Unemployment is a terrible scourge across much of the Western world. Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills. Some European countries have it even worse: 21 percent of Spanish workers are unemployed.
Nor is the situation showing rapid improvement. This is a continuing tragedy, and in a rational world bringing an end to this tragedy would be our top economic priority.
Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.
So someone needs to say the obvious: inventing reasons not to put the unemployed back to work is neither wise nor responsible. It is, instead, a grotesque abdication of responsibility.
What kinds of excuses am I talking about? Well, consider last week’s release of the latest report on the economic outlook by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D. The O.E.C.D. is basically an intergovernmental think tank; while it has no direct ability to set policy, what it says reflects the conventional wisdom of Europe’s policy elite.
So what did the O.E.C.D. have to say about high unemployment in its member countries? “The room for macroeconomic policies to address these complex challenges is largely exhausted,” declared the organization’s secretary general, who called on countries instead to “go structural” — that is, to focus on long-run reforms that would have little impact on the current employment situation.
And how do we know that there’s no room for policies to put the unemployed back to work? The secretary general didn’t say — and the report itself never even suggests possible solutions to the employment crisis. All it does is highlight the risks, as it sees them, of any departure from orthodox policy.
But then, who is talking seriously about job creation these days? Not the Republican Party, unless you count its ritual calls for tax cuts and deregulation. Not the Obama administration, which more or less dropped the subject a year and a half ago.
The fact that nobody in power is talking about jobs does not mean, however, that nothing could be done.
Bear in mind that the unemployed aren’t jobless because they don’t want to work, or because they lack the necessary skills. There’s nothing wrong with our workers — remember, just four years ago the unemployment rate was below 5 percent.
The core of our economic problem is, instead, the debt — mainly mortgage debt — that households ran up during the bubble years of the last decade. Now that the bubble has burst, that debt is acting as a persistent drag on the economy, preventing any real recovery in employment. And once you realize that the overhang of private debt is the problem, you realize that there are a number of things that could be done about it.
For example, we could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads — which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt. We could have a serious program of mortgage modification, reducing the debts of troubled homeowners. We could try to get inflation back up to the 4 percent rate that prevailed during Ronald Reagan’s second term, which would help to reduce the real burden of debt.
So there are policies we could be pursuing to bring unemployment down. These policies would be unorthodox — but so are the economic problems we face. And those who warn about the risks of action must explain why these risks should worry us more than the certainty of continued mass suffering if we do nothing.
In pointing out that we could be doing much more about unemployment, I recognize, of course, the political obstacles to actually pursuing any of the policies that might work. In the United States, in particular, any effort to tackle unemployment will run into a stone wall of Republican opposition. Yet that’s not a reason to stop talking about the issue. In fact, looking back at my own writings over the past year or so, it’s clear that I too have sinned: political realism is all very well, but I have said far too little about what we really should be doing to deal with our most important problem.
As I see it, policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue: the more they fail to do anything about the problem, the more they convince themselves that there’s nothing they could do. And those of us who know better should be doing all we can to break that vicious circle.
more on your millionaire post..... it will get much better for Bigs.........SS "Replacing Economic Democracy with Financial Oligarchy" (Greece is just the prototype) By 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]
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.
Are Britain and France trying to colonise Africa again? Published: 2011/05/03 07:04:32 AM
THE rebels spent all their time arguing. No leadership was apparent. They fired in the air on a whim. They spent more time praying to Allah than cleaning their weapons. They were a total rabble.
Sounds like the anti-Gaddafi fighters in Libya. But, no, I am describing my first time in battle with the Mujahedin in Afghanistan in an attack on a Russian-occupied fort near Kabul in 1984. The West helped the Afghan fighters in general and Osama bin Laden in particular. That intervention backfired spectacularly, as the West appreciated on September 11 2001.
Will Western — especially Anglo-French — military intervention in Libya lead to another Afghanistan? British MPs are also warning that the UK could be bogged down in Libya in the same way that a small number of advisers led to the US entanglement in Vietnam. The recent decision to send at least 10 British and 10 French military advisers has stirred up a row. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has said this is not "mission creep", but clearly it is.
British MPs of various parties believe that the government, taking advantage of the parliamentary recess, is stretching the United Nations (UN) mandate over Libya to break the current military stalemate.
Already government statements from Paris, London and Washington have gone beyond the spirit of the UN mandate, by essentially calling for regime change.
Now the dynamic Anglo-French duo, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, are putting "boots on the ground", no matter how much they deny it. Their special forces have already put their booted feet on Libyan sands, as have US Central Intelligence Agency operatives, but now the presence of regular infantry forces has been made public.
The UK may not be in much of a military position to sustain the current effort in Libya, let alone expand it; because Britain, and France, are already sunk in a Vietnam-style quagmire — in Afghanistan. The Western allies are losing that war and a vaguely honourable retreat is the best option. British involvement in a third war in an Islamic state might just force an early withdrawal from the disaster in Afghanistan.
Cameron has nailed his colours to the mast in his commitment to depose Muammar Gaddafi’s tyranny. Another war was the last thing defence planners thought of last year, when they were forced to cut. So should Paris and London leave Gaddafi in place to massacre his own people?
If Gaddafi stays in power it could severely embarrass the Conservative-led coalition and perhaps inspire regime change in London, not Tripoli. Sarkozy has tried to bolster his flagging domestic support with military adventures in both Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. The Bonaparte in built-up shoes could also be toppled. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), bogged down in Afghanistan, could be humiliated if Gaddafi manages to maintain his two-fingered salute to the "crusaders". The Arab Awakening could be stalled. And other African monsters, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, could be encouraged to accelerate the whole-scale slaughter of their own people.
The humanitarian corridors from Tunisia will help, as will the UK-sponsored sea bridge to Misrata. UN humanitarian intervention has been allowed, says Tripoli. However, the outside world should not expect too much. The large Arab air forces, some arguably better equipped than the British Royal Air Force, especially the Saudis, have not lifted a finger. Egypt’s big army could help by driving in from next door. But it won’t happen. Only French special forces could have ended the stalemate in Côte d’Ivoire, by deposing Laurent Gbagbo, and thus avoid another possible Rwanda. Likewise, only Western forces have the capability and perhaps will to organise the Libyan rebels. The Americans can’t, so that leaves the British and French.
So just 20 military advisers are being sent. They are supposed to advise on military structures, communications and logistics, including how to deliver humanitarian aid. The UK foreign office says they will be "mentors" who will not train or arm the rebels, nor be involved in planning military operations. The latter is exactly what is needed, because even the lowliest British corporal can see what a mess the Benghazi "army" is.
A few good noncommissioned officers from Britain and the French Foreign Legion could make a big difference. But they won’t — officially. More than 800 Nato air sorties may have knocked out a third of Gaddafi’s arsenal, but they can do little on the ground. To prevent a stalemate — a defeat for the West — more quality troops will have to be sent to train and organise from the front. And more arms will have to be sent. I witnessed how a handful of British military officers and noncommissioned officers bravely secured the cease-fire in Rhodesia in 1980, then stayed on to advise the rebels how to make an army. A small number of British officers and men played a crucial role in merging the nine different armies in SA. They quelled potential mutinies and played a major role in the peaceful transition from apartheid. The British army can be a force for good.
It is for the British taxpayers to decide whether it is worth "saving" Libya from the forthcoming disaster. Full British engagement — combat troops — may help to forestall either a Gaddafi or Islamist victory in the country. On the other hand, "crusader" involvement may also precipitate the triumph of al-Qaeda-type franchises in Libya, as well as in Tunisia, Egypt and the Yemen.
Meanwhile, France has been criticised throughout Africa for resuming its role of continental "gendarme", especially in Côte d’Ivoire; Britain has also been lambasted for a so-called return to a colonial rule. This suits paranoid African despots, who prefer to shadow box with long-dead white men in baggy shorts and pith helmets than resolve problems of their own making.
Sarkozy might have done the right thing for the wrong reasons, namely bolstering his own weak electoral base. And London simply didn’t have the money, the men or the equipment, so why did Cameron embrace Sarkozy’s hyperbolic interventionism with such alacrity? Call me naive, but it was both a genuine last-minute humanitarian gesture to save Benghazi’s and Tobruk’s civilians, as well as hard-headed national security interest to prevent another Somalia adjacent to Europe’s soft underbelly. Talk of a new imperialism is sheer nonsense.
The Arab League members, who all detest Gaddafi, did put on a rare display of unity, but did not back their words with military force. Meanwhile, the visit of African Union bosses to Tripoli was obviously a wasted journey. Gaddafi appreciated the apparent solidarity, especially when President Jacob Zuma addressed the mad tyrant as "dear brother leader". Zuma, with all the levers to topple Mugabe overnight, has done nothing to end the monstrous regime in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has slaughtered far more of his own people than the white regime ever managed.
African leaders keep pledging that they want African solutions to African problems, but they rarely provide any. When an African crisis threatens another Rwanda, as Libya possibly and Côte d’Ivoire probably did, then African leaders will have to tolerate prompt Western intervention. Until Africa starts fixing its own continent, Sarkozy’s Legionnaires and Cameron’s recourse to a fine army will have to plug the gap.
Paul Leslie Moorcraft (born 1948 in Cardiff, Wales) is the Director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis in London and visiting professor at Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Moorcraft
By Ezekiel Pajibo and Emira Woods. Edited by John Feffer, July 26, 2007
Just two months after U.S. aerial bombardments began in Somalia, the Bush administration solidified its militaristic engagement with Africa. In February 2007, the Department of Defense announced the creation of a new U.S. Africa Command infrastructure, code name AFRICOM, to “coordinate all U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.” .. more .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=59092339
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