tuneintothemovement-blog

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Resentment towards Germany

Originally published on the BBC by Gavin Hewitt.

There is increasing frustration and resentment towards Germany. It is criticised for failing to lead, for being a prisoner of its history, for acting selfishly while also being disliked for imposing a culture of austerity on the rest of Europe.

The Germans are aware of this and it is leading to soul-searching.

As the paper Die Welt said, "the Germans are the indispensable nation on the continent".

Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform draws a similar conclusion: "Germany is emerging," he said, "for the first time in the EU's history as the unquestioned leader. France is having to adjust to a subordinate role".

But as Die Welt also noted, "our new power is triggering rejection and resentment".

Why the resentment? Germany is the advocate of austerity. It believes that countries need to put their finances in order through cuts and reforms.

In countries like Greece years of hardship lie ahead. German fingerprints are seen as being on their austerity programme. The resentment can be glimpsed at demonstrations, where banners call for Berlin to make further reparations for the war, or in a picture in an Athens store - Angela Merkel in a Nazi uniform.

In Italy, Chancellor Merkel is seen as having helped engineer, along with the European Central Bank, Silvio Berlusconi's departure. Of course it is not as simple as that, but Mario Monti's weakness is that he is seen as "sponsored" by Berlin and Brussels. All the time spent discussing his plans with European officials undermines his standing at home. As an unelected leader he will have to implement deeply unpopular cuts without a mandate. Rightly or wrongly some of the anger will attach itself to Germany.

It did not help that almost as soon as he was elected in Spain, Mariano Rajoy was on the phone to Berlin.

Realignment of EU

Ulrike Guerot, from the European Council on Foreign Relations and writing from Berlin, said "this will backfire on us terribly in two or three years' time".

Even amongst some eurozone countries there is increasing unease that Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy are meeting almost every week and expounding plans for the future of the eurozone and the EU.

This week the Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen warned against proposals that bypass the EU. He and other smaller nations fear an EU that is increasingly a Franco-German union with France in a supportive role.

At the same time there is rising frustration that Germany will not allow the ECB to print money to buy the bonds of countries in trouble and to become the lender of last resort.

President Obama has tried to muscle the German chancellor. So has David Cameron. But the Germans, for the moment, will not allow the bank to play that role because they fear a repeat of history - the inflation of the Weimar Republic and all that flowed from it.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski added to the pressure, saying "I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help the eurozone survive and prosper… I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe's indispensable nation."

When the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, tried to put eurobonds (common European debt) on the agenda he was seen in Germany as trying to force their hand. The German Economics Minister, Philipp Roesler, called his intervention "irresponsible".

More than 'big Switzerland'

Katinka Barysch, from the Centre for European Reform, says that "many in the German government say that leadership consists of spreading Germany's 'stability culture' throughout Europe. They point to the fact that Greece is implementing reforms that were unthinkable until recently, that Italy is now run by a man who praises the strength of the German model."

She goes on to argue that the Germans do not want to be the ones who impose austerity and reforms on their neighbours. "They clearly do not enjoy being unpopular."

Again the Germans are agonising over this leadership role. Here is a German paper again: "Scarcely any nation is less suited to this task than the contrite Germans, who spent decades pretending to be smaller than they really are and who would prefer to be just a big Switzerland in foreign policy terms. But now they're suddenly realising that the world is relying on them to save the euro and avert a disaster for the global economy.

"The Germans are going through a crash course in being a leading power… with their focus on austerity and their refusal to permit a bigger role for the ECB, the Germans are as isolated as the Americans were with the Iraq war."

For post-war Germany it is an acute dilemma. Never has their influence and power been greater. Their modern culture makes them reluctant leaders. And yet that is what is demanded of them and, at the same time, the fear is that the EU is becoming a German union.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

a crisis deepens

The blow to eurozone efforts to save the currency came amid increasingly apocalyptic predictions of a euro collapse. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris forecast a "deep depression" across Europe and a tidal wave of bankruptcies if any of the 17 countries was forced to quit the euro. The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, urged Germany to save the EU from "a crisis of apocalyptic proportions". Article from the Guardian. 

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Pressure Mounts for Urgent Action to Avert a Euro Zone Split

November 28, 2011

PARIS — European leaders faced mounting pressure Monday to overcome divisions and move ahead quickly with new plans to prevent the euro zone from fracturing, as warnings multiplied that the crisis could endanger the global economy and cause credit to dry up in the banking system.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday that the euro crisis remained “a key risk to the world economy.” The research group, which is based in Paris, sharply cut its forecasts for wealthy Western countries and cautioned that growth in Europe could come to a standstill.

The warning came just hours afterMoody’s Investors Service issued its own bleak report on Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Moody’s, a leading credit rating agency, warned that the problems could lead multiple countries to default on their debts or exit the euro, which would threaten the credit standing of all 17 countries in the currency union.

Despite the gloomy predictions, stock indexes rose sharply in Europe and Asia, and were surging in Wall Street trading, and the euro strengthened, on hopes that European leaders were working on a new approach to resolve the crisis.

Finance ministers from the euro zone were to meet Tuesday in Brussels to try to agree on how to increase the firepower of their bailout fund, and also hope to sign off on an €8 billion, or $10.7 billion, loan installment to prevent Greece from defaulting. A proposal for a Europe-wide solution to the crisis is expected before a summit meeting of European Union leaders on Dec. 9.

Concerns about the European crisis hung over a meeting Monday at the White House between President Barack Obama and three European leaders: José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission; Catherine Ashton, the European foreign policy chief; and Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council.

Those concerns also surfaced during a White House news briefing, when a questioner asked the press secretary, Jay Carney, whether the White House shared the view that “the euro is in a particularly perilous state, perhaps poised to collapse within days.”

Without going that far, Mr. Carney replied that “our position is and has been that it’s critical for Europe to move with force and decisiveness now, particularly with new governments coming into place in Italy, Greece and Spain.”

He added: “We continue to believe that this is a European issue, that Europe has the resources and capacity to deal with it and that they need to act decisively and conclusively to resolve this problem.”

In Brussels, European officials rejected suggestions that the euro was days away from breaking up, pointing out that countries have completed most of their bond issuance for this year, though they know the respite will only be a matter of weeks.

Belgium had to pay higher interest rates to borrow money in the markets on Monday, illustrating how the country’s failure to form a government has increased concerns about its ability to tackle its debts. The yield on 10-year bonds was 5.66 percent as opposed to 4.37 percent last month.

Concern also mounted regarding Italy, where borrowing rates skyrocketed at a bond auction Monday for the second consecutive business day. The interest rate Italy had to pay to get investors to part with their cash for 12-year issues soared to 7.20 percent, a full 2.7 percentage points higher than the previous similar auction.

There was alarm in several capitals Monday over French-German plans to create strict new budget rules for countries that use the common currency — something seen in Berlin as a precondition of further steps to save the euro zone.

On Sunday, France, Germany and Italy signaled they were ready to agree on new rules to enforce budget discipline in the euro zone, and to encourage more coordination of economic and fiscal policy.

On Monday the German Finance Ministry published comments from the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, suggesting that this could be done by amending a protocol of the E.U. treaty, though officials said this would still need approval by all 27 E.U. members.

An alternative, favored by some French policy makers, is to reach agreement among euro zone nations outside the framework of the E.U. treaty. Some news reports have suggested an even smaller group might be involved.

Finland’s prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, made it clear Monday that he did not favor a solution outside the current system, a view echoed by the prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also chairman of the Eurogroup, a forum for the finance ministers of the euro zone.

“I don’t think we would be best advised to look for instruments outside the treaty,” Mr. Juncker said, according to Reuters. “Trying to divide even the 17 member states of the euro area and having them organized in two different groupings seems to me to be a very bad idea.”

With growing signs of a looming credit crunch, the O.E.C.D. report warned that Europe’s politicians had so far moved too slowly to prevent the crisis from spreading. Its report said that the problems that started in Greece almost two years ago would start to infect even rich European countries thought to have relatively solid public finances if leaders dallied, a development that would “massively escalate economic disruption.”

“We are concerned that policy makers fail to see the urgency of taking decisive action to tackle the real and growing risks to the global economy,” the O.E.C.D.’s chief economist, Pier Carlo Padoan, said.

In its warning, Moody’s underlined that “the probability of multiple defaults by euro area countries is no longer negligible,” and that “a series of defaults would also increase the likelihood of one or more members not simply defaulting, but also leaving the euro area.”

Efforts at greater European integration have so far been overshadowed by the failure of euro zone countries to follow through on promises made back in July to bolster mechanisms to fight the crisis. In particular, the authorities have been slow to implement an expansion of the bailout fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility, that was meant to raise money by issuing bonds backed by the stronger European countries and loan it to shakier countries facing high interest rates on their debt.

The head of the fund, Klaus Regling, has said that, under current conditions, the leveraging of the resources left at his disposal — thought to be around €250 billion — will be in a multiple of three or four times. That means that the €1 trillion target is likely to be a maximum. If the guidelines are approved by euro zone finance ministers, the expanded fund could start to operate early next year.

The O.E.C.D. called on politicians to get the expanded bailout fund running as fast as possible, and said the European Central Bank must be allowed to step in more than it has to stem the crisis.

“We know there is a lot of disagreement, but the E.C.B. should decide to send a very strong message to markets by saying, ‘We will put a cap on interest rates and we will do that credibly because we have the resources to do that,”’ Mr. Padoan told Reuters.

Germany last week made clear its opposition to issuance of a common bond that would be backed by euro zone countries, something investors said could help calm the crisis during the long time that it will take to expand the rescue fund.

The government in Berlin has also resisted calls to allow the E.C.B. to act as a lender of last resort to put out financial fires during the transition to a more federalist structure in the euro zone.

Many observers expect the next fire to come from Italy, where investors are so nervous about the country’s debts that the International Monetary Fund took the unusual step Monday of denying reports in the Italian press that it was in talks with Rome on a program for I.M.F. financing.

But observers say eventual I.M.F. involvement is likely.

The fund has about $390 billion available to lend worldwide — a sum too small to help Italy, whose economy is seven times the size of Greece’s. Thus, in recent weeks, European leaders have floated numerous ways to augment I.M.F. resources. The fund could oversee a loan package that uses E.C.B. or European rescue fund money. It could allow Italy to borrow by asking all its member nations to contribute. Cash-rich, emerging-market countries like Brazil and China have also signaled their willingness to provide more money to the fund.

“The odds that the I.M.F. will step in have increased substantially,” said Domenico Lombardi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington. “By having a program with the I.M.F., the newly established Italian authorities will be able to isolate the implementation of an ambitious reform agenda from the intrinsically unstable political outlook. The I.M.F. provides an external anchor, boosting the chances that a reformist agenda will be implemented,” Mr. Lombardi said.

In the coming days, the I.M.F. is due to send a team of observers to Italy to verify the implementation of an overhaul program agreed to by the government of Silvio Berlusconi, who recently stepped down as prime minister.

Stephen Castle reported from Brussels. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger in Paris, and Annie Lowrey and Brian Knowlton in Washington.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

truth about debt crisis

The inevitability of the default of Greece hangs heavy on the future of the European economies. Who owns the debt? The chain reaction will be similar to that of Lehman Brothers in 2008 - and even though Greece is a relatively small economy in Europe, the impact of a bankruptcy (that has been so clumsily avoided) will blindside a population not told/explained the gravity, and cause the next major blow to a dinosaur monetary system incompatible with our technical reality, or our creative potential.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Occupy UC Davis Calls Nov. 28 General Strike

The following proposal was passed by a massive general assembly on November 22nd at UC Davis:

The UC Board of Regents, who not only represent but actually are this state’s richest one percent, has repeatedly shown itself to be utterly unfit to manage and represent the interests of the students, faculty, and workers who constitute the University of California.

Following two successive years of sharp tuition increases, accompanied by millions in department and resource cuts, layoffs, and furloughs, the board had the audacity to propose a new 81% fee increase and drastic budget reductions.

Undergraduate student fees have tripled over the past ten years, as we have seen an unprecedented explosion of student debt; and departmental budgets have shrunk, as academic and non-academic workers experience diminishing benefits, swelling workloads, and non-existent job security.

In the midst of the economic crisis, the Regents have intensified their pursuit of the project of privatization and de-funding that diminish the quality of education and quality of life for those across the UC, while consigning students’ futures to greater and greater sums of debt.

The Regents’ theft of an ostensibly public resource to fund “capital projects” such as construction projects and private research initiatives, demonstrate a clear conflict of interests that benefits a narrow administrative elite—both the Regents and their local appointees (chancellors and vice chancellors)—at the expense of the greater faculty, staff, and student body.

The familiar rhetoric of austerity demands our resigned compliance, as our learning and working conditions progressively deteriorate. We have seen recently and in years past that political dissent is met with increasingly violent displays of force and repression by University police.

The continued destruction of higher education in California, and the repressive forms of police violence that sustain it, cannot be viewed apart from larger economic and political systems that concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of the few.

Since the university has long served as one of the few means of social mobility and for the proliferation of knowledge critical to and outside of existing structures of power, the vital role it plays as one of the few truly public resources is beyond question.

The necessity of reclaiming the UC has never demanded such urgency, as it continues to shift towards the corporate model, pursues dubious fiscal partnerships (such as those with the defense department and international agribusiness), and engages in disturbing collusion with financial institutions like US Bank (which is one of the largest profiteers from student loans).

As such, I propose that in light of the upcoming Regents’ vote on Monday the 28th, (which will be occurring on four campuses simultaneously, one of which being UC Davis), that we call for a general strike this same day, with the aim of shutting down campuses across the state and preventing the Regents from holding their vote.

In response to the intolerable effects privatization and austerity and the horrific repression of student dissent that has occurred throughout the last month, the GA, as a governing body of all concerned UC Davis students, will prevent the Board of Regents from continuing its unbridled assault upon higher education in the state of California.

This will entail total campus participation in shutting down the operations of the university on the 28th, including teaching, working, learning, and transportation, as we will collectively divert our efforts to blocking their vote[s]. In doing so students, faculty and workers assert the power—and the will—to effectively represent and manage ourselves.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Says Olivier

The chief economist at the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, warned, "The global economy has entered a dangerous new phase. The recovery has weakened considerably. Strong policies are needed to improve the outlook and reduce the risks." (Austerity?) The U.S. economy faces longer-lasting problems that go beyond high gas prices and disruptions caused by the Japan crisis, the IMF said. Employers are adding few jobs and giving out meagre pay raises. Many homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Banks are keeping credit tight. An increase in the growth of China, India and Brazil is hoped for to offset the loss of faith inability of countries to manage their public debt? "Fear of the unknown is high," Olivier said. Meanwhile, in Europe this week U.S. President Barak Obama said, "They're going to have a strong partner in us, but European leaders understand that what is ultimately important is to have a strong signal from Europe that they are standing behind the euro." Stand behind a collapsing currency; responses to which are limited to 'cut spending' and 'practice austerity' ... a lack of creative thinking as much of an assurance of global financial collapse as the epidemic of apathy it will itself be a cruel cure for.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Clouds

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Marching

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Can you dig it?

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Ryerson march October 17th 2011 #occupyto

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Ryerson march #occupyto

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Bring your own Bowl to Occupy Toronto at St. James Park DownTown Toronto... and you shall be fed.

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

#occupyto #occupytoronto

A collective expression under way: 2,000 peaceful demonstrators met at Bay and King at 10:00am this morning (October 15th), utilizing the people's microphone to announce the occupation zone: St. James Park (Church and King).

From Bay and King the march headed up to Adelaide and across, marshals keeping the swelling, singing mass at a steady pace, preceded by a wall of media cameras. Local artists Down by Riverside played acoustic through the march and when the crowd entered St. James park, setting off Pirjo's dancing shoes. 

At this moment, soon entering a new day, people have started settling down with their tents in the chilly October night. They are creating and sharing an atmosphere of solidarity and hope. The free food tent supported by Food Not Bombs is up and running and the media tent, the logistics tent and the portaporties as well. Follow using #occupyto #occupytoronto #occtorfoodies #occupytorontoTV

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Don't Evict #OWS

Occupy Wall Street has received an eviction notice from the Mayors office of New York City. The park is to be "cleaned" by park officials and police.

This from Russian Television (RT):

Last night, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an announcement that on Friday, protestors will have to leave, supposedly temporarily, for the park to be cleaned. Keep in mind, just two days ago, Bloomberg had declared that the protesters could stay indefinitely. 

Occupy Wall Street has made a call for supporters to descend on Zuccotti Park by 6:00am on Friday, October 14th to show support and resist the eviction. Visit www.OccupyWallStreet.org for details. This is a mistake. These people will not move. And so at what length are you willing to remove them? Tear gas? Batons? Police in riot gear? When does it stop? When the park is empty, fenced off, hundreds arrested, and the sentiment against this "machine" bigger than ever at a time when that message can go everywhere on Earth with a single click?

[tuneintothemovement-blog]

Occupy the Senate

STOP THE MACHINE In Washington DC today protesters attempted to occupy and shut down the Senate. Video footage can be seen here, and an article on Al Jazeera read here. 

This is a beautiful expression of shared intent. This whole occupy movement is such an expression.

You are part of a growing group of people awakened to the reality that the system we have built and support is not only grossly inefficient and wasteful, but rewards behaviour that leads to poverty, starvation and war. To think that with our abundance of human potential we must continue to hold ourselves chained to something as outdated and dinosaur as THIS is an insult to our creativity, our strength and capacity for community. We are the 100%. We are One Human Family.