Política e economia internacional

[Agreste]

Propaganda NATO. Não há nenhuma intervenção militar pronta. Pessoal mobilizado naquela região é banal. O cáucaso não é muito longe.

 

[Orion]

Para quem é investidor. Aplica-se também à Europa.

The U.S. stock market is a rigged game where high-frequency traders with advanced computers make tens of billions of dollars by jumping in front of investors, according to author Michael Lewis, who spent the past year researching the topic for his new book “Flash Boys.”

While speed traders’ strategies, developed over the past decade with help from exchanges, are legal, “it’s just nuts” that they’re allowed, Lewis said during an interview to be televised today on CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes.” The tactics are too complicated for individual investors to understand, he said.

“The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged,” Lewis, whose books “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short” highlighted Wall Street excesses, said during the interview, according to a transcript. The new book comes out tomorrow. “It’s crazy that it’s legal for some people to get advance news on prices and what investors are doing.”

Everyone who owns equities is victimized by the practices, in which the fastest traders figure out which stocks investors plan to buy, purchase them first and then sell them back at a higher price, said Lewis, a columnist for Bloomberg View. To show how lucrative the tactics are, Lewis said a technology firm spent $300 million to build a line that would shave three milliseconds off the time it takes to communicate between New Jersey and Chicago, then leased it out to securities companies for $10 million each.

Fonte

 

[Orion]

Para evitar o calote:

A Argentina está negociando os detalhes finais para um empréstimo de 1 bilhão de dólares com o banco de investimento Goldman Sachs, disse neste domingo o jornal Pagina/12.

Esse seria o primeiro grande empréstimo internacional da Argentina após o país ter dado um calote nos seus credores há mais de uma década.

O governo da presidente Cristina Fernández precisa de divisas para evitar uma maior desvalorização do peso.

O Página/12 disse que o crédito do Goldman Sachs será anunciado nos próximos dias, com uma taxa de juros de 6,5 por cento ao ano, com um prazo de dois anos.

O Ministério da Economia não comentou as informações. Segundo o Página/12, a Argentina também está negociando créditos com outros bancos internacionais.

Os dólares são escassos no país sul-americano, devido à fuga de capitais, às exportações fracas e uma menor competitividade por causa da inflação elevada.

Argentina tem tentado controlar a saída de dólares, enquanto não têm acesso aos mercados de capitais internacionais desde maciço default da dívida em 2002.

Fonte

Na Formosa ocorreu uma grande manifestação:

More than 100,000 protesters took to the streets of Taiwan's capital on Sunday as a two-week-long campaign against a trade pact with China gathered steam, piling further pressure on the island's leader.

The rally in Taipei - where many were dressed in black and some clutched sunflowers to symbolize hope - was one of the largest in recent years in Taiwan, an island that split from China over six decades ago after a civil war.

Protesters say the deal to open 80 of China's service sectors to Taiwan and 64 Taiwanese sectors to China was rushed through, and could leave Taiwan increasingly beholden to China's Communist Party leaders.

Some called for the resignation of Taiwan's China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou, whose popularity has plunged despite helping to improve ties with China since taking office in 2008.

"We must safeguard our island's interests," said Chin Mei Ching, a 29-year-old mother who was pushing her one-year-old daughter in a buggy. "We have to guard against China using the economy to control us."

A coalition of student and civil groups behind the demonstration said that around 500,000 people had massed in streets near the Presidential Palace and the parliament building that has been occupied by protesters for nearly a fortnight.

Police put the figure at 116,000.

Police erected steel barricades to prevent protesters from reaching major government buildings including the cabinet offices that were raided by students last Sunday, sparking scuffles and the use of water cannon by police.

Fonte

 

[Orion]

Há uns tempos neste tópico, escrevi que o FMI, com os seus empréstimos e medidas, só causa estragos. Até dei o exemplo de África (ponho aqui dois exemplos concretos):

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank face fresh criticism today as campaigners blame their privatisation policies for the devastating famine in Malawi earlier this year.

In a report, published this morning, the World Development Movement attacks the programme of market reforms imposed on Malawi by the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade. It singled out the privatisation of the government's grain stocks, for which it specifically blames the IMF.

"Structural Damage - The Causes and Consequences of Malawi's Food Crisis" says that despite years of liberalisation and deregulation policies, Malawi this year faced its worst famine since 1949.

The WDM says the decision to privatise Malawi's agricultural development and marketing corporation - which maintained a central stock of grain and regulated prices - was pressed on the government by IMF staff at several meetings since 1996, and left the country unable to meet its emergency needs.

Kwesi Owusu and Francis Ng'ambi, the report's authors, accept that the corporation was ripe for reform, but argue that "rather than ensuring that social aims are achieved through accountable government, the IMF and the World Bank and other donors have pursued an agenda of austerity, deregulation and privatisation. Not only have the outcomes been disastrous but also the agenda of good governance and accountability has been abused by donors."

In 2002, Malawi will spend $70m (£49m) servicing debt. That is 20% of the national budget and more than it will spend on health, education and agriculture combined. The authors call on foreign creditors to cancel all of its debt, so that "the money could be used to develop the country to be self-reliant in food".

Malawi's debts contributed to the recent food crisis, concludes the report.

The IMF yesterday defended its role in this year's famine, accusing the government of failing to organise a large enough grain reserve to see Malawi through the emergency, which was first declared in February.

"The causes of food shortages in Malawi are complex, including lapses in the government's early warning systems, distortions in domestic markets, and mismanagement of food reserves."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/oct/29/3

Christine Lagarde's crass comments on Greece have caused an understandable furore in that country. But in Niger, there must be just as much contempt for the IMF director. For in dismissing the plight of mothers in Greece, Lagarde also said she felt more sympathy for "the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger".

If "sympathy" is what characterises the IMF's approach to Niger, then Greece would do better to avoid it. Niger comes into news headlines on a fairly regular basis – associated as it is with cycles of famine and constantly high levels of malnutrition. Less reported is the role of the IMF, along with sister organisation the World Bank, in fuelling this suffering.

Niger was a victim of the IMF's now infamous Structural Adjustment Programme from 1982 and remains under an IMF programme to this day. As in Greece, the IMF loaned money to Niger to bail out Niger's creditors. Nothing was said as to how valid this debt was, an important question because it was under the military governments from 1974 that loans really started flowing.

Loans repaid debt and, as in Europe today, the ordinary people of Niger had to pay the price for reckless lending through austerity and a series of economic reforms. We get an indication of the impact of these policies by looking at agriculture.

Most people in Niger live off the land. The IMF and World Bank prioritise exporting as a vital means of earning foreign currency to repay debt. This is normally put into effect by ripping open the food sector to the volatility of international markets. Subsidised imported food floods in, destroying the suddenly unprotected agricultural sector.

Combined with austerity, such policies had a devastating impact. When food prices are low, the real impact can be masked. But when they rise, people realise all too quickly how vulnerable their food supply is. Djibo Bagna, president of the Peasant Association of Niger, believes structural adjustment ruined Nigerien agriculture: "Of course, when this sector involves 85% of the population, this has consequences: lower production, a rural exodus, growing slums."

Nor did a programme of austerity and liberalisation reduce debt levels – any more than it is doing in Greece. Niger's debts continued to rise from $960m when structural adjustment started, to $1.8bn in 1990, and then, after falling off a little, an all-time high of $2.1bn in 2003. More debt meant more control by the IMF, which meant more austerity and more reforms.

After many years, debt cancellation for Niger was seen, even by the IMF, as unavoidable. Debt relief allowed Niger to improve education and increase access to safe drinking water. But it came with strings. A 19% sales tax on basic foods and rapidly rising prices put food further out of the reach of ordinary people. The sale of emergency grain reserves, a policy that has already caused famine in Malawi in 2002, did further damage to the population's vulnerability.

These policies fed into the 2005 famine, a crisis caused not primarily by natural catastrophe – food was available but unaffordable – but by an appalling set of policy decisions. Even during a crisis there was no let-up in economic dogma. The IMF told the Niger government not to distribute free food to those most in need. Today's so-called "tough love" to Greece is nothing new.

Lagarde says: "It's sometimes harder to tell the government of low-income countries… to actually strengthen the budget and reduce the deficit." Hard but not impossible it seems, despite the impact it has had on poverty and inequality time and again.

The desperate impact of IMF policies on Niger has not even achieved the purported chief objective of the IMF – to control debt. In a Jubilee report released last week, we found that 10 years after debt cancellation, Niger's debt payments as a proportion of government revenue are projected to be the same level as they were before cancellation. IMF attempts to "restructure" Niger have failed even in these terms.

To pretend that the IMF operated in a somehow kinder way towards Niger than it is doing in Greece stands up to no scrutiny whatever. The IMF's policies cannot assist countries in crisis. Greece can learn from this – and has little to gain from Lagarde's "sympathy".

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/29/greece-sympathy-imf-niger

Para resumir:

"Vida das pessoas não está melhor, mas a do país está muito melhor"

http://www.noticiasaominuto.com/eco...o-esta-melhor-mas-a-do-pais-esta-muito-melhor

 

[Aristocrata]

Orion, já reparaste que há qualquer coisa em comum entre os países onde o FMI interviu?

Não será um problema cultural?
Não será um problema político?
Será que nestes países a corrupção ao nível das decisões que altera o resultado final desta intervenção exterior?
Em África é mais que conhecido a elevadíssima corrupção governativa.

Culpar o FMI? Eles tentam resolver o problema, mas em última instância tudo depende do poder local...

 

[Orion]

Orion, já reparaste que há qualquer coisa em comum entre os países onde o FMI interviu?

Não será um problema cultural?
Não será um problema político?
Será que nestes países a corrupção ao nível das decisões que altera o resultado final desta intervenção exterior?
Em África é mais que conhecido a elevadíssima corrupção governativa.

Culpar o FMI? Eles tentam resolver o problema, mas em última instância tudo depende do poder local...

Eles tendem a emprestar dinheiro a ditadores. Não é de admirar que os ditadores são sempre os mais ricos dos seus países. O FMI também sabe que a população é que pagará a dívida através de pobreza extrema. Foi sempre assim, é sempre assim e não tenho dúvidas que continuará a ser assim. O FMI com as suas medidas ignora os culpados (governantes) e pune os inocentes (população e especialmente os pobres).

Por exemplo, no Zimbabwe temos o Mugabe que destruiu o país mas ainda assim:

Zimbabwe will agree to the terms of an International Monetary Fund program to settle its $10.7 billion debt and become eligible for new external borrowing, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said.

The southern African nation, which has been in default to international creditors since 1999, has accepted an IMF-monitored plan that will allow it to borrow from the World Bank and African Development Bank, Biti told reporters today in the capital, Harare.

“When you continue to default, no one trusts you on the international market,” Biti said.

Zimbabwe’s economy entered recession and inflation began to surge after President Robert Mugabe in 2000 backed an often violent program of seizing white-owned commercial farms and redistributing them to black subsistence farmers.

The economy is recovering after Biti in 2009 abandoned the Zimbabwean dollar and adopted foreign currencies including the euro and U.S. dollar as legal tender to tame hyper inflation the IMF estimates accelerated to 500 billion percent.

The government forecasts the economy may grow about 5 percent this year from 4.4 percent in 2012.

Zimbabwe’s top court has ordered presidential elections to be held by July 31. They will end a power-sharing government between Biti’s Movement for Democratic Change and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, led by Mugabe, following elections flawed by violence and intimidation in 2008.

A formal letter accepting the IMF program will be sent to its managing director, Christine Lagarde, next week, Biti said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...program-to-become-eligible-for-new-loans.html

Isto não pára, é empréstimo atrás de empréstimo, intervenção atrás de intervenção. Quem é acredita que no Zimbabwe o dinheiro vai ser usado na população? Vê lá a riqueza do Mugabe:

According to cables released by whistle blowing syndicate WikiLeaks Mugabe’s riches were discussed by the United States. “….Unknown, but are rumoured to exceed US$1 billion in value, the majority of which are likely invested outside Zimbabwe.

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/22422

No Egipto há também críticas:

News that the Egyptian interim government has struck a deal with the IMF through which the fund will hand Egypt a $3bn loan has met with differing reactions. It was greeted with relief by some, as proof of the country's positive economic prospects in the medium and long term, and a rebuttal to those scaremongers who have been loudly warning that Egypt is on the verge of bankruptcy because of the revolution and of the continuing protests and street activities.

But many people, myself included, were unhappy with this news and the impact such a loan will have on deepening the country's debt and mounting debt servicing burden.

And there's a more disturbing detail – this is the IMF for God's sake. I recall repeatedly demonstrating over the past 10 years against the Hosni Mubarak regime and chanting against the "Fund" and the "Bank", meaning the IMF and the World Bank. "We will not be governed by the Bank, we will not be governed by imperialism", we chanted, "and here are the terms of the Bank: poverty, hunger and rising prices."

The IMF and the World Bank have for years been pushing the neoliberal measures implemented by Mubarak and his governments, piling praise on him for his courage and achievements.

Year after year, the international experts would commend the Egyptian economic "progress" and "performance" while the majority of Egyptians watched as their lives deteriorated and their living conditions worsened. A survey by the International Republican Institute found that 60% of the population felt their living standards had fallen over the previous year, and that this was one of the key reasons for participation in the 25 January revolution.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/07/egypt-imf-loan

Por fim:

It is difficult to understand how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank can continue to give their run-of-the-mill economic and financial assessments to Persian Gulf oil dictatorships with a straight face.

They have been saying the same things - deregulate markets, cut red tape, reduce corruption, reduce the size of the public sector, cut subsidies, encourage the private sector, adopt rational policies, and so on - and yet no good has come of it. Yes, some of the countries have been superficially transformed with tall buildings and beautiful airports, and there has been some progress in human conditions and development. Meanwhile, rulers, their families and those well connected have become rich beyond belief.

At the same time, these oil exporters have had anemic average annual per capita growth since their oil revenues surged in 1974. Their economies have not been diversified away from oil and thus they export little besides oil, refined products, natural gas and petrochemicals.

Good jobs are in short supply, and with high unemployment the government has absorbed more and more labor that does little productive work. Human development has been sub-par. Conflicts, both interstate and intrastate, have been at an all-time high, with the region recently becoming classified as the world's most conflict-ridden region. And all the while, the limited oil and natural gas resources of the region are being depleted at the expense of all future generations with little hope of a meaningful turnaround.

Under these circumstances, the average citizens of the region are increasingly angry against their rulers and the foreign powers that back them.

The Fund's and the Bank's assessments of the region's problems and constraints miss the central issue. Rulers in these countries have absolutely no incentive to adopt the foundational reforms that are imperative for a turnaround as long as they benefit as they do now and enjoy the support of foreign powers to hold on to power.

If foreign powers, historically the West, continue to support these dictators, conditions cannot change and reforms will not be adopted. Rulers, their families and their cronies benefit from their oppressive rule beyond anyone's dreams. They are taking directly from the sale of oil, from their treasuries and through corrupt business activities.

They have no incentive to change. There is no price to pay for their actions that rob their citizens and impede human, political, social and economic development as long as they have the support of foreign powers who they reward, their companies and their former senior officials, and hire influential foreign lobbyists to secure the needed political support.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-190413.html

Se fazem sempre a mesma coisa e os resultados são sempre os mesmos (desastrosos) não achas que já deviam ter mudado alguma coisa? Isto é, o que sempre foi, escravatura através da dívida. E tudo tem a ver com dinheiro. Ou pagas ou morres... literalmente. Por cá em Portugal duvido que o empréstimo vá fazer alguma coisa contra a corrupção governativa. Eles vão-te é tirar o maximo de euros da tua carteira e quem vai passar muito mal é a população. O Estado nunca vai ser reformado porque se não como é que se iriam pagar os favores? É o contribuinte que paga as politiquices.

 

[Aristocrata]

Presumo que haja uma varinha de condão...

Não se empresta dinheiro, não há dinheiro para a corrupção. Simples...

Parece que é mais importante levar os estados à miséria pura e dura do que permitir que haja alguma evolução, ainda que não seja aquela que hipoteticamente se esperaria.
Quando se empresta dinheiro há condições acordadas. Se estas forem cumpridas o dinheiro vai sendo emprestado aos poucos, senão a "torneira fecha".
Até nisto o FMI corre riscos - corre o risco de emprestar uns milhares de milhões sem retorno. Como é óbvio, se isto acontecer alguns investidores\estados ficarão sem esse dinheiro (não que tenha pena de alguns deles).

Mas a realidade é maior do que simples conjecturas, suposições, teorias da conspiração ou outras tão em voga nesta altura.

 

[Orion]

Presumo que haja uma varinha de condão...

Não se empresta dinheiro, não há dinheiro para a corrupção. Simples...

Parece que é mais importante levar os estados à miséria pura e dura do que permitir que haja alguma evolução, ainda que não seja aquela que hipoteticamente se esperaria.
Quando se empresta dinheiro há condições acordadas. Se estas forem cumpridas o dinheiro vai sendo emprestado aos poucos, senão a "torneira fecha".
Até nisto o FMI corre riscos - corre o risco de emprestar uns milhares de milhões sem retorno. Como é óbvio, se isto acontecer alguns investidores\estados ficarão sem esse dinheiro (não que tenha pena de alguns deles).

Mas a realidade é maior do que simples conjecturas, suposições, teorias da conspiração ou outras tão em voga nesta altura.

Se achas que é teorias da conspiração, respeito a tua opinião. Se reparares bem, Portugal está no mesmo caminho de todos os outros países intervencionados (africanos). A dívida a subir, condições de vida a piorar, FMI ficará por cá até 2035, as importações (ou seja recuperação interna) não podem subir porque anularão as exportações, fosso entre ricos e pobres a aumentar, etc etc. Se isto é recuperação, enfim, opiniões.

Quanto à propaganda de se viver acima das possibilidades, bom, eu acho piada enorme quando nas notícias só aparece a Grécia e Portugal. E a Itália? Que só fica atrás da Grécia? Em 2013, a dívida italiana chegou aos 132,6%.

http://www.dw.de/italys-sovereign-debt-explodes-as-economy-shrinks-in-2013/a-17469523

A pobreza chegou para ficar, disso é bom que não haja dúvidas. Podem-se é enganar chamando uns aos outros preguiçosos e enveredando em lutas entre classas trabalhadoras que dão sempre jeito para esconder a corrupção.

Por fim, ainda chegará o dia em que os países do sul dirão aos do norte a mesma coisa (gastaram de mais):

Scandinavia, which attracted investors during Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, is now coming under international scrutiny on concern that record household debt levels from Denmark to Sweden aren’t sustainable.

(...)

Sweden and Denmark boast public debt loads that are less than half the euro-zone average. Norway’s $820 billion sovereign wealth fund means its government has no net debt.

(...)

In Denmark, consumers owe their creditors 321 percent of disposable incomes, a world record that the Paris-based OECD said in November demands a policy response. In Sweden, debt by that measure is close to 180 percent, a level the government and central bank say can’t be allowed to rise. Norway’s central bank has struggled to find a policy mix that addresses its 200 percent private debt burden.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...o-happen-puzzles-krugman-assessing-debts.html

A grande diferença entre o Sul e o Norte é a responsabilidade política. Portanto, é intelectualmente desonesto e vergonhoso qualquer político (nacional ou internacional) dizer que a população gastou de mais. A dívida privada não é o motivo pelo qual chegamos a este ponto.

 

[Paulo H]

Se achas que é teorias da conspiração, respeito a tua opinião. Se reparares bem, Portugal está no mesmo caminho de todos os outros países intervencionados (africanos). A dívida a subir, condições de vida a piorar, FMI ficará por cá até 2035, as importações (ou seja recuperação interna) não podem subir porque anularão as exportações, fosso entre ricos e pobres a aumentar, etc etc. Se isto é recuperação, enfim, opiniões.

Quanto à propaganda de se viver acima das possibilidades, bom, eu acho piada enorme quando nas notícias só aparece a Grécia e Portugal. E a Itália? Que só fica atrás da Grécia? Em 2013, a dívida italiana chegou aos 132,6%.

http://www.dw.de/italys-sovereign-debt-explodes-as-economy-shrinks-in-2013/a-17469523

A pobreza chegou para ficar, disso é bom que não haja dúvidas. Podem-se é enganar chamando uns aos outros preguiçosos e enveredando em lutas entre classas trabalhadoras que dão sempre jeito para esconder a corrupção.

Por fim, ainda chegará o dia em que os países do sul dirão aos do norte a mesma coisa (gastaram de mais):



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...o-happen-puzzles-krugman-assessing-debts.html

A grande diferença entre o Sul e o Norte é a responsabilidade política. Portanto, é intelectualmente desonesto e vergonhoso qualquer político (nacional ou internacional) dizer que a população gastou de mais. A dívida privada não é o motivo pelo qual chegamos a este ponto.

Orion, enquanto houver défice, há dívida sempre, mas sempre a subir! Não andemos aqui a enganar velhinhos ou miúdos rebeldes!

Há que admitir que a esquerda despesista é também demagoga, pois se estar submisso à ajuda externa é mau, então não os tivessem chamado pela 3a ou 4a vez! É degradante estar sempre a bater na mesma tecla.. Sem ajuda externa, não haveria mais endividamento, o défice seria forçosamente zero e então a dívida não crescia. Parece simples não é?

O pior é que para continuar a viver acima das possibilidades, apenas resta pedir, enquanto nos derem crédito. É essa a solução da esquerda, a mesma que ao mesmo tempo teima em chamar n vezes o fmi. Tretas!

 

[Orion]

Não penses que o futuro neo-liberal trará resultados risonhos. Esta ilusão a seu tempo será óbvia, porque outros já passaram por este mesmo processo e agora colhem os frutos desastrosos:

More and more, it appears that in the 21st century we are returning to the economics of the 19th, where wealth was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a few owners and astute speculators.

Neither the Right nor the Left seem capable of creating a society in which all benefit from increased prosperity and economic security.

Right-wing claims that free markets will enrich all sections of society are palpably false, while the traditional European welfare state appears to penalize innovation and wealth-creation, thereby locking the poor and unskilled into institutionalized poverty and unemployment.

Thus in the new age of globalization, both ideologies create the same phenomenon: an underclass caught between welfare and low wages, a heavily indebted middle class increasingly subject to job and pension insecurity and a new class of the super rich who escape all rules of taxation and community.

It was in Britain that neo-liberalism first emerged in its decisive form. Confronted with union militancy and the apparent bankruptcy of the welfare state, the Conservative party under Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979. In America, Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, and the Anglo-Saxon countries have pursued and advocated free market liberalization ever since.

Today, its reach extends as far as communist China, which, while eschewing political freedom, fervently preaches economic liberalization. This year even the French acknowledged free market supremacy, electing a president who has persistently denounced the costs of Gallic welfarism and praised the economic advantages of the Anglo-Saxon model.

But the benefits of free market liberalization depend on who you are, where you are and how much money or assets you had to begin with.

In terms of economic development, free market fundamentalism has been a disaster. The free market solutions applied to Russia during the Yeltsin years succeeded only in mass impoverishment, the creation of a hugely wealthy oligarchical class and the rise of an authoritarian government.

Similarly, the growth rates of Latin America and Africa, which had been higher than other developing nations, dropped by over 60 percent after they embraced IMF-sponsored neo-liberalism in the 1980's, and have now ground to a halt.

On an individual level, a similar story pertains. Real wage increases in the top 13 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been below the rate of inflation since about 1970.

Thus wage earners - rather than asset owners - have faced a persistent 30-year downward pressure on their standard of living. It comes as no surprise to learn that the golden age for the wage worker, expressed as a percentage share of GDP, was between 1945 and 1973, and not under economic liberalization.

Nobody questions that trade increases prosperity, and that the liberalization of credit and financial services allow hitherto excluded groups to supplement their wages by buying shares or houses and thus participating in the asset economy.

But the real story of neo-liberal success is not the extension of assets to all, but the huge and disproportionate share of wealth attained by the very rich. In the United States, between 1979 and 2004 the wealthiest 1 percent saw an increase in their share of national income of 78 percent, whereas 80 percent of the population saw an overall decrease in their income share by 15 percent. That's a wealth transfer from the large majority to a tiny minority of some $664 billion.

The traditional Left panicked in the face of neo-liberal hegemony and spoke in the 1980's of redistribution, higher taxes and restrictions on capital transfers. But, outside of Scandinavia, they were whistling in the wind: Traditional state-regulated economies appeared locked into high unemployment and low growth.

A new path for the Left was offered by the country that first experienced the new Right: the UK. By the late 1990's, Britain was exhausted by Thatcherism; its public services were failing and the country was socially and economically fragmented. Thus in 1997 New Labor was elected.

Under the guidance of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the new progressives promised that the benefits of rising prosperity would be applied to the public sector and the poor. Social exclusion would be tackled by opening up education and extending opportunity to all. The rest of the world was once more transfixed by the social experiment taking place in Britain. Could this seemingly exclusive neo-liberal circle be squared for the benefit of all?

Sadly, after 10 years the conclusion has to be no.

Poverty in Britain doubled under Thatcher, and this figure has become permanent under New Labor. The share of the wealth, excluding housing, enjoyed by the bottom half of the population has fallen from 12 percent in 1976 to just 1 percent now. Thirteen million people now live in relative poverty. Social mobility has declined to pre-war levels.

The least able children from the richest 20 percent of the population now overtake the most able children from the bottom 20 percent by the age of seven. Nearly half of the richest group go on to get university degrees while only 10 percent of the poorest manage to graduate. Clearly, the New Left has entrenched class division even more firmly than the neo-liberal Right.

This in a nutshell is the problem: Both Left and Right seem incapable of challenging monopoly capitalism. Neither welfarism nor statism can transform the lives of the poor, and neither, it seems, can neo-liberalism. Only a shared economy can correct the natural tendency of the free market to favor monopolies.

But we can only share if all own. Thus there is a radical and as yet unexplored possibility - that of a general and widely distributed ownership and use of assets, credit and capital. This would dissolve the conflict between capital and labor since it would be a market without monopoly and a state where waged labor - since it was the owner of capital - did not need state welfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22iht-edblond.1.9399739.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[Scan_Ferr]

Orion, ainda não percebi muito bem de que lado estás, lol.

 

[Orion]

Orion, ainda não percebi muito bem de que lado estás, lol.

Eu sou neutro. Não sou fã de socialismo ao estilo comunismo nem neo-liberalismo. No meio está a virtude

 

[Gerofil]

A Transparência Internacional coloca a Rússia no 127º lugar em seu ranking de percepção de corrupção, junto ao Mali e Paquistão.
"Putin destruiu todas as fontes independentes de poder na Rússia. Ele só pode se apoiar na burocracia e deve alimentá-la para garantir sua lealdade", afirma o britânico Ben Judah, autor de Fragile Empire (Império Frágil, em tradução livre), sobre a Rússia de Putin.

Como Putin está tentando reconstruir a URSS

 

[Orion]

Democracia no seu melhor. Político precisa do voto. Quando é para ouvir o que as pessoas têm para dizer proíbe-se.

Vários milhares de pessoas desafiaram esta terça-feira a proibição de manifestações no centro de Atenas durante a reunião do Eurogrupo na capital grega, um protesto que derivou em confrontos com a Polícia.

A concentração, que tinha sido convocada pelos sindicatos e pelos partidos Comunista e Syriza, começou de forma pacífica, com cerca de oito mil manifestantes, segundo dados da Polícia, mas evoluiu para confrontos, depois de os líderes sindicais e partidários se terem retirado.

A polícia recorreu a gás lacrimogéneo e granadas cuja explosão causou um som muito forte até conseguir dispersar cerca de mil manifestantes, alguns dos quais encapuzados, que procuravam chegar à emblemática Praça Syntagma.

http://www.dn.pt/inicio/globo/inter...Europa&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

 

[Orion]

O lado negro do capitalismo:

General Motors Co in 2005 decided not to change an ignition switch eventually linked to the deaths of at least 13 people because it would have added about a dollar to the cost of each car, according to an internal GM document provided to U.S. congressional investigators.

The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce released the documents on Tuesday as lawmakers asked CEO Mary Barra why GM failed to recall 2.6 million cars until more than a decade after it first noticed a switch problem that could cut off engines and disable airbags, power steering and power brakes.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette cited a 2005 GM document that she said showed a cost of 57 cents per fix.

DeGette did not release the document, and Reuters was unable to get a copy. However, Reuters obtained what appeared to be a separate document, a series of 2005 emails between GM engineers debating whether to make a change to the ignition switch. The change would have cost an extra 90 cents per unit and additional tooling costs of $400,000, one email showed. Those tooling costs typically are amortized over several years.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-gm-recall-delphi-idUSBREA3105R20140402