Posts belonging to Category It Is Supposed to be a Republic!



The Eurozone and Greece

Calendar January 19, 2013 | Posted by John Brian

IS IT OVER?

A journalist from Chile’s El Mercurio just put two questions to me:  (1) Is the Eurozone safe? and (2) Is Greece stabilising? Here are my answers:

1)  Are the threats over the Eurozone’s survival over?

Certainly not. The serious design faults of the Eurozone remain intact. The promised decoupling of the banking crisis from the debt crisis has been ditched. All moves toward debt mutualisation or for a central Eurozone budget have been suspended. The ECB’s bond purchasing program (OMT) remains in the sphere of the imagination, a purely phantom program whose announcement-effect cannot continue forever. Meanwhile, recession in the Eurozone’s centre and depression in the periphery is eating away at the heart of Europe’s social economy.

2)  Is the economic situation in Greece getting better (considering that the risk premium is lower than few months ago and the local stock market is going up)?

Greece has been given a reprieve, in the sense that it has been told that all discussion of being thrown out of the Eurozone is over – at least for now. Thus, the panic caused by the ‘conversion’ risk (i.e. assets being redenominated in drachmas) has passed and, thus, the stock exchange has moved upward. However, the falling yields of the Greek bonds mean absolutely nothing for two reasons: First, after the recent debt buyback, Greek banks hold no GGBs and, therefore, the GGBs’ increased value does not help the Greek banking sector in the slightest. Secondly, the Greek state is not issuing new bonds, which means that the Greek state cannot benefit from the falling yields. The only beneficiaries are the hedge funds that purchased the 35 billions of GGBs that remain in play and are trading them with each other for speculative reasons. Meanwhile, Greece’s social economy is continuing to collapse, with a defunct banking sector ensuring a dearth of credit even for profitable firms, unemployment reaching world record levels, and aggregate demand that is continuing to shrink. In brief, the stabilisation of Greece’s financial markets is in sharp contrast to the continuing tailspin of its social economy.

Category Categories: A Saturday Break, It Is Nice To Be Part of the Elite!, It Is Supposed to be a Republic!, It starts with a foundation, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Suffering Poor  |  Comments No Comments

Until the System Is Reformed…

Calendar July 29, 2012 | Posted by John Brian

“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true.

It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”

Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General

The Fed is not the solution; the Fed is a creature of the biggest banks, and very much a part of the problem.

Once again we hear a lone voice of common sense, and reason for reform, in this case Sarah Bloom Raskin, speak out forcefully for reform.

You may recall ‘The Warning’ which featured Brooksley Born, who sounded the alarm about the growing dangers of the unregulated derivatives market during the Clinton Administration. And who was thwarted and bullied by team Greenspan-Summers-Geithner.

And you might remember how the Wall Street Banks used the NY Fed and the Treasury’s Tim Geithner to block the reforms proposed by the FDIC’s Sheila Bair.

I do not think that these men who block reform and serious change are evil. Rather, I think they are just dead wood, who know nothing more than the system of privilege that has elevated them, and rewarded them, and which they are loathe to see change.

But the times are getting difficult, and so it is time for a change, which is necessary for there to be a sustainable economic recovery.

And in the election of the President this year the people are being given a choice, as someone so aptly put it, between an ineffective and compromised gamekeeper and one of the worst and greediest of the poachers. Obama was marketed as an independent outsider, but he is not. They are both owned by the system, each in their own way.

And that means change is not going to come from the top. But it will come nonethless.

If this continues the capitalists will eventually destroy themselves, because none of them will want to be the first that calls a stop. And that will be a tragedy.

Baseline Scenario
Fed Governor Speaks Out For Stronger Rules
By Simon Johnson
July 28, 2012

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Resistance and Faith, Faith and Unbelief – Prague Spring 1968

Calendar June 10, 2012 | Posted by John Brian

Hedges: Resistance and Faith, Faith and Unbelief – Prague Spring 1968

 

Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Robert Francis Kennedy

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”Václav Havel, Letter to Alexander Dubček, August 1969

 
The impulse to freedom and democracy always seems weak and hopeless when matched against the forces of oppression, because aggressive oppression is always more single-minded, having already crushed internal dissent and perspective, and is generally better organized and equipped.

And yet even the greatest tyrannies have fallen, always. This is because they carry within themselves the seeds of their own renewal and return to balance, or utter destruction.

As in most human things, their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, and it is their inability to master and evolve that strength, to reform and achieve sustainability, that brings them crashing down, every time. Their strength is their weakness, in its overreach and self-absorption.

 

At Their Extremes, Most Belief Systems Become Indistinguishable From their Putative Opposites

I noticed today that I have never posted a memoir which I had intended about Prague, and my time as a forty year old ‘student’ at a symposium there when I was taking my MBA in 1991, a period of great change. I shall have to do that sometime. I thought I had done so already.

It was particularly meaningful to me because this is where my father’s grandfather had been from many years ago. And of course it is a city with a great tradition of learning, manufacturing, and engineering.   And the ‘hometown’ of my great-grandfather, although all family traces seem to have been erased by time, and by the decisions of the great powers to hand the region over first to the Germans and then to the Soviets.

Coincidentally enough I am informed by readers via email that two organizations have blocked access to Le Café Américain of late: the government of mainland China, although I think that applies to all blogs and has been on and off for some time, and just recently Bank of America. Plus ça change, plus c’est la similar bureaucratic mentality.

‘Prague Spring’ 1968 – The 99 Percent

Marta Kubišová, Modlitba pro Martu , 1968

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

The cloud is slowly sailing away from the skies,
Everyone is reaping his own harvest.
Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Category Categories: It Is Supposed to be a Republic!, IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER AND MONEY, The End of American Capitalism As We Know It? - Discuss, The excellent adventures of Ben Bernanke, The Financial Elite, The Growing American Fascist State, The Inherent Disorder of Empires, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, The Obama OMG magic factory, The Suffering Poor, Time For A New Third Party  |  Comments No Comments