European authorities – namely the Council on the basis of a proposal by the
Commission, in liaison with the ECB – to take themselves decisions
applicable in the economy concerned.
             One way this could be imagined is for European authorities to
have the right to veto some national economic policy decisions. The remit
could include in particular major fiscal spending items and elements
essential for the country’s competitiveness. …

            By “unsound economic policies,” Mr. Trichet means not paying
debts – by writing them down to the ability to pay without forfeiting land
and monopolies in the public domain, and refusing to replace political and
economic democracy with control by bankers. Twisting the knife into the long
history of European idealism, he deceptively depicted his proposed financial
coup d’état as if it were in the spirit of Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and
other liberals who promoted European integration in hope of creating a more
peaceful world – one that would be more prosperous and productive, not one
based on financial asset stripping.

            Jean Monnet in his memoirs 35 years ago wrote: “Nobody can say
today what will be the institutional framework of Europe tomorrow because
the future changes, which will be fostered by today’s changes, are
unpredictable.”
            In this Union of tomorrow, or of the day after tomorrow, would
it be too bold, in the economic field, with a single market, a single
currency and a single central bank, to envisage a ministry of finance of the
Union? Not necessarily a ministry of finance that administers a large
federal budget. But a ministry of finance that would exert direct
responsibilities in at least three domains: first, the surveillance of both
fiscal policies and competitiveness policies, as well as the direct
responsibilities mentioned earlier as regards countries in a “second stage”
inside the euro area; second, all the typical responsibilities of the
executive branches as regards the union’s integrated financial sector, so as
to accompany the full integration of financial services; and third, the
representation of the union confederation in international financial
institutions.
            Husserl concluded his lecture in a visionary way: “Europe’s
existential crisis can end in only one of two ways: in its demise (…)
lapsing into a hatred of the spirit and into barbarism ; or in its rebirth
from the spirit of philosophy, through a heroism of reason (…)”.

             As my friend Marshall Auerback quipped in response to this
speech, its message is familiar enough as a description of what is happening
in the United States: “This is the Republican answer in Michigan. Take over
the cities in crisis run by disfavored minorities, remove their
democratically elected governments from power, and use extraordinary powers
to mandate austerity.” In other words, no room for any agency like that
advocated by Elizabeth Warren is to exist in the EU. That is not the kind of
idealistic integration toward which Mr. Trichet and the ECB aim. He is
leading toward what the closing credits of the film “Z” put on the screen:
The things banned by the junta include: “peace movements
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_movement><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_movement>,
strikes
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action>,
labor unions
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union>,
long hair
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hair><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hair>
on men, The Beatles
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles>,
other modern and popular music
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music>(‘
*la musique populaire’*), Sophocles
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophocles><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophocles>,
Leo Tolstoy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy>,
Aeschylus
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus>,
writing that Socrates
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates>
was homosexual
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual>,
Eugène Ionesco
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ionesco><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ionesco>,
Jean-Paul Sartre
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre>,
Anton Chekhov
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov>,
Harold Pinter
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Pinter><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Pinter>,
Edward Albee
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albee><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albee>,
Mark Twain
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain>,
Samuel Beckett
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett>,
the bar association <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(law)> , sociology
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology>,
international encyclopedias
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia>,
free press
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press>,
and new math
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_math><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_math>.
Also banned is the letter Z <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeta_(letter)> , which was used as a symbolic
reminder that Grigoris Lambrakis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigoris_Lambrakis><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigoris_Lambrakis>
and by extension the spirit of resistance lives (zi = ‘he (Lambrakis)
lives’).”[6] <#_ftn6>

            As the *Wall Street Journal* accurately summarized the political
thrust of Mr. Trichet’s speech, “if a bailed-out country isn’t delivering on
its fiscal-adjustment program, then a ‘second stage’ could be required,
which could possibly involve ‘giving euro-area authorities a much deeper and
authoritative say in the formation of the county's economic policies …’”[7]
<#_ftn7> Eurozone authorities – specifically, their financial institutions,
not democratic institutions aimed at protecting labor and consumers, raising
living standards and so forth – “could have ‘the right to veto some national
economic-policy decisions’ under such a regime. In particular, a veto could
apply for ‘major fiscal spending items and elements essential for the
country’s competitiveness.’
* *            Paraphrasing Mr. Trichet’s lugubrious query, “In this union
of tomorrow ... would it be too bold in the economic field ... to envisage a
ministry of finance for the union?” the article noted that “Such a ministry
wouldn’t necessarily have a large federal budget but would be involved in
surveillance and issuing vetoes, and would represent the currency bloc at
international financial institutions.”

            My own memory is that socialist idealism after World War II was
world-weary in seeing nation states as the instruments for military warfare.
This pacifist ideology came to overshadow the original socialist ideology of
the late 19th century, which sought to reform governments to take law-making
power, taxing power and property itself out of the hands of the classes who
had possessed it ever since the Viking invasions of Europe had established
feudal privilege, absentee landownership and financial control of trading
monopolies and, increasingly, the banking privilege of money creation.
            But somehow, as my UMKC colleague, Prof. Bill Black commented
recently in the UMKC economics blog: “One of the great paradoxes is that the
periphery’s generally left-wing governments adopted so enthusiastically the
ECB’s ultra-right wing economic nostrums – austerity is an appropriate
response to a great recession. ... Why left-wing parties embrace the advice
of the ultra-right wing economists whose anti-regulatory dogmas helped cause
the crisis is one of the great mysteries of life. Their policies are
self-destructive to the economy and suicidal politically.”[8] <#_ftn8>

            Greece and Ireland have become the litmus test for whether
economies will be sacrificed in attempts to pay debts that cannot be paid.
An interregnum is threatened during which the road to default and permanent
austerity will carve out more and more land and public enterprises from the
public domain, divert more and more consumer income to pay debt service and
taxes for governments to pay bondholders, and more business income to pay
the bankers.

            If this is not war, what is?

------------------------------
[1] <#_ftnref>  Mark Gongloff,“Moody’s Downgrades Greece,” *Wall Street
Journal*, June 1, 2011.

[2] <#_ftnref>  Helena Smith, “The Greek spirit of resistance turns its guns
on the IMF,”* **The Observer*, May 9, 2010.

[3] <#_ftnref>  Reuters, “Greece PM fails to win austerity reform backing,”
*Financial Times*, May 28, 2011.

[4] <#_ftnref>  Roland Vaubel, “Europe’s Bailout Politics,” *The
International Economy*, Spring 2011, p. 40.

[5] <#_ftnref>  “Building Europe, building institutions.” Speech by
Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB 
on receiving the Karlspreis
2011
in Aachen, June 2, 2011.

[6] <#_ftnref>  “Z (film),” Wikipedia.

[7] <#_ftnref>  Tom Fairless, “Trichet Calls for Tougher Debt Intervention,”
*Wall Street Journal*, June 2, 2011.

[8] <#_ftnref>  Bill Black, “Bad Cop; Crazed Cop – the IMF and the ECB,” *New
Economics Perspectives*, May 30, 2011.

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