'Welcome to “globalization,” where everyone is either a Pawn or a Player... '
The Globalization Strategy
Latest Report
Strategic landscapes are radically changing. No longer does a person’s country represent the core of citizenship or identity.
Today, a new murky world is dawning, one that advocates global governance as the portent to humanity’s social, political,
and economic future.
Indeed, in this post-Cold War environment, “nation-states” – like the societies they serve and accommodate – find themselves in a
relentless swell of transformation.
National interests give way to global loyalties, just as world citizenship is touted as preferable to the narrow views of nationalism; no individual,
corporation, or country is immune to this revolution.
Welcome to “globalization,” where everyone is either a pawn or a player.
As an end to itself, the concept of globalization seems to rest on one central pillar: the consolidation of power.
No matter what stripe or ideology globalization comes packaged in, this singular component cannot be denied.
And in a society where “power begets power,” a global system, by definition, has the capability to expand this characteristic to new levels.
Politically, globalization represents the leveraging of power beyond that found in any one nation ...
The August Review
Larry Elliot describes the state's relationship with 'pawns'.
Britain's economy needs a big push but the Tories can only nudge
Until the OECD officially predicted a double-dip British recession today, the spurt of hype and guesswork preceding George Osborne's autumn statement was just about doing its work.
The airwaves crackled with news of the £30bn jump-leads to be attached to the national infrastructure plan, to be part-funded by pension funds, and coalition high-ups talked up 500 projects, including 50 or so "top priority" schemes that will get their money as soon as possible: electrification of the TransPennine rail line between Manchester and Leeds; upgrades to the M25, M3 and M56; work on the good old Kingskerswell bypass.
All was sweat, cement and national renewal: a vision worthy of Stalin's Russia – without quite so much death ...
Using pension funds for national investment, [Richard Murphy] told me, could be done much more efficiently than the Osborne plan.
In exchange for the vast sums granted in pension tax relief – £38bn at the last count – we could be compelling funds to put money into the very infrastructure projects the government is so keen on – and with no need for a mouthwatering rate of return to draw them in.
The same logic, he says, applies to credit easing, the roundabout method Osborne is using to persuade banks to supply businesses with money.
Again, were we to insist on a quid pro quo for pension tax relief we could channel funds into a national investment bank and send credit directly to those businesses.
But that's all surely too ambitious for Whitehall, and far too dirigiste for the free-marketeers at the top of government ...
The coalition seems to be locked into an economic tragedy ...
Gdn 28 Nov 2011The creation of the cowardly state
The 'cowardly state' is also the corporate state. Because the nature of the neoliberal state has had to be veiled off from the hoi polloi - the 'third face of power' - government has actually got bigger in the service of corporate capital - which is the antithesis of the 'free market' - since corporate capital no more pursues 'free markets' than Stalin did.
The economic crisis we are now facing is the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan because they introduced into government the neoliberal idea that whatever a politician does, however well-intentioned that action might be, they will always make matters worse in the economy.
This is because government is never able, according to neoliberal thinking, to outperform the market, which will always, it says, allocate resources better and so increase human well-being more than government can.
That thinking is the reason why we have ended up with cowardly government ...
What began as an economic idea has now swept across government as a whole: we have got a class of politicians who think that the only useful function for the power that they hold is to dismantle the state they have been elected to govern while transferring as many of its functions as possible to unelected businesses that have bankrolled their path to power ...
Tax Research UK 15 Nov 2011 Autumn Statement 2011 Coalition Log Corporate State LogCourageous State
Workers should not fear for jobs under employment law overhaul, says Vince Cable
Mr Cable is due to announce what is being billed as the biggest reform of employment law for decades – although senior Conservatives have privately blamed Liberal Democrat Coalition partners of hampering an even greater overhaul.
Ministers say cutting the cost and bureaucracy of laying off workers will help businesses remain profitable throughout the economic downturn ...
Tel 23 Nov 2011Coalition to relax employment laws
Ministers also want to make it easier for companies to lay off large numbers of staff more quickly.
Under current laws on collective redundancy, companies planning to lay off large numbers of staff have to hold a consultation lasting at least 90 days.
That could fall to 30 days under the proposals.
Business groups have told ministers that the requirement to go on paying workers for so long after deciding to sack them places an undue burden on companies trying to cut costs urgently ...
Tel 23 Nov 2011 A 'modern and compassionate party' Coalition Log Global Labour MarketCameron's war on employment rights
Precarity
Why revisit the working time directive?
Every crisis also provides an opportunity.
In exchange for agreeing to the revision of the Lisbon treaty, it looks like the British coalition government has won the right to revisit the EU working time directive ...
The working time directive is a European Union directive that provides the right for workers in EU member states to have a minimum number of holidays each year, paid breaks and rest of at least 11 in any 24 hours, as well as placing an upper limit (subject to some exemptions, called "opt outs") on the number of hours a worker may work per week.
This is currently 48 hours per week ...
Like all parts of the social chapter, it was opposed by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories because of their belief that anything that stopped the untrammelled operation of the free market was an affront ... to the right of employers to act as they saw fit ...
Gdn 21 Nov 2011Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood
... the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing" ... the government's aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".
The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life ...
Gdn 15 Nov 2010
A 'modern and compassionate party' Coalition Log Global Labour Market
Oliver James Towards a new measure of well-beingComment is free readers on … long working hours
Government set to measure UK happiness
Work-Life Balance
Precarity
The markets distrust democracy. Just ask the masters of Beijing and Moscow
"The wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow" - Plato
Why is the democratic world faring so much worse than its non-democratic rivals in the current storm?
Start with austerity.
It may not be the best solution for a worldwide crisis of anaemic growth and falling demand – indeed it is surely making the problem worse – but it is what the markets demand in return for manageably low rates of interest on the money they lend to governments.
That it is these men, not those we elect, who are all-powerful is not new: Bill Clinton discovered as much nearly two decades ago ...
Given that it is the markets who call the tune, the question then becomes one's ability to dance to it most nimbly – and in that endeavour democracy is an impediment ...
In the immediate postwar era, people might have been readier to endure rationing and hardship in, say, Britain because there was a sharper sense of collective identity and solidarity ... now society is less cohesive: austerity is seen as the result not of defeating foreign tyranny in a just war but of bankers' reckless greed; and few believe, as they once did, that they are guaranteed to be better off than their parents ...
The larger problem of democracies' weakness has not been caused by the economic crisis, so much as revealed by it.
The growth statistics for the pre-crash decade tell a revealing story. The EU, US and Japan did OK, clustered together in the low single digits.
But China and Russia enjoyed figures nearly twice as high. The best performing economies were the most authoritarian states ...
Gdn 15 Nov 2011 Contesting the Markets Global Risks 2012
Is Capitalism the only game in town? Losing Democracy Log Third face of powerSergei Magnitsky
Is corruption in Russia's DNA?
Merkel says Europe faces toughest hour since WW2
All pretence of democracy - the 'third face of power' pretence - is now at an end.
Bankers may have ruled they economy, they are now taking over governments.
Politicians are joining the pawns.Hyperzeitgeist
14 November 2011 8:22AMMuch of our attention will be focused on Italy. Mario Monti agreed last night to form a new 'government of technocrats' with the authority to push through economic reforms. Today he should name his cabinet.These people are not 'technocrats'. They are not the scientists and engineers that use their ingenuity and technical skill to make the advances that improve our world. They are 'econocrats'.
Nothing more than bankers and economists, aided and abetted by corporate lawyers, who practice (at best) a pseudo-science or (at worst) the charlatanism that has forced the world to the edge of the financial abyss.
Now we are supposed to accept these unelected agents of corporate despotism as our saviours? Perhaps we should look a little more closely at their connections.
Lucas Papademos: As has been widely reported Papademos was head of Greece's Central Bank when Goldman Sachs were helping the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules.
Papademos was also a member of the Trilateral Commission.
Mario Monti: Monti is the first chairman of Bruegel, a European think tank founded in 2005, and he is European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission.
He is also a leading member of the Bilderberg Group. Monti is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs and The Coca-Cola Company.
The questions that should be asked are: Why are these faceless representatives of powerful vested interests stepping out of the shadows at the present juncture?
Why are they being accepted so uncritically by the mainstream media?
I think the first has something to do with the fact that, formerly docile, politician's are now perceived by the powers that be to be less malleable and more prone to waver under pressure of public protest.
As to the question of the complicity of the media, that is for others to answer.
Gdn 14 Nov 2011
A Corporate Super-State Euro Crisis Neoliberal Financial Terrorism
The Heritage Foundation The Trilateral CommissionThe great euro Putsch rolls on as two democracies fall
Europe pushes Italy into the abyss
A Corporate Super-State Euro Crisis Neoliberal Financial Terrorism Neoliberalism: Pawns or Players?
The great euro Putsch rolls on as two democracies fall
Europe pushes Italy into the abyss
Ed Miliband: business, finance and politics are out of touch with people
Motherhood and apple pie: we all support them.
The Tories are discussing how to make it easier for firms to fire people.
Ed's problem is that he does not seem to understand the 'terms and conditions' on which the current economy functions: globalised free markets driven by the Washington Consensus, which demands that the great majority of the population accept precarity and powerlessness as the norm.
Nor does Ed begin to address the role that the state must play in 'rebalancing' the economy away from that greed-driven dystopia, the City of London.
A practical start would be re-nationalise the Bank of England, and get it to capitalise the Green Investment Bank.
We are developing policies so they can hire people.
We would start by creating thousands of new jobs paid for by a tax on the bank bonuses.
It is about rewarding the right values, not the wrong values, in our economy.
Young people wanting to go to university fear being burdened down with debts of £50,000 when they leave.
It makes no sense and it does not reward aspiration and hard work.
So, instead of proceeding with tax cuts for the banks as the government plans to do, we should use that money to cut the maximum tuition fee from £9,000 to £6,000.
And we should apply the right values in the rest of our economy.
Our welfare system needs change to reflect not just the compassion of our country, but also the values of hard work, contribution and getting something out when you put something in.
Rather than wringing our hands about electricity bills, we would break up the rigged market of the energy cartel so that new competitors can drive prices down.
And let us tell the top CEOs that, if they are unwilling to justify their rewards to an employee on the committee that decides salary packages, they will not get it.
These choices are all affordable and can all be made now to help get Britain working again for most people.
But they also pave the way for a better economy and a more responsible capitalism in future ...
Obs 06 Nov 2011
Ed Miliband Full Employment: Where is it coming from? Is Capitalism the only game in town?Occupy London
Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world
Is narcissism the new capitalism?
What is it about high corporate pay that so enrages us? ...
Ind 30 Oct 2011 A 'Greed is Good' Wealth log Bonus Culture Is capitalism the only game in town?
Gordon Gekko Inequality 'No such thing as society'Cover-up at St Paul's
The protesters seem more adult than politicians and plutocrats
The protesters are confronting an establishment which caused the crisis, but is detached from its consequences
The protest at St Paul's is just one example of an international phenomenon.
What began in the Spanish springtime with demonstrations by the splendidly named los indignados has turned viral and global.
It is just over a month since the first thousand people turned up at Zuccotti Park in New York to express their rage at Wall Street.
Since then, similar movements have come to life in more than 900 cities around the globe ...
The default response of establishment opinion is glibly to dismiss these protests as a passing spasm which cannot achieve anything because the movement is either wildly unrealistic in its aspirations for a new world economic order or too vague in its demands.
It is true to say that the protests vary in their tactics and are disparate in their goals ...
But they are loosely united by common themes: fury at corporate greed, resentment at lack of economic opportunity, concern about social inequality and alienation from a conventional politics that appears incapable of doing anything serious to address and redress public discontents ...
Obs 30 Oct 2011 Contesting the markets
A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log Bonus Culture Gordon Gekko Inequality 'No such thing as society''Occupy’ Protest at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London Divides Church
Cover-up at St Paul's
FTSE 100 directors' earnings rose by almost half last year
St Paul's showdown: lawyers act to clear Occupy London camp
"Blessed are the peacemakers ... ...
Lawyers will serve notice on activists camped out around St Paul's Cathedral as early as Monday, as police also finalise plans to forcibly remove them if senior officers are convinced they are causing disruption ...
The prime minister said: "I'm all in favour of the freedom to demonstrate, but I don't quite see how the freedom to demonstrate has to include the freedom to pitch a tent almost anywhere you want to in London.
"These tents, whether they are in Parliament Square or St Paul's, I don't think it is the right way forward." ...
Gdn 28 Oct 2011 Bankocracy Log Corporate State Log
'Divi' Dave Log Gordon Gekko Third Meltdown Log
'Inarticulate protests'
St Paul's Cathedral canon resigns
Church 0 - 1 Corporate State
In a statement to the Guardian, Fraser, who was appointed canon in May 2009, confirmed his resignation, saying:
"I resigned because I believe that the chapter has set on a course of action that could mean there will be violence in the name of the church." ...
Gdn 27 Oct 2011 Bankocracy Log Corporate State Log Third Meltdown Log
'Inarticulate protests'
Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds
The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt ...
Specifically the report made these points:
¶ The share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent of the population more than doubled, climbing to 17 percent in 2007 from nearly 8 percent in 1979.
¶ The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. In other words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded the income of the other four-fifths of the population.
¶ People in the lowest fifth of the population received about 5 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, down from 7 percent in 1979.
¶ People in the middle three-fifths of the population saw their shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points from 1979 to 2007 ...
NYT 25 Oct 2011 Food Stamps USA Global Risks 2011
Discord at St Paul's over protest camp
The Church of England was facing a grass-roots revolt from within its own ranks last night after a retired reverend used a rearranged Sunday morning service at St Paul's Cathedral to pledge solidarity with the protesters camped outside.
Reverend Dennis Nadin said he would write to the dean of the cathedral demanding an explanation about the exact "health-and-safety reasons" under which it was closed on Friday – the first time such an action has been taken since the Blitz.
He told The Independent that the protesters' message was "absolutely what God would be saying".
"He [God] provided abundant resources for everyone in the world, but they have been unfairly distributed in a way that means people are starving," he said ...
Ind 24 Oct 2011UK Uncut joins Occupy protest
'The money changers in the temple'
A cathedral spokesman said it was losing between £16,000 and £20,000 a day.
The Reverend Rob Marshall said: "The cathedral needs around £20,000 a day to stay open." ...
BBC NEWS 24 Oct 2011 Bankocracy Log Third Meltdown Log
G20 leaders pledge to protect banks from Europe's debt crisis
The current generation of politicians bought into the globalised fiat currenncy 'utopia' and are now standing around its corpse, wondering how to bring it back to life.
"We commit to take all necessary actions to preserve the stability of banking systems and financial markets as required," the G20 said in a communique after a dinner meeting.
A Debt Jubilee is the only answer, but that would ruin their cosy relationship with corporate finance.
The pawns? They get the 'hair cut', a.k.a. higher unemployment.
The players get richer.
Tel 23 Sept 2011This is a political problem - and governments are all out of ammunition
... the sense of policy fatigue and indecision is palpable.
As one government official remarked:
“We’ve already sent the best of our cavalry into battle, and it’s come back in tatters. There’s a limit to what more we can do.”
But governments are doomed to try and, as has long been apparent, the action that must take priority over all else is further measures to underpin the banking system.
A second injection of public funds so soon after the last one would to many seem not just unaffordable but politically unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the alternatives look a great deal worse ...
Tel 22 Sept 2011Global economy: it could be autumn 2008 all over again - but worse
The fact that only six members of the G20 could be persuaded to sign up to David Cameron's round-robin letter urging Europe to sort out its sovereign debt crisis says much about just how divided leaders are about what needs to be done.
Churchill's words from a different era were made for today's politicians who are "resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity and all-powerful for impotence" ...
The real concern is that three years after Lehmans the global economy's problems have proved so intractable.
It is not just the tough winter ahead that politicians need to worry about. It is the risk of a lost decade as the whole world goes Japanese.
Gdn 22 Sept 2011BRIC nations helping eurozone overcome debt crisis is impossible
The countries said in a statement after their meeting that they would provide support “if necessary” through the IMF or other global financial bodies.
The BRICS are also “concerned with the slow pace of quota and governance reforms in the IMF”.
With work lagging on implementing changes agreed in 2010, BRICS are more likely to contribute to the new agreement on borrowing as a way to help through the IMF than trying to further boost their sway by raising their shareholding, [Russian deputy finance minister] Storchak said.
Tel 22 Sept 2011The Fatal Mistakes of Berlin's Bailout Strategy
A haircut which mirrors the debtor's real ability to meet financial obligations could, of course, leave some banks in trouble and threaten a new banking crash.
But this problem could be easier to control than one outrageously expensive bailout after another.
Above all, this solution would be cheaper for the countries; indeed, the burden would be borne by the lenders.
Banks which, thanks to the stress test, are known to be in a precarious position, would have to be weatherproofed before the debt haircut with fresh capital.
This "recapitalization" must take place through the state because private investors would certainly not rush to take on such a risk.
In return, governments would be shareholders in the banks ...
Der Spiegel 23 Sept 2011
Bankocracy Log EU Corporate State Log Global Risks Is Capitalism ... ? Whither Britain? LogOperation Twist marks a turn for the worse
Terminally ill patients told their benefits may be cut
Missing Out
In the Resolution Foundation's second report to the Commission on Living Standards Matthew Whittaker and Lee Savage explore who is receiving the fruits of growth and who is Missing Out.
Workers in the bottom half of the earnings distribution have seen their fortunes decline significantly in the last thirty years.
Their share of GDP has fallen by a quarter, at the same time as the share going the top 1% of earners increased by half.
Missing Out reveals that in the last 30 years of each £100 of GDP:
• only £12 is paid as wages to the bottom half of earners, down from £16 in 1977
• £14 is paid to the top 10% of earners – more than the whole of the bottom half
• £3 is paid to the top 1% of earners, up from £2 in 1977
Resolution Foundation 25 July 2011 Falling Living Standards Global Risks 2011 InequalityUK household squeeze at its worst for two years
The Commission on Living Standards
Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe
"A return to primordial loyalties"
The attacks in Oslo on Friday have riveted new attention on right-wing extremists not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence.
The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics ...
NYT 23 July 2011 Global Labour Markets 'War on Terror & the Christian Right
IDS & The Third Face of Power 'Primordial Loyalties'Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
Europe's 21st Century Bourbons Cling to the Wreckage
'We Europeans Are All Being Put to the Test'
Der Spiegel interviews French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde on the 'pact for competitiveness'
Lagarde: The pact combines German virtues with a proper dose of realism.
The issue of the retirement age is a good example. No one is aiming for a situation where every European would in the future only be able to retire at the age of 67. Chancellor Merkel also knows that the retirement age in each country has to be brought into line with demographic developments in that country. But one basic rule applies to all countries, namely that if people are living longer, the pension system has to be adjusted. We have to work longer because we are living longer. It's simple mathematics.
SPIEGEL: Under the pact, wages would also no longer rise automatically with inflation, as is customary in Spain and Belgium, for example. These countries sense an attack on their social systems.
Lagarde: Of course we have to be careful that we don't antagonize people too much. But if tying wages to inflation results in certain countries being less competitive, they should ask themselves: Is this wage policy really the best approach? The French government, like the German government, believes that wages should not rise in lockstep with inflation.There you have two key facets of the elité's agenda: put the needs of the currency before the needs of Europe's pawns, and take steps to ensure that wages are eroded by inflation.
This is consistent with Sandy Brian Hager's argument that Europe is now about serving the needs of the neoliberal agenda.
Merkel, Sarkozy, et.al. are the new Bourbons: their response to the crisis is to urge more of the same medicine.
What we need now is a second 18th Brumaire and one which returns Europe to its Social and Christian Democratic roots, both of which rejected the previous incarnation of Anglo-US laissez faire.
Der Spiegel 15 Feb 2011
Young British people claim more disability benefits
The fact that there is almost certainly a direct link between these figures and Thatcherism seems not to have occurred to Mr Grayling, who should ask himself: what have young people to look forward to? Answer: a life of precarity in the service of corporate profit.Young people are twice as likely to be living on disability benefits in the UK as they are in other rich countries, says OECD ...
The report says not only are rich-world claimants getting younger, but there has been a "big shift" in the reasons for making a disability benefit claim.
Mental health problems have replaced physical causes for long-term sickness payments.
On average, a third of new disability benefit claims have a mental health condition as the primary cause, rising to 40% in some countries and almost 50% in Denmark.
The share of new recipients with mental health problems is highest among young people.
In Britain, two-fifths of those claiming benefits because of depression or mental health issues are aged between 20 and 34.
Professor Malcolm Harrington, the occupational health specialist tasked with improving the government's medical assessments, has told ministers that "people do not attempt to get benefits by pretending they are mentally ill".
Although the figures do not take into account the effects of the recession, the OECD said there would be little change in the overall trend.
Britain had seen a steep rise in the level of the long-term sickness over the past two decades ...
Guardian 24 Nov 2010 Oliver James Youth UnemploymentDystopia of Individualism
Incapacity benefit tests face overhaul after damning report
Weaning places off the state
Middlesborough's problem with the shrinking of the state
Today's Experian data finds that 42% of workers are employed in the public sector.
In the decade to 2008, it's estimated that while private sector employment created only 168 jobs, 13,000 public sector jobs were created in Middlesbrough, Redcar and nearby Stockton.
No wonder today's survey finds this area so vulnerable to a shrinking state ...
The town's elected mayor, Ray Mallon, is very bullish about Middlesbrough's prospects but he does accept that there are challenging times ahead.
"We will lose something like £6m this year from the budgets and something like £12-18m next year and over the next three years it will be over £30m" he told me.
"Clearly we will get job cuts (but) we will survive this because we have the get up and go and the will to deal with what we have got."
It is estimated that 11,000 public sector jobs could be lost following the cuts in the Tees Valley and the big question is whether the private sector can replace those workers as fast or faster than they disappear ...
Mark Easton's UK 09 Sept 2010
Autumn Spending Review Is Capitalism the only game in town?North East and Midlands 'least resilient' areas
'There is an alternative'
UK trade deficit hits new record
Total positions lost at bailed-out British banks RBS and Lloyds rises to almost 45,000 ...RBS cuts 3,500 UK jobs
Compare and contrast: P45s for pawns, an opulent 'reward for failure' for Fred the Shred
RBS announced that it was axing 3,500 back-office jobs as a result of the sale of 318 of its branches to Santander, a move demanded by EU regulators in return for the bank's £54bn government bailout almost two years ago.
That takes the total number of posts lost since Stephen Hester took over as chief executive two years ago to almost 27,000 ...
RBS employs 24,000 people in its back-office functions, out of a total workforce of just under 100,000.
"It will be a specially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the far east, India and America," said Rob MacGregor, national officer at the union Unite.
"Just three weeks ago, staff were boosted to hear of the £1.1bn half-year profit, yet today thousands of them are told that they have no future at the bank.
"The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country today will be left reeling from this news. We continue to see a financial services sector which thinks the skills and expertise of its staff are a disposable asset with scant regard for the high level of service these very same staff provide to their customers." ...
Guardian 02 Sept 2010 'Reserve Army'Sir Fred Goodwin shredded
The Coalition Government has shelved plans for an independent inquiry into the £25bn-a-year energy industry amid accusations of profiteering on electricity and gas.Coalition turns down heat under energy suppliers
Millions of pawns; six groups of players
Before the general election, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats repeatedly criticised Labour for failing to tackle prices charged by the Big Six suppliers.
Both the opposition parties demanded an inquiry by the Competition Commission.
An inquiry would have the power to reform the industry, encourage new entrants to break the hold of players such as British Gas and EDF on 99 per cent of the market and, potentially, impose price caps.
However four months into the Coalition Government, no inquiry has been called and the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed last night that it has no plans to refer the industry to the Competition Commission ...
Homes in fuel poverty – defined as spending 10 per cent or more of their income on fuel – have trebled in five years to around 6.6 million.
Figures released in December showed that during the cold winter of 2008/09, “excess winter mortality” jumped by 49 per cent to 36,700, sending an extra 10,000 pensioners to early graves.
Meanwhile, profits have surged at the Big Six – British Gas, EDF, Eon, Npower, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power – and the firms are accused of failing to pass on significant falls in wholesale prices ...
Consumer groups condemned the failure to act, saying customers needed a thorough investigation of the industry, whose numbers of major suppliers has shrunk through takeovers and mergers from 20 at privatisation in the early 1990s to 6 now ...
Independent 18 Aug 2010
Corporate State Economic Democracy Energy Policy: The Market Failure Rebalancing the EconomyCameron warned over cuts to winter fuel allowance
Ministers consider cuts to winter fuel allowance
Winter fuel payment cuts to hit millions of pensioners
Rupert Murdoch donates $1m to Republicans
Murdoch's News Corporation said it supported the Republicans because the party had a pro-business agenda.
Murdoch's Fox News channel, New York Post and Wall Street Journal support the Republicans editorially and he has now added a significant amount of cash to the cause ...
Jack Horner, vice-president of corporate affairs and communications at News Corporation in New York, said:
"News Corporation believes in the power of free markets and organisations like the RGA, which have a pro-business agenda, support our priorities at this most critical time for our economy." ...
Guardian 17 Aug 2010 Rupert Murdoch
Anger over losses of £529m at AA and Saga owned by private equity groups
• Private equity owners amassed debts of £6.4bn
• Pension fund deficit grows as average salaries fall.
Union leaders have attacked the private equity bosses behind the AA and Saga after annual accounts revealed that the highly indebted businesses recorded a combined loss of £529m while at the same time squeezing workers' salaries and pension benefits.
Although the businesses made an operating profit, it was wiped out by interest payments of £705m on debt – much of which was piled on to the group's books when it was refinanced by a trio of private equity firms three years ago.
The GMB union's national officer, Paul Maloney, said: "Private equity always wants to pay no one but themselves. And it's the workforce here that suffers." ...
Guardian 15 Aug 2010 Corporate SociopathyDamon Buffini
Mergers and Acquisitions
Private Equity
US unemployment: Don't let the elite pass the buck
Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic – in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation.
But now it has happened and what do we see?
First, we see Congress sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless ... a large part of Congress, large enough to block any action on jobs, cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1% of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can't find work ...
Observer 15 August 2010 Food StampsThe Third Depression
More than one million people
'take out payday loans'" ... some companies charging more than 2,500% ...
And why do people take out loans at 2,500%? First,because there are no usury laws; second because the greedy banks don't want to loan to the hoi polloi; and third, because credit unions have never received the encouragement they deserve from the state.Research by Consumer Focus suggests that 1.2 million people are now taking out a payday loan every year, borrowing a total of £1.2bn ...
... if the loans are rolled over, debts can quickly escalate.
Dressmaker Stephanie Derby from Finsbury Park in London took out a pay day loan after she fell behind on rent and bill payments.
She was already overdrawn and at her limit on her credit cards.
"I didn't feel I had any other option, I had just graduated and all my debts were mounting up, it really was a last resort," she said.
"I borrowed £400 hoping to pay it back a few weeks later but I was unable to.
"Each month it cost another £56 to renew the loan and after six months the initial loan of £400 ended up costing me nearly £800," she explained ...
BBC NEWS 14 Aug 2010 InequalityTry paying fair wages and tax
Repossession threat ...
It is only in mahogany-panelled boardrooms that things are looking up ...Bonuses are up –
so the economy must be doing well, right?We're all in it together. Aren't we?
Executive pay specialists Hewitt New Bridge Street have released their annual report on packages in the FTSE 100, which shows that although companies have been more restrained on basic salary awards, bonuses have risen.
Median pay for the highest paid directors in the FTSE 100 has risen from around £2.5m to £3m, and the typical bonus earned was about 120% of salary ...
The main problem with the bonus spiral ... is social.
It is divisive to have a super-class operating several cloud levels above the rest of society, being rewarded for activities that are not always obviously beneficial to society as a whole.
A couple of modest proposals: bonuses should be a fraction of salary, not a multiple, and FTSE 100 executives should sign up for Warren Buffett's charity drive.
Guardian 11 Aug 2010
Growing Inequality
Is capitalism the only game in town?
Wealth LogCompany bosses enjoy £500,000 pay increases
Corporate pay Britain
'Fat cats' still have some slimming to do
How incentive bar was set so low that executives could hardly fail
Older workers 'trapped in long-term unemployment'
Youth unemployment for two years or more soars by 42pc
Youth unemployment rising in most regions
Premier Foods signals end
to final salary pensionsPremier Foods chief executive Robert Schofield, a long-standing supporter of final salary pensions, has finally bowed to investor pressure and told pension trustees and unions he wants to ditch the group's gold-plated retirement scheme for its 17,000-strong workforce to help reduce the group's considerable debt.
Premier ... has been one of the last FTSE 350 firms to keep open a final salary scheme despite group debt running at 4.5 times its top-line operating profit.
In 2007 Schofield vowed to keep the scheme open to new members "as long as possible".
Asked today why he had not made the move sooner, he said: "Because I am a bloody socialist, that's why."
Premier has a handful of pension schemes with total assets of about £2.5bn.
According to the latest accounts, the schemes showed a combined funding deficit of £431m – equivalent to 91% of the group's value on the stock market ...
Guardian 04 Aug 2010
Executives deserve high rewards when their activities and innovations benefit society, but lavish payments are distasteful when they leave a trail of unemployment and traumatised families in their wake.Corus redundancies
a stark contrast to Adams payout
The contrast between Adams's circumstances and those of the redundant steelworkers does not need spelling out.In a concurrent article, Ruth Sutherland raises the issue of the
Observer 01 Aug 2010 Corporate Sociopathy
" ... the mainstream Anglo-Saxon male template ... "
within not only the MPC but economics in general.
The current economic template is oriented towards market norms and needs rebalancing to give more weight to social norms.
I know generalities are very dangerous, but since women tend to more social than men - Margaret Thatcher excepted - the importance of this rebalancing cannot be over-stated.
The current model of the corporation is solely market-norms oriented, as this report once again demonstrates.
The loss of a thousand jobs gives rise to a collective shrug of the corporate shoulders: "it's not our problem".
The financial costs pass to the state, which may not take into account allnof the social costs - family breakdown, mental illness, impact on children - I am sure you can add to the baleful list.
But no one in power questions the line of travel, because market norms are the only show in town, and 'the show' is in the interests of - mainly male - politicians of all parties.Outgoing Corus boss paid £2m last year
A good woman economist is hard to find
Big earners are still safe in their glass towers
The FSA may talk as if it's getting tough on the City, but it seems it has already run out of steam ...
In a detailed report, the FSA shows that of the 27 firms netted by its first regulatory trawl, 2,800 bankers got more than £1m, almost 90% of the total in bonuses.
Thousands more lower down the food chain also benefited from bonuses, usually worth at least 80% of their total income ...
Safe from the protests of ignorant consumers and from intervention by a government fearful of killing the golden goose, banks feel secure.
A little heat could be applied by the agents whom consumers pay to handle their money. Fund managers, pension trustees and independent financial advisers could exercise some control to the benefit of ordinary savers.
It does not happen and is unlikely to happen when this small and shadowy group are under instruction to maximise short-term profit for their customers.
They also benefit from fees and commissions that oil the industry's wheels.
The FSA chairman Lord Turner famously said that much banking activity was socially useless.
It's a pity the debate he sparked last year already seems to have run out of steam.
Guardian 29 July 2010
Commission on Banking Fractional Reserve BankingFresh bonus fears as bank profits rise
Banks ignore pleas and cut loans ...
3,000 City staff took home £1m+
Neoliberalism: A Social Darwinist Creed
Like all faiths, neoliberalism needs enemies.
Christianity - in its fundamentalist form - has "the devil and all his works"; Islam has "kaffah" [IASDK]; Stalin had the Kulaks; and Hitler anyone who was not inside his mythical Aryan community.
Neoliberlism has simply "losers":Seen thus - as a faith - explains much, if not all that we need to know about the essence of neoliberalism.
John Gray puts it thus:... rationalists ... lament the renewed strength of religion in politics.
They seem to have forgotten the political religions of the twentieth century and cannot have reflected on the fact that in the United States, a model secular regime, religion and politics are intertwined more closely than in any other advanced country.
The unreality of this secularist stance does not come only from an ignorance of history.
Those who demand that religion be exorcised from politics think this can be achieved by excluding traditional faiths from public institutions; but secular creeds are formed from religious concepts, and suppressing religion does not mean it ceases to control thinking and behaviour.
Like repressed sexual desire, faith returns, often in grotesque forms, to govern the lives of those who deny it.
Black Mass HdBk edition, Allen Lane 2007 - page 190Or, to put it another way, neoliberalism is another form of authoritarianism:
“The idea of freedom ‘…degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’, which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’.
But if, as is always the case, ‘no society is possible in which power and compulsion are absent, nor a world in which force has no function’, then the only way this liberal utopian vision could be sustained is by force, violence and authoritarianism. Liberal or neo-liberal utopianism is doomed, in Polyani’s view to be frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright fascism”. [oDem]Controlling the Untermensch
Here then is the explanation of government's growing authoritarianism, and it's 'security state' agenda complete with a vast panoply of IT data bases and Europe's largest CCTV network.
The large state is now needed, not to enable declining welfare provision, but to ensure that the new untermensch - those who fall into mental illness and/or those who fall into criminality and/or those who fall into old age - do not destabilize the 'free' market utopia. The world would be better off without them. [WL]
The Globalization Strategy: America and Europe in the Crucible
Strategic landscapes are radically changing. No longer does a person’s country represent the core of citizenship or identity.
Today, a new murky world is dawning, one that advocates global governance as the portent to humanity’s social, political, and economic future.
Indeed, in this post-Cold War environment, “nation-states” – like the societies they serve and accommodate – find themselves in a relentless swell of transformation.
National interests give way to global loyalties, just as world citizenship is touted as preferable to the narrow views of nationalism; no individual, corporation, or country is immune to this revolution.
Welcome to “globalization,” where everyone is either a pawn or a player.
As an end to itself, the concept of globalization seems to rest on one central pillar: the consolidation of power.
No matter what stripe or ideology globalization comes packaged in, this singular component cannot be denied.
And in a society where “power begets power,” a global system, by definition, has the capability to expand this characteristic to new levels.
Politically, globalization represents the leveraging of power beyond that found in any one nation.
Using the clichés of global governance, we would call this a “new world civilization,” one that’s built with international management in mind.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last true master of the Soviet style of centralized power explains, “The time has come to develop integrated global policies.” ...
The August Review