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Buh-bye, austerity jackal!
Governing parties backing EU-mandated austerity in Greece are on course for a major drubbing as hard-hit voters, venting their fury in elections, defected in droves, according to exit polls.
In a major upset that will not be welcomed by the crisis-plagued country’s eurozone partners, the two forces that had agreed to enact unpopular belt-tightening in return for rescue funds appeared headed for a beating, with none being able to form a government.
After nearly 40 years of dominating the Greek political scene, the centre-right New Democracy and socialist Pasok saw support drop dramatically in favour of parties that had virulently opposed the tough austerity dictated by international creditors.
[...]
“That agreement now belongs to the past. It has been delegitimised,” said Panaghiotis Lafazanis, a prominent Syriza MP. “Our strong showing sends a message especially to Europe that Greeks have rejected austerity.”
Socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in France’s presidential election.
Mr Hollande – who got an estimated 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – said the French had chosen “change”.
[...]
The socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year.
He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.
Mr Hollande has also called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.
Obama, are you listening?
75 Comments
“Obama, are you listening?”
In a word, no.
Regardless, these are important events; so thank you for posting this. Not that the results of either election is very surprising to me.
The Greeks have been screwed over by the big European and American banks for years, with their own government acting as an accomplice. The French have seen the hard won social gains of almost a century under constant assault by those who want to turn France into a version of Corporate America in order to line their own profits and increase their power.
A French politician, I forget who, once said, “Every French leader lives under the shadow of the guillotine.” IOW, they KNOW the French people are perfectly capable of putting their heads on poles if they sufficiently piss them off, and that includes revolutionaries(look what happened to Robespierre).
The French Socialists had been complicit in going along with the corporatist agenda until a couple of weeks ago when Hollande dramatically changed his tune. Whether his conversion to economic populism is genuine or not remains to be seen.
As for Obama, we already KNOW where he stands, firmly in front of Wall Street and behind imperial militarism. So, even as he changes his tone, I for one do not believe him, and cannot in good conscience vote for him again.
I’ll vote FOR someone, which means I won’t vote for Romney, either. And if Obama loses Ohio and the election by 537 or so votes and the Greens and Socialists combined for 50,000, the Democrats are free to blame me. I don’t care anymore.
Phoenix Woman–
Great diary. I’ve read very little about Francois Hollande, but I did read a column by Chris Hedges at Truthdig (I’d link it here, but I can no longer get the “link” gizmo to work, sorry) entitled “Globalization of Hollow Politics.” Pretty interesting article. Chris attended one of Hollande’s political rallies. Think he’s a little worried that Hollande may turn out to be a “French Obama,” although he considers him to be an improvement over Sarkozy.
Anyway, appreciate your shout-out to President Obama–at this point, we have nothing to lose.
Highly recommended.
Blue
Nope. Obama is hiding under the Oval Office desk going “I can’t hear you, this isn’t happening, no, no”.
Or he’s on the phone with Rahm saying “stupid liberal French retards”.
French Obama? That’s sounds “promising”.
Wait and see.
Ad Blue and Ohio pointed out above, this is not a clear victory for the 99%. Same reason that O’s victory was a win for the 1%.
In CA, Brown did the same thing. Another corporatist won against a corporatist.
Brown is a corporatist. My gut says so is Hollande. But we shall see.
France has the right idea tax the rich more raise the minimum wage now if only Greece follows suit they might still save their country rather than be forced into bankruptcy.
If you tax the rich more and use the money to create good paying jobs you get consumers spending again.
If you just bailout the rich while cutting jobs you cut tax revenue from consumer spending and concentrate the cash you still have with the bankers who got you into the mess in the first place with their unproductive investments.
We need real people buying real goods we don’t need banks buying Credit Default Swaps with imaginary money.
CDS have more paper money in their market than we have on the planet a 5% drop in that market could wipe out all our banks worldwide.
I would also ask if Cameron and Osborne are listening. The UK is in recession again. “Expansionary austerity” is a joke.
Merkel’s Party is also losing in local elections there.
It’s time for the Eurozone to wake up. The Treaty needs to be renegotiated.
The problem with Greece has not been just the tax on the rich but the rich being able to avoid paying any taxes through corruption and nefarious means.
Humm…that sounds familiar.
You can pick any ‘western’ nation, outside of Scandinavia…! *gah*
Aloha, DDay, glad to see that you’re home safe and sound…! *g*
Any TSA horror stories…? ;-)
*oops* Sorry, PW, wrong thread…! ;-)
Interesting how the various countries media is covering the Greek elections. DW (Germany)is focusing on how the young are embracing “Totalitarian ideologies”.
Where as The Guardian, France 24, BBC are focusing the the rejection to austerity.
Hollande will be bought by wingnuts in 5, 4, …
Wingnuts? Are all capitalists and their compradors wingnuts now?
No, it’s a double fraud. It’s a deception taken as a false opinion by capital apologists.
Capitalism is a scam.
The neo liberals are taking a wacking it appears. Is Obama listening? Hmm, I sort of doubt it. too early.
From what I’ve read, Hollande is a little like Obama but it will still move the ball to the left. There is also an article on Bloomberg about the greek elections.
Obama doesn’t have to listen but he would be an idiot not to.
They are all neo liberals, believing in a “free” and unregulated market and in austerity with spending cuts and low deficits. Hollande is the same but perhaps a little to the left. We can only hoope.
yes.
Crumbs. Not even let-them-eat-cake.
The real break will come when one of them says “i’m outa here, take your euro and shove it.”
This should lend some moral support to the OWS movement. they need it.
This country takes private enterprise and profit making almost as religion. But the truth is, it always ends in a ponzi scheme and then the bubble breaks, time and again, like in 2008 and 2000. And did we get any real regulation this time around?
actually the problem with greece is their ecomomy is about equal to the Dallas/Ft Worth area. Think about that. An entire country with a GDP on par with a metropolitan area in the US. They can never, ever, never deal with the debt the banksters created. Any bail outs are just throwing good money after bad.
They need to follow Iceland’s lead and just say Hey, these arent our debts.
Austerity seems to infer that people have been getting excessive amounts of money or gifts. The only ones doing that are the rich. It’s time to redefine the conversation.
Well of course they have. Excessive SS, medicare, medicaid, student assitance, low interest rates, and for a little while, houses with no money down. Oh and did I mention unemployment insurance and the minimum wage. What give aways.
How do we convince people that austerity if for the rich and not the poor?
I just looked at the Dow futures. they are down 141, little while ago it was 121. Seems some investors are worried about these elections.
It would be poetic justice if the French and Greeks changed economic course and their economies recovered while the rest of the EU tanked further. I’d laugh my ever-loving ass off.
That’s two of us. When your driveway is fullup, send them on to mine.
With all the money out there fighting us, I doubt you can. I hope something like OWS that comes up from the people will make a difference. But time’s awasting.
What. You. Said!
x2
Good for you. Why should you care when Obama and the DimocRATS don’t care about you (us)?
We have two neo liberal candidates out there. One a little this way, the other a little that. They are both evil. BUT, we have to figure out which one is the mostest insane.
nice jackal photo! and thanks for the good news.
Major revelation; trickle-down doesn’t work.
Who knew?
And: the cheese-eating surrender-monkeys kick a little Randian ass. Whoa! :o)
Now just a damn minute, Beach; you can’t have ALL the blame; I want some of it. :o)
All we have is a the bare thread of hope.
Sad state of affairs.
Well, at the least, the results in France, will put a small monkey-wrench in the:
“I’ve got mine! Fuck you Jaques!” people grinder.
It is a pity that we have to drive our world into depression before our electorate and leaders finally get the message. Austerity doesn’t work, not even a little bit.
I, too,am hoping that two major rejections of austerity governments will cause a wake-up among the Very Serious People, especially in our own government, but can’t say I’m hopeful.
It’s been obvious forever, not to mention the last year or three, that austerity doesn’t work, that it just makes things worse, yet the VSP’s continue to argue that it just isn’t “austere” enough.
It’s craziness, and I’m not holding my breath. But these are pretty dramatic events. Maybe Greece will decide to go the Iceland route. And lest we forget,I’m sure I read that Goldman Sachs had a lottodo with getting Greece into its debt troubles, though I can’t recall the details at the moment.
Let us hope that the Obama folks are getting their preconceived wrong ideas shaken up a little bit…
It’s quite easy for Obama to get the Left vote, just move and act Left.
If he doesn’t want the Left vote, then it’s not the voter’s fault, it’s Obama’s fault.
I consider myself on the left, pretty far left actually, but he will have to utterly renounce austerity and the intent to reduce the safety net and then do something about unemployment to be even remotely acceptable.
Don’t ya’ll relish the delicious irony of Madame Hillary shilling for Wal-Mart today, in India…?
As I’d quipped on DDay’s welcome home thread: “…just like her old Arkansaw daze…!” ;-)
Obama is listening just not to you and me! He is listening to those who put in office; Wall St and the Pete Peterson
At least it looks as if the voting procedures were not hacked in France and Greece. The motu would never have allowed this outcome unless Hollande is, in fact, a French 0.
I’m not worried about the Dow long term. A more expansionary economic policy, such as Hollande has called for, is good for business. The fact is that the austerity policy has been implemented for purposes of raw power rather than economics. By the forced transfer of trillions to their non-productive financial vehicles, the 0.01% have increased their choke hold on the rest of us. And that is what they really are after. Their personal enrichment they of course view as desirable, but they were wealthy to begin with, that is not really the main point.
You are entirely correct, Greece couldn’t get into the Eurozone, even two years after they still needed Goldman Sachs to disguise billions of debt as a currency swap to get them to meet the fiscal requirements. I can provide sources if requested.
At this point the albatross is that the ECB is still holding the lion’s share of Greek debt, so a default actually might kerplode the EU faster than one might think. Alternately the Greeks need to come up with a government and a plan to pay off the bonds maturing on May 15th, while somehow addressing the fact that their debt reduction deal failed to completely work. Basically, if they pay out the full amount of the 15th, why would anyone have swapped for less value on their bonds when they were asked during the restructuring?
I am hoping Hollande does exactly as he says. And, Greece does what the election indicates they are going to do.
We will have a good experiment and it will be interesting to see the results.
bluedot12–
I hope you’re right about Hollande. Here’s an excerpt from David Dayen’s piece “Hollande Wins French Presidential Election” (May 6th):
“The election has implications for Europe. In truth, Sarkozy and Hollande did not differ all that much on budgetary policy – both of their proposed budgets balanced in the same year, 2017. But Hollande said he would attempt to stimulate growth early on, while raising taxes on the rich afterward. And more important, Hollande vowed to reassess the EU fiscal pact, which demanded a specific budget target for each member country.”
Blue
Back in May, during a two-week trip to France, I watched Sarkozy, Le Pen, Hollande, and Jean-luc Melenchon on French TV. Le Pen is represents the French version of the Tea Party, Hollande is, in my opinion, a French Obama, and Melenchon, albeit better doesn’t get it.
The French intellectuals I spoke to agreed with me. Big money politics has doomed France, the way it has doomed the U.S.
It’s not about taxing the rich, it’s about eliminating the parasitic corporate stranglehold on the economy – deregulation, outsourcing, and privatization.
Namaste,
Antoine
Update : I visited France in March, not May!
Antoine
Isn’t that kind of a self-created bullshit risk? All the ECB has to do is guarantee Greece’s debt and they get their credit rating back. At that point their interest payments go back to a nominally sane level and suddenly the mathematically impossible becomes seemingly doable. Same with Italy and Spain (and France).
It seems that the ECB has intentionally refused to do it’s job and provide economic stability within the EU. Because the ECB won’t do it’s job, credit agencies are down-rating everyone. As soon as that happens, whomever holds that debt (as you point out, the ECB itself) is able to demand orders of magnitude more interest for the exact same level of debt.
Since the reward given to the ECB for destroying the economies of Europe is essentially an ability to put the entire wealth of a destroyed nation into the personal coffers of whomever controls the ECB … why the hell would they EVER do anything but focus on destroying the economies of member states? Altruism?
Well you’re assuming the ECB actually has power, there has been a series of decisions that some people have not been happy with expanding the power of the ECB, and the shift from Trichet’s reign as president of the ECB to Mario Draghi has also shown some differences. The ECB’s job wasn’t ever to be the fiscal warden of the eurozone, it was just supposed to do price stability and exchange assets for euros, nothing more. If the Greeks want to kerplode their economy, then sure go right ahead…. But that’s obviously the childish way to think about it, the German, Italian, French, and Spanish creditors to Greece want their money paid back. So almost the entire system is as fault. Economic Stability is NOT price stability. So I’m not sure why you’re placing the blame on the ECB.
The ECB also has taken up so much of the Greek debt already, and refused to mark it down during the restructuring, that its actually creating even more risk in the system. If you actually look at the growth projections they think that Greece can magically get back to growth in the next two years, from a 7…no 8% GDP decline year over year. That’s just wishing for unicorns, no matter what monetary policy you use.
You’re also ignoring the massive amounts of money and graft the Greek entrance into the Eurozone caused. The Germans and French don’t want to mention how many billions the Greeks have put into their military, buying the aforementioned countries arms. The chronically delinquent borrower, is enabled by his creditors. The various powers and leaders of the more stable countries have been doing this dance with Greece for the past two years precisely because they DO care about keeping their own wealth intact by trying to loan Greece more money, its just the country was never honest about how deep the debts were, and kept playing at the Casino. Both the gambler, (Greece) and the Casino (ECB and the remaining creditor countries there, not as many remaining at this point, but dominated by Germany) are BOTH AT FAULT.
Not sure why you’re quoting George Will, but here’s something to think about.
The Dallas Ft Worth area has about 2% of the U.S.’s population. ( 6.6 million of 313 millon)
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2012/01/dallas-fort-worths-population-ranks.html
The U.S. national debt is $15.6 Trillion. (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np)
DFW’s share of that (by population) is $303 Billion (2% of 15.6 Trillon)
Greece’s Dept is $375 Billion
http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock (click on Greece)
Not that much a difference, is there?
The problem isn’t so much the size of the debt, it’s not knowing how leveraged the institutions owning said debt are. While a total default of all Greek debts might be a small amount, doing it in 2010 would be an entirely different story than doing it this year. The system might not actually be able to absorb such a shock, or at least specific banks wouldn’t at first, causing a cascade reaction.
O.K., I’ll bite.
How leveraged are our institutions – given that the US has a comparable debt to GDP?
Conservative estimates on those CDS’s are 60:1, on average…! That’s a whole lot of Paper to paper over…! 8-(
Thanks for sharing this good news. At this point, it doesn’t matter to me if Obama is listening or not. Wall Street is watching it, and they are going to ramp up their agenda to offset any losses they think they will suffer as a result of these elections. Obama is not going to rock their boat, and I have no reason to believe he will pop out of his 11-dimensional shell after the election either.
But, what is good about this is that at least somewhere else in this world, the corporatists lost another battle, got dented, and were reminded that they aren’t as powerful as they think they are. Which means the OWS movement just got reminded that its on the right track. And at this point, every victory is worth it. Thanks again for sharing.
Fed versus ECB? Or US domestic banks? Our debt has a bit more to do with obligations to other countries, while I cannot tell you certainly where the debt of Greece is located. The ECB has about half, from what the restructuring losses that ended up being put on the remaining holders of Greek paper ended up being.
Usually those more inclined to complain about doom cite the Federal reserve at a 53x leverage ratio. While consumer banks in this country are rather hard to nail down. If you want an example of that, see any bank’s earnings, and how hard they are fighting aspects of Dodd-Frank. (note, that reform bill is a joke in its entirety, but it still has interesting effects on banking. Even more interesting when you see how we’re not BASEL III compliant yet, and bumped back our deadline)
What’s 4 percentage points amongst friends…? ;-)
At least, last available data from the bank of international settlements BEFORE June 1 last year had 700 trillion in derivatives… Granted a large chunk of those are relatively benign interest rate swaps, however, they still threaten stability of the world’s financial system. We are playing with weapons of mass financial destruction, and unwilling to admit it.
Oh it’s totally fine =P Let’s test it by dropping US asset values by 8% across the board, then forget about releasing those test results because they prove the game is over.
No, we don’t. we can choose to vote for a third party candidate… and I suspect a lot of voters will.
I don’t now and never have given a damn about the GOP. They’re just doing what they’ve been doing for decades. Nothing new there, no matter how far right they go. But the Democrats? Fuck ‘em. It’s time to put that party out of its misery and that’s what I’m voting to do – to destroy the now loathsome Democratic Party. Had it fought to protect and expand its historically core beliefs (New Deal liberalism and egalitarianism) the past several decades we wouldn’t be where we are today. But they didn’t. They eagerly drank the neoliberal koolaid and rubber-stamped Reaganism instead.
It’s time for the Democrats to “Whig out.”
Vote third party progressive. There are several good choices.
De-elect the president.
A.B.O. – Anyone But Obama!
We need to get a basic legal reform added to all these international trade packages passed that all taxes must be paid where the customer makes the purchase.
Enough of this “merchant chooses where he pays taxes” nonsense.
if only Greece follows suit
in a way, greece has already followed suit in reducing pasok, the party that brought in an unelected banker to negotiate austerity, has been trounced from a 40% share of electoral votes to less than 19%, however, greece’s problems are not in not taxing the rich but in too many tax avoidance loopholes that pasok never focused on, instead taking the easy way out of cutting the public sector payroll that wasted taxpayers who never used those loopholes
the uk is also following suit given the drubbing both the governing coalition parties has been handed in recent local elections
the eu, including the uk, does not want to lose its social welfare programs and is not particularly dazzled by the US exemplar – memories of katrina horrified these countries
Democracy: It is the best economic system around.
But, what about their debt? Who’s going to get stuck paying their debt, if they don’t. Europe can’t allow its banks to collapse, can it?
Well, it’s good news for France and better news for Greece, but I don’t see what it has to do with the U.S. U.S. citizens are going to vote for either Obama or Romney, so the U.S. will limp along, divided along imaginary political lines.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/will-a-man-on-horseback-come-to-rule-america/
At least some citizens are smart enough not to be sucked into voting for any Democrat running for national office. That’s something, anyway. Not much, but something.
This notion of “left” and “right” has become absurd. If public opinion polls are to be judged on a left vs. right, we’re living in a nation of radical revolutionaries. Issue by issue, the public is way left of center.
And that raises the question: “The center of what?” How can someone like Obama claim to be a centrist, when he’s far to the right of public opinion on so many issues.
The answer is that what journalists call “center” means the center of the money, not the center of public opinion and the wishes of the people.
Philippe Marliere wonders aloud whether Hollande will be France’s Tony Blair.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/01/francoise-hollande-frances-tony-blair/
Yes, I agree. “The center of what?” And if, as you wrote, the public is way left of center (and I think it is, too), then what the corporate media calls “center” really is corporatism. We have the population on one side of the spectrum and the corporations and their water-carrying politicians (everyone currently holding national office) on the other side. It stands to reason that we don’t really have a center, anymore. Just the two opposite sides: them and us.
Sorry. My response was to wigwam @70.
that’s worth stealing ….