Economy/Economics

The not so mysterious capitalist economy

On July 16 this year protests erupted outside Greek parliament as lawmakers were approving further harsh austerity plan in exchange for a third European bailout. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won by 229 votes to 64 while 32 members of his own Syriza party voted against the measures, including his ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
The vote took place after a fiery debate when Tsipras energetically defended his stand under threat of resignation.

All across America, from West Quoddy Head, Maine, the easternmost point, to Cape Wrangell, Alaska, the westernmost point, a distance of 3,625 miles, people are confronted by politics, Democrats and Republicans, but do they know the two parties merged into a neoliberal juggernaut some time ago? It’s Purple Politics, a de facto single party.

Though not explicitly stated, America’s most powerful instrument of national power is Capitalism. The pistons that power Neoliberal American Capitalism are: Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Human Capital/People. The clearest exposition of the instruments of national power on record can be found in the US Army’s 2008 Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare Manual.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, July 16, the Greek Parliament passed a host of austerity measures in order to begin talks on a potential third bailout of 86 billion euros. The austerity measures were pushed onto the Parliament by Greece’s six-month-old leftist government of Syriza, elected in late January with a single mandate to oppose austerity.

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, in an article in the Guardian entitled “Germany won’t spare Greek pain – it has an interest in breaking us”, frames the Greek tragedy in clear terms thus:

From April 28 – May 5, 2015 representatives of the July 26 Coalition of New York-New Jersey organized a people-to-people program to Cuba with a dozen travelers.
Our delegation included doctors and other health care providers, teachers, trade unionists, and activists against the decades-long U.S. government policy aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution which triumphed in 1959.

I’m no economist but I have been wondering how Syriza plans to bypass German-imposed austerity as long as it sticks with the euro. Depressed economies recover by devaluing their currency so that they can become more competitive. But Greece is currently tied to the euro, which means it cannot devalue and must continue to compete, despite its deathbed economy, against far larger and stronger economies like Germany’s.

Although nuclear proliferation in “developing” states has long been an international concern, evidence revealed through statistical tests does not support claims that nations develop civilian nuclear power in order to supplement the development of nuclear weapons programs.

In what could hopefully lead to a significant change in the nature of Third World development financing, a new research paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admits that the strong pro-capitalist policies at the centre of its development support activities do not work.