The US ambassador to Libya and several employees at the US embassy in Benghazi have been killed by Muslim fundamentalists in reaction to a short clip that portrayed Muhammad in a not very flattering manner.
This is just plain wrong: there is never an excuse for reacting with violence, let alone murder, to some form of media statement, be it movie, photo, painting, book, newspaper article. Never!
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Back in June, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, voted on the ratification of European Stability Mechanism (ESM) a.k.a. “bailout fund” and European Fiscal Compact a.k.a. “fiscal pact”. (the two are tied up together)
The former is intended to loan money to eurozone countries who have trouble financing their public spending by public debt utterance, for instance because the yields they have to offer have become too high. The fund is supposed to be capitalized by the eurozone countries, mainly Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. A simpler way would of course be if the ECB unconditionally backed eurozone public debt but this goes against the neo-liberal article of faith that the central bank should be independent. Therefore, that solution was not considered.
The fiscal pact, on the other hand, takes budget autonomy away from eurozone member states. It tightens the nonsensical 3% deficit, 60% public debt rate requirements even further, requires countries to pass laws that install those same requirements at a national level, places compliance with its budgetary and other requirements under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and allows any ratifying state to bring enforcement proceedings against any other ratifying state. In short, it reduces eurozone members’ sovereignty, and in times of economic recession, like currently, requires cutting public spending, i.e. slashing the social safety net.
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The Black Agenda Report writes about what Obama has wrought:
Preventive Detention
George Bush could not have pulled off such an evisceration of the Bill of Rights, if only because the Democrats and an aroused street would not have allowed it. Bush knew better than to mount a full-court legislative assault on habeas corpus, and instead simply asserted that preventive detention is inherent in the powers of the presidency during times of war. It was left to Obama to pass actual legislation nullifying domestic rule of law – with no serious Democratic opposition.
And this is the cruel irony of it all: Romney/Ryan seems like a nightmarish future and Obama appears as the lesser evil. But 1) he’s at best marginally better, just compare his presidency so far with the man’s that he replaced with so much fanfare, and 2) a Republican president would experience pushback from what passes for the Left in the U.S. whereas in the case of Obama leftists grudgingly proclaim that this is the most realistic option for left-wing policies and therefore side with him even when his policies are as neo-liberal, imperialistic, and oligarchic as the Republicans’ would be.
This is the exact same BS that The West Wing pushed.
I also could have titled this post “Wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too”. Because, you know, Armin Mahler is complaining in Spiegel that ECB Bond-Buying Plans Undermine Democracy:
Draghi, on the other hand, has no democratic legitimization. And yet he has taken it upon himself to make the most important and possibly momentous decision in the history of the monetary union: defending the euro at all costs.
Funny how the holy grail of neo-liberals is not so holy anymore all of a sudden. Because this is exactly what an independent central bank means: a group of people that have not been democratically elected and cannot be held politically accountable.
Allegedly, according to everything neo-liberals have told us over the years, such an institution is the prerequisite for (financial) “market confidence” because instead of bowing to politically pressure they make decisions based on their expertise.
Well, seems Mr Draghi is not bowing to German political pressure (anymore).
from Mark Weisbrot
The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised in three years. But a raise is much more overdue than that. If we look at the minimum wage 44 years ago, and simply adjust it for inflation, it would be more than $10 today.
This is another ugly symptom of what has gone wrong in America over the past 35-40 years.
Spiegel recently ran an article series on “Good Governance”. The lede read like this:
Western democracies consider themselves to be efficient, farsighted and just — in other words, prime examples of “good governance.” But in recent years, the euro and debt crises, along with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have shattered faith in the reliability of Western institutions. Disconcerted Europeans are casting a worried eye at newly industrialized nations like China and Brazil. Can the West learn something from countries that for so long sought its advice?
There are four articles, on Brazil, the U.S., Denmark, and China – all of them interesting reads but unfortunately also one more example of how Spiegel nowadays consider journalism to be bare bones facts reporting (and of course opinion pieces). There are no attempts at linking the reporting to the situation in Germany, the EU, or other “western” countries, and connecting the dots.
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The main underlying idea of supply-side unemployment measures is that the average (potential) employee looks at wages he can earn working, the unemployment support (welfare) that the government is paying, and then decides that the wage is too low to give up on the leisure he enjoys staying unemployed.
The “solution” is therefore to punish people that are unemployed: by reducing overall unemployment support, having unemployed participate in “trainings” and cut their support if they don’t do this often enough, to include stipulations that unemployed have to take on jobs, even only part time or very low-paying (in fact, the government might even subsidize part or all of the wage) or have their unemployment support cut.
The current incarnation of such a scheme in Germany means that as a single, longterm unemployed, without children, or additional income one would receive 374 euros per month (plus a certain amount of rent money) (Calculator – only in German). At this “support” level, 7.5% of Germany’s workforce prefers their leisure, about half of them long-term.
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