A good socio-economic news channel

There are others that I may have mentioned in the past, like The Real News or Redacted Tonight but this morning I had breakfast with Professor Wolf and I really liked it because it tells the naker truth, no pretense of anything else your life space is smaller, economic recovery for the rich is not doing anything for your rightful depression other than selling you pills, and they want you to believe you are a slave and nothing more.

That's how I like my news: no nonsense, it makes me feel more energetic by the morning full of anticapitalist energy, wanting to do things.

These are their sites:

• Democracy at Work: Economic Update 
• Professor Richard D. Wolff

Serious erosion of US economic hegemony in two key details

One is that Russia is about to replace the USA as main global wheat exporter. Being an agricultural exporter may seem minor but it is an strategical way to make sure you hold the pan by the handle and that, of course, in case of crisis your state is self-sufficient to feed its own people and maybe also its allies. The USA knows it and that is why agriculture is over-protected, mega-subsidized and systematically exempt from foreign trade agreements. A few decades ago only the USA, Canada and Argentina were global grain exporters. This is changing fast. 

The other one is that Iran is selling oil for euros, not dollars anymore. This is a direct attack against the dollar hegemony and to the ability of the imperial power to finance its own deficit, caused by consumerism and military costs. The US' imperial power heavily depends on the denomination of oil in dollars but sales of oil in US dollars have decayed to just 60% globally. The last one in the OPEC who tried to do that was Saddam Hussein, however Iran is a much bigger and better backed state and therefore invasion is not likely at all.

Greece: what will happen now?

This very honest interview by The Real News Network to Kostas Lapavitsas (Syriza's independent MP and columnist at The Guardian) is a must watch (two videos as "playlist"):

Lapavitsas is very clear: the banks must and will no doubt be nationalized, IOUs denominated in euros will be issued to put up with the lack of liquidity caused by the ECB and the Greek banking oligarchy. 

There is no hope in negotiations: Germany won't budge and neither can Greece, much less after the massive rejection of the Troika's take-it-or-leave-it proposal by the Greek People on Sunday. 

Changes will happen in a matter of days, very possibly after the last attempt at negotiating a deal this week, which is desperate and won't produce any results.

Less clear is what will happen to the European Union and the Eurozone, but that is not, I guess, Greece's problem anymore.

Fascist Ukraine gets Western support in its bankruptcy - compare with Greece

The Fascist regime in Ukraine has just passed a law allowing arbitrary moratorium on its foreign debt payments. The country has been actually brought to bankruptcy by the Fascist "Maidan" regime imposed by the USA and its allies, including early "evacuation" (robbery?) of its gold reserves to the USA and therefore this bankruptcy was very predictable. 

The interesting part is actually in the Western reaction to the news:

The international community, including the United States, European Union and international financial institutions are helping Ukraine in this difficult time, said the statement. The country expects a $17.5 billion bailout from the IMF in the next four years, as well as $7.2 billion that will be loaned to Ukraine other countries and international financial institutions.

In other words the USA and its puppets are helping the Fascist dictatorship of Kiev to have a non-catastrophic partial bankrupcty by means of perpetuating the debt dependency. It serves their purposes, which are to extend the anti-Russian and anti-Ukrainian regime for as long as possible (it won't last forever, that's clear when you get a mere 17% participation in the mock presidential elections, but meanwhile the looting continues). 

The siege of Greece

Meanwhile the extremely democratic socialist government of Greece, enjoying growing popular support by all accounts, a member of the European Union and NATO, is being forced to uncontrolled bankruptcy (and exit from the Eurozone) by those same powers. 

Not a single attempt at relief is being made even if Tsipras and his cabinet enjoy vast democratic support. Much like in Venezuela, what the Western Empire is doing, is to besiege the democratic socialist government in the hope that it will collapse and stops being a nuisance to their extremist capitalist policies.

A naive observer would think this is absurd, how can the self-proclaimed "guardians of democracy" promote fascism and attack democracy? Well, they are only the guardians of Capitalism. "Democracy" in their propaganda speech is just a code word for Capitalism at its worst, for vassalage to the global banker mafia. That way in their media Ukraine becomes a "democracy" and Venezuela a "tyranny". Of course nobody informed can believe that but not everyone is informed, many just watch TV. 

In fact today we see more and more how democracy opposes Capitalism and how Capitalism, after the period of concessions because of the Cold War I, when it had to compete against the Leninist version of socialism, is again, as in the 1920s and 30s supporting fascism everywhere. It never really stopped being that way (just consider the many fascist regimes under NATO protectorate in Mediterranean Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, including Israel and Apartheid South Africa) but there was a time when the West appeared ashamed of such relationships. Not anymore now that the mass media is absolutely concentrated in a few oligarchic hands: now it is again as in the time of Mussolini and Hitler and it may indeed have the same dire consequences.

80 people own more than 3.7 billion.

I read at Global Research, citing OXFAM (one of the few charitable NGOs that really has a conscience) that the World's 80 wealthiest individuals own more than the less affluent 50% of the global population. Reality can be even worse because some very rich individuals such as monarchs are not included in the sources and the exact accountancy of their wealth is not fully clear anyhow. 

Another finding is:

The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 presents on its page 98, a global wealth pyramid, which indicates that the world’s richest 0.7% (35 million people) own $115.9 trillion, while the poorest 99.3% (4,665 million people) own $147.3 trillion. It also shows that the richest 8.6% own $224.5T (trillion), while the poorest 91.4% own only $38.7T. (Or, in other words: the richest 8.6% own 5.8 times as much as do the poorest 91.4%.)

Finally they mention that scientific research demonstrates that the USA is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy (pretty much like Russia). The power of the common people to influence policy in the USA is effectively almost zero nowadays. 

They don't say but much of that is because of private property of the mass media, which are concentrated in very few hands. These have globally rigged the market so media are not anymore profitable in most cases, becoming exclusively an investment for their influence, something every stinkingly rich oligarch must have but not because they make any profit, not directly, but because they serve to influence policy and politics in general.

It is the same in Europe and in almost every other place. I guess that the few exceptions may be found in Latin America, where a few countries like Venezuela or Bolivia can be considered truly democratic, with common people actually making a difference, or in Greece. 

Marx predicted it

But back to the economy: this horrible situation of extreme and growing inequality, of extreme concentration of wealth and power in very few hands, is exactly the predictable and actually predicted outcome of Capitalism in the "end of times" (so to say): an unproductive rentier oligarchy, every day more extremely financier and speculative and corrupt to the marrow is parasitizing the global economy. This minuscule group of hyper-rich cannot of course generate much demand (some luxuries but nothing otherwise), what actually plunges the real economy into catastrophe as the bulk of the people is deprived of even the most basic means of life (salaries that don't even pay the rent, you know the deal, you probably live through it in one or another form). 

The result, the unavoidable and already ongoing result is a dramatic implosion of the whole economy, produce that doesn't sell, even if people would like to buy it (but nope: they can't afford even the very basics), deflation that causes the collapse of even correctly managed productive companies, accumulation of the nominal wealth in the speculative-financial sector, a gambling residual economy that is absolutely unsustainable (more money invested in betting against the success of companies and countries than in favor of their success). No future at all for this scenario. I doubt it survives to 2020. 

But regardless of the sustainability, or rather total lack of it, of the current speculative global economy (or rather eco-chaos, because there is no nomos whatsoever in it anymore), the dramatic effects it is having and will have on the vast majority of the population can't be exaggerated: each month, each year greater and greater fractions of the global people are being pushed to the extremes of near-impossible survival, what causes desperate mass migrations, riots and what-not. Only the low level of class consciousness and popular organization prevent this situation from evolving into full fledged revolutions in more and more places. Mind you that the growing victories of "Bolivarians" or now also Syriza in Greece must be considered as revolutionary because they are active expressions of the extreme exhaustion of the peoples and their growing desire to try anything but this endless and hopeless plunder. 

Sometimes, rarely, even mercenary politicians, in Freudian slip, speak the truth. The Secretary General of the ruling People's Party of Spain, María Dolores de Cospedal, is one of those. In two occasions she was recorded reminding us "how hard they have worked to plunder the country", confusing the Spanish word sanear (to clean up) for saquear (to plunder, to loot).

And that's the truth: they are looting not just this or that country but the whole planet Earth. It's a bit like the flying party of Douglas Adams: until the last pack of chips is exhausted, until the whole planet underneath has become scorched earth... they will continue with the looting. 

Unless we impede it. Time to sharpen the pitchforks.

Report on the horrible reality of Greece

Read in full the highly informative article by Greek-Australian economist Yanis Varoufakis at his blog. 

Greek GDP has continuously collapsed in the last years

Notable excerpt (depressing but highly informative data):

• There are 10 million Greeks living in Greece (and falling fast due to migration), ‘organised’ in around 2,8 million households that have a ‘relationship’ with the Tax Office. Of those 2,8 million households, 2,3 million have a debt to the Tax Office that they cannot service.
• 1 million households cannot pay their electricity bill in full, forcing the electricity company to ‘extend and pretend’, thus ensuring that 1 million homes live in fear of darkness at night while the electricity company is insolvent.
• Of the 3 million people constituting Greece’s labour force, 1,3 million [43%] are jobless.
• Of the 1,3 million jobless only 10% receive unemployment benefits. The rest must fend for themselves.
• Of those who work in the private sector 500 thousand have not been paid for more than three months.
• Contractors who work for the public sector are paid up to 24 months after they provided the service and pre-paid sales tax to the Tax Office.
• Half of the businesses still in operation throughout the country are seriously in arrears vis-à-vis their (compulsory) contributions to their employees’ pension and social security fund.

A failed state whose only objective possibility is to declare bankruptcy, socialize all the economy and begin anew. 

EU: IMF proposes huge tax on savings

It seems clear that the Cyprus savings crisis was just the beginning. Back in the day there were already voices proposing to tax savings and it seems their time has come. Faced with plummeting income sources EU states may agree to tax savings above €100,000 with a yet unclear figure, speculated to be 10%. 

Uh, just what happened in Cyprus!

Or is it a "one time ~30% tax on all assets", as Zero Hedge speculated? Or is it a 10% on all households with "positive wealth", as suggested by the Fiscal Monitor? 

They are in any case trying to impose it stealthily, "before avoidance is possible". 

Oops, just as happened in Cyprus!

Of course, the rumor is already spreading, so it may not work at all. 

In any case it illustrate the terrible woes of this deep systemic crisis, whose cost, as happened some 230 years ago in France, can't be unloaded anymore only on the shoulders of the workers.

Source: The Automatic Earth.

USA: government shutdown (and "emergency" rumors)

The US Government is since yesterday in technical shutdown for lack of a budget (unlike in other countries the previous budget can't be automatically extended, it seems - someone explain this to me, please).

The effects, which may have dramatic consequences in workers and welfare beneficiaries, are described in this official page:

Below, find an overview of some of the government services and operations that will be impacted until Congress passes a budget to fund them again. For detailed information about specific activities at Federal agencies, please see federal government contingency plans.

• Vital services that ensure seniors and young children have access to healthy food and meals may not have sufficient Federal funds to serve all beneficiaries in an extended lapse.
• Call centers, hotlines and regional offices that help veterans understand their benefits will close to the public.
• Veterans’ compensation, pension, education, and other benefits could be cut off in the case of an extended  shutdown.
• Every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, will be immediately closed.
• New applications for small business loans and loan guarantees will be immediately halted.
• Research into life-threatening diseases and other areas will stop, and new patients won’t be accepted into clinical  trials at the National Institutes of Health.
• Work to protect consumers, ranging from child product safety to financial security to the safety of hazardous waste facilities, will cease. The EPA will halt non-essential inspections of chemical facilities and drinking water systems.
• Permits and reviews for planned energy and transportations projects will stop, preventing companies from working on these projects. Loans to rural communities will be halted.
• Hundreds of thousands of Federal employees including many charged with protecting us from terrorist threats, defending our borders, inspecting our food, and keeping our skies safe will work without pay until the shutdown  ends.
• Hundreds of thousands of additional federal workers will be immediately and indefinitely furloughed without pay.

Services That Will Continue During the Government Shutdown

• Social Security beneficiaries will continue receiving checks.
• The U.S. Postal Service will keep delivering mail.
• Active military will continue serving.
• Air traffic controllers, prison guards, and border patrol agents will remain on the job.
• NASA Mission Control will continue supporting astronauts serving on the Space Station.

Emergency rumors affecting Mid-Atlantic and Puerto Rico

Webguerrillero[es] reports that various sites speculate with this crisis being maybe engineered into a desperate emergency situation that would end with an emergency state, emergency in which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would intervene. This emergency would affect FEMA region III, which includes Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington D.C.

They also mention that there is great concern in Puerto Rico because the FEMA began sending large loads of coffins and mysterious bags to the island, as well as to "other places in the USA". FEMA replied that these are just "routine supplies".

FEMA has bought 22 million water bags and €6 million in readily edible food. They have also been moving, as mentioned, lots of plastic coffins, in Puerto Rico as well as in the USA, as well as weaponry. 

The Puerto Rican TV source[es] speculates with a possible imminent earthquake in a fault line in Eastern USA, which already hit two years ago, damaging the the North Anna nuclear power plant (Virginia).

Maybe just a mere rumor but it does sound intriguing, especially as seismic weapons do seem very real and were speculated to have been used against Haiti years ago (which "coincided" with a "humanitarian" intervention drill in Haiti - coincidences like that do not happen).

USA: myths and facts of wealth distribution (very informative video)

You may have already watched this because it has not less than 7 million views. Still that's only the thousandth fraction of World's population and just about 2% of US citizenry, so I guess it is still worth spreading around.

What US citizens believe and wish about wealth distribution in their country, the wealthiest one on Earth, and what is the sad reality instead. First of all an screened key graph:

click to expand

Then the whole video (with even more shocking graphs):

 

As you can see but let's underline it:

1% of US citizens own 24% of all the national wealth (excluding public property such as roads, schools or the military, which is just 9% of the GDP). That makes this super-oligarchic 1% (3.16 million people):

• Jointly own $ 3.43 trillion.
• Own on average more than $ 1 million each.

10% of US citizens own around 73% of all the national wealth (again excluding in pure theory that 9% of public share). Therefore the oligarchic 10% (less than 32 million people):

• Jointly own $ 10.4 trillion (1/7 of the global wealth).
• Own on average some $ 350,000 each.

These together make up what we can consider the great bourgeoisie and the ones who actually control the country and, to a great extent, the whole planet.

Down the road are the real "middle classes" (petty bourgeoisie and assimilated), which may comprise the next 30%: those who own jointly some 22% of the total wealth (and the vast majority of the remainder), i.e. $ 3.14 trillion. On average someone from this "middle" 30% owns like 33,000 bucks (yearly figures always), roughly the average of the European Union. 

The remaining 60% (~working class) owns barely above 5% of the total wealth, what is like $ 714 billion, less than the GDP of Turkey. Considering that they are 190 million people, they have a GDP per capita of $ 3,750, what is just slightly above that of Vietnamese. Cubans get three times your share (on average, sure, but Cuba has almost no inequality, you know).

But we are still considering the average of this 60%. Most US workers are not actually getting even their fair share of these pathetic crumbs, the 40% of US-Americans barely get 1% or 2% of the total wealth. Let's be "optimistic" and say 2% (I do not have the exact figure, although it may be mentioned somewhere in the video). If so, these impoverished masses, 127 million people, would own jointly less than $ 286 billion (less than the GDP of Egypt). On average some $ 2,250 bucks per year (barely above the average Tajik or Sudanese). Cubans own on average almost five time this figure.

These masses of lower working class are largely made up of ethnic minorities (African Americans and Hispanics mostly) but these minorities only make some 29%, so there must be a good number of whites also in this extremely dispossessed sector of the working class. 

We can conclude that, thanks to the extreme and worsening inequality of the USA, the average Cuban is a lot better than the average US citizen. Of course that in Cuba almost everything belongs to the state but the state largely serves the people, unlike what happens in its northern and oft menacing neighbor.

Credit: politizane.


Update: the US wealth distribution is very markedly unequal but not the worst one at all at global levels, while the USA has a 0.41 score in the Gini coefficient, which measures wealth inequality, South Africa and Namibia (some of the worst cases) score of 0.63.

The sparse data for Cuba shows a clear decline in income equality thanks to the "market friendly" reforms promoted by the current regime but it is hardly comparable when all basic needs are guaranteed by the state at almost no cost. It is the extras which are costly. In the linked article someone complains that they can't buy a moped at the price of $98 (1 CUC=1 USD) but that same moped elsewhere costs $700 or more. The problem is getting dollars or other hard currencies to buy imported goods, not surviving decently.

The best performing capitalist country I could find is Ukraine, with a Gini score of 0.26. Next are other former Soviet bloc countries like Belarus or Afghanistan, but also some formerly socialist countries have quite horrible scores: Russia or China score similarly to the USA, with 0.40 and 0.42 scores respectively, what guess that can be added to the "merits" of Putin and the counter-revolutionary Chinese politburo.

The worst ex-socialist case is anyhow Angola, where oil wealth and civil peace have not served to extend equality but to destroy it. It scores 0.58 in the Gini coefficient.

While searching for this data, one of the most interesting graphs I found was this one on Latin American advances (or lack of them) towards equality by country:

(source: Revolutionary Communist)

We can see that most Latin American countries have improved somewhat their equality performance in the last decade (there are exceptions however: the usual suspects, of course: those still dominated by old school comprador oligarchies) but that some countries have very markedly improved their social-economic balance: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have all removed some 10 points from their Gini score (expressed in x100 figures here).

The ever-growing surplus value

I'm borrowing here a graph appeared at Naked Capitalism (data for the USA but it could be anywhere):

 

The implications are obvious: capitalists have been taking an ever growing share of the produced wealth since c. 1972. Previously, in what some have described as the period of "generous capitalism" (caused by the Cold War and fear of socialist revolutions) surplus value (the share of production appropriated by capitalists as manager class of the economy) was more or less stable, but since the 1970s it has grown steadily up to more than double, while real wages have remained stable. 

Wages are the share of production kept by producers, workers. But beware: salaries have remained stable but the share of wealth retained by producers has declined very sharply. 

This is how Capitalism works normally in fact. Marx explained it in Das Kapital with the example of the pin factory, in which vast improvements in technology and organization of production (~ productivity) led only to loss of jobs, not any improvement to the conditions of workers but exactly the opposite. 

Only radical and global class struggle caused a parenthesis in this natural tendency of Capitalism: the post-war decades of relatively shared affluence, which marked a generation that is now dying out.

But for all other generations of workers this is just the normal. And that is why Communism is extremely necessary and urgent.

Egypt: Petras analysis of the causes behind Morsi's failure

Borroka Garaia Da! publishes today a Spanish language article by James Petras (veteran international analyst from the USA) in which he synthetically analyzes the causes behind the fall of Morsi in four points (my synthesis):

1. The economy: Morsi adopted a neoliberal plan of removing subsidies without any kind of investment for job generation. He resorted to loans by the FMI, which demanded that suicidal economic strategy. The government was so undecided that it did nothing worth mentioning in this key economic aspect: neither social redistribution, nor investments... nothing. The result: economic deterioriation.
2. Sectarism: Morsi promoted divisionist fundamentalist policies that only satisfied the most fanatic among his supporters. 
3. Authoritarianism: imposing partisan appointments and abusing the presidential power against the other branches of government, disdaining any possible wider consensus.
4. Collaboration with Zionism and other Western Imperialism: maintaining the illegitimate and inhuman blockade against Gaza Strip, supporting the extremists against the Syrian government, totally folding to the demands of the US Empire.

However he mentions that while the core of the opposition is progressive, there are also important elements of supporters of the Old Regime, who want to reverse the democratic process. 

He thinks that Washington is playing many different cars in the Egyptian turmoil: Morsi, the Mubarakists, the center-right liberals, etc.

The military caste in turn is probably just seeking to weaken any civilian government in order to keep their privileges.

Japan: government announces Cyprus-like "bail-in" mechanism to face bank collapse

The Japanese government has announced this self-defeating mechanism by which savers' money will be made part of the bank's capital if the private financial corporation is at risk of bankruptcy.

The mechanism will be to convert savings deposits into preferential shares, a scam mechanism already used in Spain to massively rob small savers, or something called "subordinated bonds".

According to some Japanese-language economic media:

By having the investors shoulder part of the loss in a financial crisis, the system will reduce the burden on taxpayers.

Problem here is that savers are not investors. Investors are those who hold capital shares, aka stock, aka equity. What this system does is to force customers into forcibly becoming investors precisely when the investment is collapsing.

Large scale savers will probably have no problem here: they will already be rushing their money to overseas banks, where it will be safer, so the main victims of this scheme will unavoidably be small and middle savers, often people who have been saving all their lives in order to have something to rely on when old. 

Japan is by far the most indebted state on Earth. Its stock market woes have been driving the global ones downwards in the last weeks. 

Source: EXSKF.

Turkish Revolution report (night 6-7 June)

Garanti, the bank which owns several TV channels in Turkey, all of which are censoring the information on the revolutionary uprising, has been faced now with a boycott. Small business owners are closing their accounts in it and returning the bank's card readers, as shown in the photo.

But they are doing much more: they occupied one of the TV stations forcing the matter to be debated in the waves.

Garanti is controlled 50-50 by Doğuş Group and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA).

Repression moves to Ankara

As the international attention is to great extent focused on Taksim Square and Istanbul, the repression there has weakened. However elsewhere in the country and very especially in Ankara, it has increased instead.

Causes of the uprising

Aytekin Kurtul Kaan, member of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), explains in an article published in Spanish language the causes of the social anger, which I synthesize here:

1. Growing repression: the AKP government, especially since 2007 has increased the repression, directed especially against military officers who were reluctant to NATO hegemony and independent journalists. Most of the charges were reliant on telephone tapping, what has caused paranoia in the population. 

2. Anti-secularism: imposition of religion teaching in schools, transformation of secular schools into religious ones, even what in Turkey amounts to nearly "blasphemy": Erdogan claimed that the founders of the republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Ismet Inönü were "a pair of drunkards".

3. Economic disaster: even if it is not usually discussed because of the protection that Erdogan has in the Western and Arab halls of power, Turkey has a worse foreign debt than Greece, debt that has been partly hidden by the sellout of the country's assets to private investors. Also the productivity level is mediocre in spite of the very low salaries, what has damaged the economy after the trade association with the EU. Today only 16% of Turkish citizens live above poverty level and 14% lives under hunger level.

In addition to that the intervention in favor of the Islamists in the Syrian conflict has caused many troubles especially in the border areas, where Syrian fundamentalist militias have attacked Turkish citizens. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link 1, link 2, link 3).

IMF admits 'austerity' wrong for Greece

In yet another case of, quite hypocritical, "too little, too late", the International Monetary Fund has admitted (so far only internally but to be published this week) that the organization underestimated the damage that austerity would cause to the Greek economy and society. 

They also admit that the Greek debt bubble was only possible because the IMF bent its own rules in order to pretend and extend.

The acknowledgement seems to forecast a haircut of the Greek debt. 

Source: The Guardian.

State support for the economy works

Ah, the irony: ultraliberal (=ultracapitalist) and decadent Europe (EU) debates whether or not impose duties on Chinese cheap solar panels. Why? Because it is suspected that the overwhelming Chinese production necessarily required of state support. 

Sure, probably very true. If so, why not to begin or retake at least some much needed state support for the economy here in Europe?

That is what is not being debated at all. The current desperate situation of European economy and society is only because of ultraliberalization and destroying by design the state involvement in the economy. 

Without state intervention we are bound to become others' colonies.

Black Thursday: Japan's stock market collapse 7.3%, World follows suit

Japanese stock market Nikkei collapsed today, falling 7.3%, the biggest slump since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. 

Other global markets have followed the trend, as usually happens.

The "official" version of the causes, reflected for example by Euronews, blames Chinese and European economic weaknesses. However, would that be the case, why would Japan be the first market to collapse and so dramatically. 

The real reasons therefore seem to be Japanese many weaknesses: first and foremost the effects of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, which, no matter how much you deny them, are very real and scaring everyone inside and outside the Asian archipelago. Another weakness is the absolutely brutal (and ever-growing) public debt and related excessive strength of the yen. This pre-dates the Fukushima disaster but have been aggravated by the loss of export markets after it. 

Main source: Ex-SKF.

Humor: Spain's fundamental constitutional "rights" to the psychoanalist

Again the political cartoon artist Tasio nailing it:

Translation: 

Article 36.1 of the Constitution [of the Kingdom of Spain]

All Spanish citizens have the duty to work and the right to work, to the free choice of profession or trade, to the promotion through work and to a remuneration sufficient to satisfy their needs and those of their families, without in any case being allowed discrimination by reason of gender...

Psychoanalyst: You tell me...

Source: Gara.

A very short graphic history of late Capitalism

Ever heard of surplus value, Thatcher & Reagan or the Credit Bubble? I bet you did. What you might not have realized is that, in the golden decades of Capitalism, at the middle and third quarter of the 20th century, the system, deeply trampled in a protracted class war at home and abroad, decided to effectively apply semi-socialist measures allowing a much greater share of this surplus value to be shared by workers. 

These figures, which apply only to the USA but surely have strong parallels elsewhere within the core Capitalist Empire, come from Campaign for America's Future (via Hullabaloo), a self-described progressive site, but most informative in any case.

The most revealing chart is this one:

We can easily see how in the 1940s, with the war effort and all that (heh, not the New Deal but many years later in fact) the 10% bourgeois elite took more than just a haircut in their share of the surplus value, from c. 45% to 35% or less. Those ten or fifteen percentile points were enough to keep most of the popular classes content and hopeful for the following decades. 

However, since the 1980s, that interested generosity of the 20th century capitalism, was dramatically reversed and today the levels of wealth concentration among the bourgeois elites are record high, what implies that the working class is having a very bad time, as we know too well. 

Why?, could well a naive person ask. Because the top bourgeois elite is taking it all in their bottomless pockets, as they always did except (partly) for that anomalous parenthesis of the Cold War.

Other parallel charts, all of which are coincident in pointing to Reagan as the trigger culprit:

Share of workers in the benefits

Less income means less savings

What meant disparage growth of credit while tolerated (the bubble)

So now you know the secret of the "happy capitalism" of mid-century: a bourgeois-managed "Robin Hood" strategy of sorts in order to prevent the masses from siding with Communism. Once they estimated that the danger had passed, they removed the benefits, feeding a gigantic credit bubble as buffer. Bubble that eventually burst, of course. 

So here we are back in the 1920s, so to say, just that almost everything else has changed. That's the cycle of Materialist Dialectics, which is not circular but spiral. Spiral that unavoidably leads to the end of the Capitalist regime.

Obituary: José Luis Sampedro

Writer, philosopher and economist José Luis Sampedro died on Sunday at his home at the most venerable age of 96. Of deep humanist and communist libertarian ideas, Sampedro worked most of his life as professor of economic science, writing a number of works on the matter, some very recently, but he is much better known as fictional author (for example: The Etruscan Smile).   

He fought with the Anarchists in the Catalan/Spanish Revolution of 1936-37. He was eventually elected member of the Academy of the Spanish Language, owning the seat F. 

Last year he announced the nearing end of Capitalism and what he calls The Age of Money, claiming that younger people already are one step beyond Capitalism. 

Figures of the German green energy transition (up to date)

From Energy Transition:

PV = photovoltaic = solar energy (non-thermal)

Important note: biomass is not green: while biomass is considered and is indeed renewable, depending on its origins it may well be very harmful. A key source of biomass is wood, which is generally obtained from plantations in Europe but also elsewhere. Burning wood, no matter how renewable is not ecologically honest and is not better than biofuels (also renewable). Not only the method of energy generation from combustion is pollutant but also and critically the tree plantations damage the environment and human rights where they are installed. A WRM report is available HERE (source[es]).

More details at Energy Transition.