Uprising In Greece As Rage Against “Austerity” Flames, Fin Reform Compromises

May 6th, 2010 - by: danny

I will be hosting News Dissector Radio on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com 10 AM to 11 AM EDT. Guests: Michael Greenberger, Mary Bottari

Announcing a screening of PLUNDER in Washington DC May 17. I will be there.

NEW VIDEO: “PLUNDER MARCHES ON WALL STREET“

PROTESTS CONTINUE IN GREECE
CONFRONTING GOLDMAN SACHS
FIREWORKS OF TERROR

Greece has become the new volcano in Europe–only it’s the people who are spewing anger and fury at the virtual takeover of the company by European and international financial institutions who are imposing “austerity” –ie cutbacks in services, layoffs and worse. Unlike Americans who can be conditioned to accept what the people on top dish out, Greece is a country where people are conscious, organized and have a long history of struggling for what they believe is right. This does not mean that there weren’t and aren’t serious economic problems. It does mean that what was an economic problem has become a serious political one. The unions there see the imposed austerity program as a a declaration of war against the working and middle classes.

Said one worker quoted by the BBC: “This is a war on workers. We will answer with war.” It seems to be class struggle time. Others point to the role of Goldman Sachs and US rating agencies in setting the ground for this crisis.

The LA Times reports: 3 killed as rioters overrun streets of Greece.

Tens of thousands protest cutbacks that come with the massive international bailout of the debt-ridden nation. The national strike shutters historical sites, schools. ‘Everyone is furious,’ says a resident.

Just read this:

A 24-hour national strike morphed into the strongest — and most violent — show of defiance yet over the austerity plan as millions of workers walked off the job and thousands took to the streets to vent their anger against the government.

In Athens, at least 100,000 protesters stormed the sprawling grounds of parliament, jeering at politicians and chanting, “Thieves, thieves!”

Tempers flared when a group of workers in orange caps tried to break through a cordon of riot police. Authorities fired three rounds of pepper gas, but rather than retreat, the demonstrators retaliated, sparking a series of running streets battles that quickly engulfed the Greek capital in plumes of acrid smoke.

BBC reports: Flights have been grounded, many schools are closed and hospitals are operating an emergency-only service.

The prime minister, who wants to freeze pay, gather more taxes and reform pensions, insisted that the proposals would be fully implemented.

EU leaders will discuss Greece’s difficulties on Thursday amid concern the crisis could threaten the euro.

European finance ministers are also due to hold a teleconference on Wednesday to talk about the issue

In Our country, there is not so much populist rage on financial issues but there is an intense debate.

Economist Rick Wolff comments (Portside.org)

The political conflicts and street battles in Greece today foretell what is coming to many countries including the US. The struggles are basically over what the government spends on and who pays the taxes. In today’s class-divided societies, classes differ over what governments should do and who should pay the taxes. Governments in such societies often turn to
borrowing – which produces national debts – as ways to defer and postpone the political problems of resolving class struggles focused on the state. By borrowing, governments can immediately accommodate – at least partly – the different class demands for government spending while postponing the raising of taxes into the future (when they will need to be raised more, of course, to repay the amount borrowed plus interest).

Scott Schneider comments:

Indeed it’s a minor miracle that the poor and working classes of Europe have thus far taken the staggering class warfare waged against them with so little violence. Worse is the total passivity which thus far has met the depravity and theft of trillions (directly costing thousands of lives through bankruptcies, dispossesion, homelessness, street crime, domestic violence, family break-ups, utility co. heating shut-offs leading to deadly fires, interruptions of critical medical treatment, suicides etc.) perpetrated upon helpless Americans – with no end in sight.

Something to consider.

Now back to the USA where financial reforms are quietly being cut back and compromised.

Fed Audit Endangered?

The Campaign for America’s Future reports: “First it was derivatives, now it’s auditing the Fed that Dems are looking to ditch on the financial reform bill. But Matt Yglesias doesn’t see it happening: “I find it very hard to imagine the Obama administration vetoing its own financial regulation bill over a popular, populist measure. Presumably that’s why they’re trying to kill it in the Senate.

Paradoxically, though, the harder Obama struggles against this idea, the more incentive conservative Republicans with no intention of voting yes on the bill have to vote with Sanders. That way, the whole package might fall apart in the Senate and nothing whatsoever will pass. This is pie-in-the-sky, but I think that if Congress wants to get serious about supervising the Fed better what they ought to do is scrap the ‘dual mandate’ in favor of something clearer. The nature of the dual mandate is that it’s impossible to say if the Fed is meeting its mandate, and thus impossible to hold anyone accountable. As an alternative, Congress could set a statutory nominal GDP trend target or a price level trend target and hold the leadership of the Fed accountable based on how good a job they do of hitting the target.”

GOING AFTER RATINGS AGENCIES

Senate Democrats are targeting the rating agencies with new amendments to financial reform: “Sen. Al Franken has written an amendment to financial overhaul legislation that would seek to prevent securities underwriters from hiring rating agencies based on which ones proved most willing to give their deals the highest possible ratings. Senators Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have agreed to cosponsor the amendment, according to a spokesman for Franken. The amendment is expected to be formally introduced later this week. Meanwhile, Nelson is also preparing his own possible amendment that would seek to hold rating agencies more accountable once their ratings, akin to Good Housekeeping seals of approval, are handed out. Currently, agencies continue to monitor credit ratings only if they are paid to do so. Nelson’s proposal would mandate ongoing surveillance.

Simon Johnson, BaselineScenario.com: Fake Debate: The Senate Will Not Vote On Big Banks

There is widespread agreement that the financial crisis which broke out in September 2008 was our most severe in over 50 years. There is also a consensus that, whatever other factors may have been involved, the excessive risk-taking and general mismanagement of huge banks at the center of our economy played a significant role in what happened. (Yes, of course the largest banks themselves deny any responsibility — including most recently using insulting language.)

The financial reform package now on the Senate floor puts surprisingly little constraint on the activities of our largest banks going forward — preferring instead to defer to regulators to tweak the rules down the road (despite the fact that this approach has gone badly over the past 20-30 years).

A growing number of senators insist we should do more to reduce the size and limit the leverage of megabanks (i.e., the amount that banks can borrow), arguing that this would constitute an important additional failsafe — on top of all other efforts to establish “more effective regulation”.

Senator Ted Kaufman (D, DE) has led the charge on this issue, pounding away for months — and giving another powerful speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs held a hearing yesterday with an interesting title: “Wall Street Fraud and Fiduciary Duties: Can Jail Time Serve as an Adequate Deterrent for Willful Violations?” Subcommittee chair Arlen Specter said that he has “long believed that it is insufficient to have fines for fraud.” In his view, “[f]or corporate fraud, if you have a fine it is calculated as part of doing business.” Look for Senator Specter, who is running for re-election this year, to seek to add new crimes for financial fraud to federal law. Financialfraidlaw.com

Yet, astonishingly, it seems increasingly likely there will be no real Senate debate on this issue.

STEALTH BAILOUT STILL UNDERWAY

The Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) updates on a monthly basis our Total Wall Street Bailout Cost Table that unlike other bailout assessments, includes Federal Reserve loans. CMD finds that the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and FDIC combined have disbursed a total of $4.7 trillion on the bailout of which $2 trillion is still outstanding.

CMD’s assessment also shows that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury have disbursed $1.6 trillion in an effort to prop up the mortgage investment market through purchases of mortgage-backed securities and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt.

“Our Wall Street Bailout accounting illustrates that a stealth bailout it still underway as the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department disburse funds to prop up the housing market. The majority of this money is from the Fed and was not subject to Congressional debate or approval. This activity underscores the need for a full and public audit of the Federal Reserve and all of its programs,” said Mary Bottari, Director of the Real Economy Project.

GIMME, GIMME

And now Fannie Mae is asking for another $10 BILLION from the government, a clear sign that the attempt to fix the housing market is NOT working. This GSE (Government Supported Enterprise) lost $8 in the last quarter. In all Freddie and Fannie have received more than $60 billion in bailouts with apparently no end in sight.

RICHARD ESKOW: The Senate Should Debate “Too Big to Fail” On Live Television

Now that the ideological defense of Wall Street behavior has collapsed, brought down by the wreckage of deregulation, bankers and lobbyists are pursuing a new strategy: fighting the democratic process itself. They’re suggesting that this issue is a little too complicated for public scrutiny, and that what’s really needed is for wiser heads to sort things out in private. We’ve seen what happens when deals are made in the back room. What we really need is the opposite: A live, televised debate before the American people.

There are still protests underway against Goldman Sachs. Here’s one:

Release: GOLDMAN SACHS FACES THE MUSIC: FIVE MAJOR SHAREHOLDER RESOLUTIONS FROM RELIGIOUS, SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTORS REFLECT MAIN STREET VALUES AMIDST CONCERNS ABOUT WALL STREET ABUSES

Anticipating Goldman SEC Fraud Probe, Faith-based Investors Raised Concerns Months Ago About Company Practices By Filing Resolutions on Derivatives, Pay Disparity, and Other Issues.

When the management of Goldman Sachs meets Friday (May 7th) with its shareholders, it will face five major proxy resolutions filed by a delegation of over 12 members of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). The broad range of concerns reflected in these resolutions from religious and other socially responsible institutional shareholders will send a stark message to Wall Street regarding abuses that are very far removed from “Main Street values”.

The five key resolutions and their filers are:

1) Collateral in derivatives trading — Cathy Rowan for Maryknoll Sisters — A resolution that already received 30 percent support at Citigroup and 39 percent shareholder backing at Bank of America;

2) Pay disparity — Laura Shaffer for Nathan Cummings Foundation and Sr Judy Byron for Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel — A resolution requesting a review of internal pay disparity and the appropriateness of executive compensation levels;

3) Separation of CEO and chair — A resolution requesting that the Chair of the Board of Directors be an independent member of the board. Julie Tanner for Christian Brothers Investment Services and The Needmor Fund;

4) Political contributions — A resolution requesting that management provide a semi-annual report disclosing monetary and non-monetary political contributions and expenditures. Adam Kanzer for Domini Social Investments.

5) Executive compensation (Withdrawn) — Tim Smith, Senior Vice President, Walden Asset Management.

Two resolutions dealing with executive pay were withdrawn: One asked for the implementation of an annual advisory vote on executive pay as a platform for input from investors. As the company agreed to implement “say on pay” and put a resolution in the proxy, the resolution was pulled. A second resolution asked for independent input on executive compensation policies and practices and, as management took steps to address the issue, the resolution was withdrawn.

Pam Martens: Why A Criminal Case Against Goldman Matters and Could Stick

Michael Wolf, Newswer.com, Can Warren Buffett (and Andrew Ross Sorkin) Save Goldman Sachs?

Business reporters love successful people. One reason more scrutiny was not brought to bear on financial institutions during the boom years by more reporters is that financial institutions are (or were) run by successful people. You can’t argue with success. Of course there are fewer successful people today. Even people who still have a lot of money, like partners at Goldman Sachs, now find themselves in an equivocal position. They have diminished reputations, which means they have diminished power, which could mean they will have diminished fortunes (although that hasn’t happened…

OTHER CRISIS NEWS

REAL NEWS VIDEO: A GLOBAL FOOD BUBBLE IS ON THE WAY

SURVIVAL RATIONS AND FOOD SUPPLY

Greg Palast, Truthout, The BP I have Known All Too Well

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On The Oil Spill: Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP’s oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama’s Katrina.

In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.

The absence of an acoustical regulator — a remotely triggered dead man’s switch that might have closed off BP’s gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) — was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway’s North Sea operations. BP uses the devise voluntarily in Britain’s North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland’s Shell and France’s Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism “essential” and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs.

Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry …

WATCH: MORE ON THE MEDIA: YOUR NEWS DISSECTOR DISCUSSES CABLE RATINGS AND MORE ON RT

Late Breakers….

OBAMA PLANS TO PROPOSE IMMIGRATION LAW THIS YEAR

GORDON BROWN EXPECTED TO LOSE TODAY IN THE UK

Rep Obey (D-Wi), head of Appropriations Committee Will Step Down Nigeria’s President Dies, VP takes Over For Real U.S. regulators to reassert powers over broadband’

Times Square Terrorist?

PA fireworks store has video of NYC bomb suspect (AP)

AP – A man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square was videotaped buying consumer-grade fireworks at a Pennsylvania store that a company official said were not nearly strong enough to make a powerful bomb.

WHO IS THIS GUY?

Via Undernews: Justin Raimondo of Anti Warl:

The oddness of this case is brought out in the details of Shahzad’s career — from being a financial analyst at the Affinion Group, in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he commuted from the home he and his wife had purchased in nearby Shelton, to quitting his job, in 2009, going off to Waziristan for “training,” and then returning to at the beginning of this year, a changed man. . . News articles talk about how, in the beginning, Shahzad and his wife – whose Facebook page says she “likes to party every night” – were friendly, at first, but later seemed to withdraw as Shahzad became more “radicalized” . . .

What stands out about Shahzad and his family is their ordinariness – the wife, a University of Colorado graduate, majoring in business, and Shahzad, who spent his days calculating profit margins and tending his garden, not to mention a baby daughter nicknamed “Bunny Wabbit.” So typical is this family that they recently had their Shelton house foreclosed.”…

Sam Smith: “Even Walt Kelly – who warned us years ago of meeting the enemy and finding it to be us – might be alarmed.”

New York Times: U.S. Officials Say Pakistani Taliban Likely Had Role in Times Square Bombing Attempt

American officials said Wednesday that it was very likely that a radical group once thought unable to attack the United States had played a role in Saturday’s bombing attempt in Times Square, elevating concerns about whether other militant groups could deliver at least a glancing blow on American soil.

Jitters on CNN: New York City Police Shut Down The RFK Bridge when someone abandoned a U-Hall truck on it.

Later, they find nothing to worry about in truck.

Via DXM: Racist slogans and derisive depictions of President Obama at Tea Party gatherings

There is no comparison between the “slogans and derisive depictions” lambasting Bush and what has happened to Obama at the hands of almost entirely white people. Bush was responsible for Shock and Awe and everything that went along with what started out as an illegal war on the people of Iraq, a war crime – no different than Hitler making the preemptive strike on Poland that started WWII. For reasons that don’t change those facts, there was no one to make the US answer for its crimes; the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children; the maiming and crippling of hundreds of thousands more, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands – not to mention the deaths of 4397 American soldiers. No matter the perceived benefit, and there was none for the US, Israel or the American oil companies, the action initiated by the Cheney-Bush White House neocon was a crime against humanity that according to The Cost of War website, has a price tag quickly approaching one trillion dollars. The 2003-2008 attacks on Bush were a protest of the man and his deeds. The attacks on Obama since he was elected are racially motivated.

Tea party groups battling perceptions of racism

Catholics Call on Pope Benedict to Reconsider Vatican’s Ban on Contraceptive Pill

Fifty years ago this week, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the contraceptive pill. The man most prominently associated with the development and introduction of the pill, John Rock, was an Irish Catholic doctor from Boston. Dr. Rock didn’t set out to make waves with the Vatican; in fact, he was sure that his invention would gain approval from the Vatican and finally allow Catholics to practice safe and effective family planning. He was successful on both counts. Three different layers of a Vatican commission approved the pill back in 1965. But Pope Paul VI decided to ignore the findings of those panels and condemned Catholic women to a variety of unreliable methods if they were to follow the Vatican’s dictates. To this day, most Catholic women ignore the Vatican’s decree, and many millions of them have safer and more reliable family planning thanks to Dr. Rock’s pill.

The story of the pill’s genesis is a fascinating one. John Rock was an infertility expert who was a pioneer behind many modern methods of assisting couples to conceive. In the course of his work, he also met many fertile Catholic women who wanted to space the births of their children, and sometimes to avoid having children. The Vatican’s ban on artificial methods of contraception meant that they had to rely on so-called natural methods, when a couple can only have sexual intercourse during the time each month when a woman is infertile if they want to avoid pregnancy. This was unacceptable to many, unworkable for those who have unreliable cycles and impossible for women who could not negotiate their sexual relationship with their part

YOUR LETTERS: Paul Kneevers writes:

For the first time in my life, I advocate the use of nuclear weapons. Here’s why, where and when. Even then I’m not sure the HOW is possible.

Why. it might be the only way to fix the leak.

http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_could_kill_Earths_oceans/

Where. In the gulf.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/deepwater_horizon_secret_memo.html

When? ASAP!

http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m5d3-Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill-disasterTotal-wellhead-failure-raises-fear-of-worst-case-scenario

And most importantly, this shows just how STUPID we have been to allow corporations, governments and the individuals who run them to push us to rely on oil for our energy needs. Now this toxic addiction may well be the end of our civilization. It certainly will be the end of all aquatic life as we know it very soon!

I’m going for a bike ride.

Finally we will close with The Onion’s take on Goldman Sachs:

The Case Against Goldman Sachs

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs is revealing a cavalier culture in which the firm invested recklessly and bet against its own clients. Here are some of the company’s questionable practices:

Created its own blood bank and sat on all deposits until the Haitian earthquake

Tried their hardest to dissuade risk-loving pensioners and teachers’ unions from buying into unsound derivatives, but in the end it wasn’t enough to stop them

Drove up commodity index while hedging against price increases by maintaining a 20-acre facility crammed with full barrels of crude oil, stockpiled bales of cotton, and tens of thousands of lean hogs

The guy who delivered lunch every day was always tipped with one of the company’s crumbling mutual funds

Offered clients discounted concert tickets that junior analysts won by repeatedly dialing into radio contests

Invested in the highly lucrative underground organ trade through its Mexican subsidiary Goldmando Saques

Over the years, executives secretly dumped the contents of nearly 2,400 convenience stores’ take-a-penny-leave-a-penny trays into their suit pockets

Taking your money and not telling you what the hell they’re doing with it

Tune in to the News Dissector Radio Hour on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com

Quote of the Day:Mark Twain (t/h to green dog democrat)

“I consider that brokers come into the world with souls — I am satisfied they do; and if they wear them out in the course of a long career of stock-jobbing, have they not a right to come in at the eleventh hour and get themselves half-soled, like old boots, and be saved at last? . . . Mind, I do not say that a broker will be saved, or even that is uncommon likely
that such a thing will happen — I only say that Lazarus was raised from the dead, the five thousand were fed with twelve loaves of bread, the water was turned into wine, the Israelites crossed the Red Sea dry-shod, and a broker can be saved. True, the angel that accomplishes the task may require all eternity to rest himself in . . .”

Hasta manana.

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